Gregory Paul, Marcin Czechowic, and Georg Schomann…

The huge Burmese army of invasion besieges the Siamese capital of Ayutthaya for ten months in the face of fierce resistance.

Shortly after the death of Siam’s King Mahachakrabarti, a treacherous monk aids the Burmese in entering the city on August 30, 1569.

Mahachakrabarti’s son Mahindra dies as a captive.

Bayinnaung installs on the Siamese throne a new vassal, the late Mahachakrabarti’s son-in-law Maha Dhammaraja, upon the return of the latter’s son and heir, Prince Naresuan, held hostage by the Burmese.

Bayinnaung deports thousands of enslaved Siamese to the Burmese kingdom.

López de Legazpi, now sixty-five, does not accompany his men during the conquest of Manila because of health problems and advanced age.

A force of three hundred Spanish soldiers, cavalrymen, and several local natives, led by Martín de Goiti, departs Cebu in late 1569 to explore the Northern regions of the Visayas, the central part of the Philippine archipelago.

They find the islands of Panay and ...

...Mindoro, where they encounter Chinese sea-traders in the area.

Goiti and Salcedo fight with Chinese pirates on the Eastern coastline of Mindoro and defeat them off shore.

Nobunaga eventually begins to restrict the powers of the shogun, making it clear that he intends to use him as a puppet to justify his future conquests.

Yoshiaki, displeased at being a puppet, secretly corresponds with various daimyo, forging an anti-Nobunaga alliance.

The Asakura clan, in particular, is disdainful of the Oda clan's rising power.

Historically, the Oda clan had been subordinate to the Asakura clan, and Asakura Yoshikage also temporarily protected Ashikaga Yoshiaki but had not been willing enough to march toward Kyoto; thus, the Asakura clan despises Nobunaga the most for his success.

Otomo Sorin has meanwhile received the news that Hetsugi Akitsura, a notable vassal of the Otomo, had been defeated at the Battle of Tatarahama and has lost the Tachibana Castle.

Sorin now threatens the Mori‘s Buzen foothold, forcing the clan’s retreat.

He is by this time is in control of Bungo, most of Buzen, Chikuzen, Chikugo, and wields influence over Higo and Hizen.

Russia, at first victorious in the Livonian War, has succeeded in destroying the Livonian knights, but their ally Lithuania becomes an integral part of Poland in 1569.

Minsk, the seat of an early Russian principality in the region of present Belarus that had fallen under Lithuanian control in the mid-fourteenth century, passes to Poland in 1569 under the Union of Lublin.

Poland gains control of Livonia in summer 1569, when the kingdom formally merges with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to become the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Poland’s Sigismund II, at war with Tsar Ivan IV of an increasingly powerful Russian state over Livonia, which had been absorbed into Poland-Lithuania, undertakes the formal consolidation of the two nations, loosely federated for two centuries.

Adroitly playing off the Polish gentry against the Lithuanian magnates, he secures the Union of Lublin in 1569, by which the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, together with Livonia and Ducal Prussia, formally merge in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with one elective monarch and a common parliament.

Sigismund also devises a system of checks and balances between the crown and parliament.

Lithuania, however, loses its separate institutions under the reorganized federation.

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth now controls territories from the Baltic to the Black seas.

Under the union, most Ukrainian lands are transferred to the direct jurisdiction of the Polish crown.

Akbar visits the Muslim hermit Chishti, who is residing in the village of Sikri, about twenty-five miles (forty kilometers) southwest of Agra.

Chishti correctly foretells that Akbar's wish for an heir will be gratified with the birth of a son, who is born in Sikri on August 31st of this year (he will later rule as the emperor Jahangir).

The grateful Akbar decides that the site of Sikri is auspicious and makes it his capital as the royal city of Fatehpur Sikri.

Pirro Ligorio—architect, painter, landscaper, and antiquarian—completes nineteen years of work for his patron, Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, on the Villa d'Este at Tivol.

Still standing in its original state of completion in 1562, the villa has a planted landscape and a vast terraced garden with spectacular fountains leading up to the huge house.

The complex comprises an elliptical cortile, two free standing portals, and the loggia with its fountain.

Rich sculptural stuccos, once supplemented by some fifty ancient Roman sculptures, enliven the exterior.

A team of at least six major painters, including Federico Barocci, Federico Zuccari, and Santi di Tito and their assistants, have frescoed the interiors.

Ligorio decorates his works with profuse stucco ornament; a good example of his decoration is his Casino of Pope Pius IV (Casina di Pio IV) in the Vatican Gardens, constructed between 1558 and 1562. He also designed the Rotunda with Baldassare Peruzzi (1481–1536).

His map of ancient Rome (Antiquae Urbis Imago) from 1561 is one of most famous published works as an antiquarian.

Fired in 1568 by Paul V for having criticized Michelangelo's work in St. Peter's Basilica, Ligorio has moved to Ferrara, where he is the guest of Duke Alfonso II d'Este.