Pope Gregory retaliates against Florence by excommunicating…

Kham Heng, who has returned with his forces to Chakangrao, defends the city against the 1376 attack of Ayutthaya’s King Borommachathirat.

Kham Heng’s army, allied with the forces of the northern Thai kingdom of Lanna (whose ruler hopes to maintain Sukhothai as an independent buffer state between his kingdom and Ayutthaya) attempts a failed ambush of the Ayutthayan forces and is decimated in a battle near Kamphaeng Phet.

Sukhothai chieftain Thao Phadong escapes the slaughter but is again defeated in battle, and many Sukhothai state officials are captured by the Ayutthayan forces.

The Lithuanians make raids in Halych, Lodomeria and Poland, almost reaching Kraków in November 1376.

A riot breaks out in Kraków against the unpopular queen mother, Elizabeth, on December 6.

The rioters slaughter about one hundred and sixty servants of the queen-mother, forcing her to flee to Hungary.

Taking advantage of the situation, Wladyslaw the White, Duke of Gniewkowo, who is a male member of the royal Piast dynasty, announces his claim to the Polish crown.

However, Louis's partisans defeat the pretender and Louis makes him abbot of the Pannonhalma Archabbey in Hungary.

Louis appoints Vladislaus II of Opole his governor in Poland.

The Genoese help Andronikos to escape in July 1376 from prison, whence he goes straight to sultan Murad I, and in return for his support, agrees to return Gallipoli, which had been retaken by the Empire ten years before, with the assistance of Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy.

The sultan duly provides a mixed force of cavalry and infantry and with these, Andronikos is able to take control of Constantinople.

Here he is able to capture and imprison both John V and his son Manuel.

Meanwhile, the ecumenical patriarch at Constantinople, after three decades of opposition, finally accepts and recognizes the Serbian Orthodox church in 1376.

Two Irish pilgrims who visited Albania on their way to Jerusalem in 1322 had reported that Durrës was “inhabited by Latins, Greeks, perfidious Jews and barbaric Albanians”.

At the death of Serbian King (Tsar) Dušan in 1355, the city had passed into the hands of the Albanian family of Thopias.

After peace was made in 1366 a company of mercenaries, mostly from Navarre and Gascony, had been organized into a coherent company of soldiers under Louis, the brother of Charles II of Navarre, who is Count of Beaumont-le-Roger in his own right and Duke of Durazzo in right of his wife, Joanna.

Louis intends to assert his claim over Albania and to fight for his claim to the principality.

Charles of France has likewise aided him with fifty thousand ducats.

The Navarrese ranks had begun to swell in 1372 through the recruiting techniques of Enguerrand de Coucy, who had been hired to form a force of five hundred lances and five hundred cavalry archers, mostly from Gascony.

Though these soldiers had been recruited for service in Albania, they had at first been first organized in Naples.

Many men from Navarre had begun enlisting in 1375 and 1376 mand have traveled directly to Albania to join their countrymen.

The enrollment lists for these years have been preserved in Pamplona and reveal the important presence of many engineers.

The total number of men that had left Tortosa between February 1375 and June 1376 is in the thousands.

They are paid thirty gold Aragonese florins a month.

Louis and the Navarrese in midsummer 1376, capture Durazzo (the remnant of the kingdom), which had been in the hands of Karl Topia, thus reestablishing the regnum Albaniae.

His death this same year leaves the Navarrese unemployed.

The Swiss force Coucy’s invaders to battle their way westward across the Jura on their return to France in the spring of 1376.

Pope Gregory's economic sanctions hurt merchants of the Florentine "diaspora" throughout Europe, particularly the Alberti bankers in Avignon, although the interdict is ignored by many, including Charles V of France.

The Alberti originated from the castle of Catenaia in Valdarno Casentinese, whence the presence of two chains (Italian: catena) in their coat of arms.

Becoming established in Florence during the thirteenth century with judge Rustico Alberti, they had later divided into different lines, who own several houses and towers near the modern Ponte alle Grazie.

Exiled after the Battle of Montaperti due to their Guelph allegiance, they had returned after Manfred of Sicily's defeat in the battle of Benevento in 1266.

Subsequently siding with the Black Guelph faction, the Alberti have established a flourishing trade company with agencies at Bologna, Genoa, Venice, Barcelona, Paris, Ghent, Brussels, Bruges, and London, as well as in Syria and Greece.

Catherine of Siena, a deeply religious woman who had joined the Dominican Third Order at sixteen, has become convinced of the necessity of ending the sixty-eight-year absence of the popes from Rome and had begun to write letters to men and women in authority, especially begging for peace between the republics and principalities of Italy and for the return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome.

She has carried on a long correspondence with Pope Gregory XI, also asking him to reform the clergy and the administration of the Papal States.

Already known for her unusual mystical revelations and the holiness of her life, she travels to Avignon as an ambassador of Florence to present her case personally for ending the war and to persuade Gregory to leave France for Rome, the rightful capital of the papacy (which he will do the following January).

Louis of Hungary invades the territories held by the Lithuanian prince George in Lodomeria in summer 1377.

His Polish troops soon capture Chelm, while Louis seizes George's seat, Belz, after besieging it for seven weeks.

He incorporates the occupied territories in Lodomeria, together with Galicia, into the Kingdom of Hungary.

Three Lithuanian princes—Fedor, Prince of Ratno, and two princes of Podolia, Alexander and Boris—accept Louis's suzerainty.

The earliest settlements in the area of present day Vilnius appear to be of Mesolithic origin.

Numerous archaeological findings in different parts of the city prove that the area has been inhabited by peoples of various cultures since the early Middle Ages.

Initially a Baltic settlement, later it will also be inhabited by Slavs, Jews and Germans.

Some historians identify the city with Voruta, a forgotten capital of King Mindaugas.

The city, first mentioned in written sources in 1323, is also mentioned as the capital city of Lithuania in the same year by Gediminas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, who built his wooden castle on the hill there.

The city had become more widely known after he wrote a circular letter of invitation to Germans and Jews (known as the Letters of Gediminas) to the principal Hansa towns in 1325, offering free access into his domains to men of every order and profession.

Emperor Louis IV in 1337 had allegedly granted the Teutonic Order the imperial privilege to conquer all Lithuania and Russia, and during the reign of Grand Master Winrich von Kniprode (1351-1382), the Order reaches the peak of its international prestige, hosting numerous European crusaders and nobility.

The Teutonic Knights in 1377 destroy Vilnius.

The Lackfis' influence in Hungary has diminished and new favorites have emerged in the royal court.

James Szepesi had been appointed judge royal in 1373, and Nicholas Garay had become the palatine in 1375.

The organization of central government has also been modified to create a more centralized power structure.

Louis's "secret seal", that he has always taken with him during his wars and journeys, has been declared authentic, and Louis has entrusted it to the secret chancellor who is always to accompany him.

A new high official, the Lord Chancellor is authorized to use the great seal in the king's name in 1376 or 1377.

Demetrius, Bishop of Zagreb, who is of humble origin, is the first to hold this new office.

The Lord Chancellor becomes the head of a new central court of justice, called the court of "the king's special presence" in 1377.

From around the same time, the royal free towns delegate jurors to assist the master of the treasury, who heads the court of appeal for the towns.

A new official, the treasurer, takes over the master of the treasury's financial duties.