Pope Sixtus V authorizes monarchs to appoint…

Majapahit ruler Girisawardhana, who died in 1466, had been succeeded by Singhawikramawardhana.

In 1468, Prince Kertabhumi had rebelled against Singhawikramawardhana, promoting himself as king of Majapahit.

Singhawikramawardhana had moved the Kingdom’s capital to Daha and continued his rule until he was succeeded by his son Ranawijaya in 1474.

In 1478, Ranawijaya defeats Kertabhumi and reunites Majapahit as one kingdom.

Ivan III begins the unification and centralization of the Russian lands under Moscow.

Novgorod is dependent on the Vladimir-Suzdal region for grain, and the main cities in the area, Moscow and Tver, have used this dependence to gain control over Novgorod.

Eventually Ivan III forcibly annexes the city to the Grand Duchy of Moscow in 1478.

The Veche is dissolved and a significant part of Novgorod's population is either killed or deported.

The Catholic nobility in Bohemia, who form a majority of the country’s aristocrats, have from 1468 attempted to have Hungary’s king Matthias Corvinus recognized as king of their country.

The legal monarch, King Vladislaus II, a strong supporter of Bohemia’s nationalists, has continued to prosecute the war against the Romanists and Corvinus for several years, but ultimately loses the regions of Moravia, Silesia, and Lusatia.

Negotiations between the envoys of Matthias and Vladislaus accelerated during the first few months of 1477.

The first draft of a treaty is agreed upon on March 28, 1478.

The treaty authorizes both monarchs to use the title of King of Bohemia—although Vladislaus can omit to style Matthias as such in their correspondence—and the Lands of the Bohemian Crown are divided between them; Vladislaus rules in Bohemia proper and Matthias in Moravia, Opava, Silesia and the two Lusatias, all of which which will revert to Bohemia on his death.

They solemnly ratify the peace treaty at their meeting in Olomouc on July 21.

Prince John of Portugal, who had been charged since 1474 by his father, King Afonso V, with the administration of the Portuguese maritime expansion, receive news in 1478 that a large Castilian fleet of thirty five ships commanded by Pedro de Covides had been sent from Seville by Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon to Portugal's claimed Mina, in the region of the Gulf of Guinea, to attack the Portuguese there and trade with the natives.

He immediately prepares and organizes a fleet of eleven ships with the objective of intercepting the Castilian expedition, giving the command of the fleet to Jorge Correia and Mem Palha, two of his knights.

When the Portuguese fleet of eleven ships arrives at the Gulf of Guinea, the Castilians have already been in the area for about two months trading with the Africans.

Cheap goods like shells, old clothes, brass bracelets and other items are being traded in exchange for gold, while slave raids along the coast of Guinea are also being conducted.

The Castilian fleet is anchored in a harbor near Mina when the Portuguese fleet initiates an attack early in the morning.

The Castilians are caught by surprise and end up being quickly and totally defeated, being forced to surrender to the Portuguese, who without much harm to themselves are able to capture the entire Castilian fleet along with its large cargo of gold.

The captured fleet is then taken to Lisbon.

The large amount of gold captured by the Portuguese is enough to finance King Afonso’s military campaign in Castile.

Resistance to the Ottoman Empire, with support from Naples and the papacy, continues mostly in Albania's highlands, where the chieftains even oppose the construction of roads out of fear that they will bring Ottoman soldiers and tax collectors.

The Albanians' fractured leadership fails to halt the Ottoman onslaught, however.

Davud Pasha is a converted Muslim and formerly Christian Albanian, who during his childhood was conscripted through the devşirme system in the ranks of the Ottoman army, where he was converted to Islam.

As Beylerbey of the Anatolian Eyalet in 1473, he had been one of the commanders of the Ottoman army in the decisive victory against Ak Koyunlu in the Battle of Otlukbeli.

He is in 1478 given control of the troops marching against Shkodër, Albania by Sultan Mehmed II, who marches against Krujë.

Davud Pasha manages to capture the city, which is the last stronghold of the League of Lezhë, thus ending the Ottoman-Albanian Wars.

Border disputes involving the ill-defined Swiss-Italian frontier increase with the number of traders and mercenaries crossing the St. Gotthard Pass.

The Swiss Confederation is attempting to expand into the southern foothills of the Alps to gain control of both ends of the valuable mountain passes.

In November 1478, Uri troops move south over the Gotthard pass into the Levantina valley.

The population of the valley, who have long been opposed to Milan, greet the Swiss troops as liberators and allies.

However, below the valley at Bellinzona, they find the city gates closed.

Uri is quickly joined by forces from other Confederation cantons and establishes a siege camp below the walls of Bellinzona on November 30, 1478.

Ludovico Sforza, acting as regent to the young Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Sforza, responds by sending ten thousand men toward Bellinzona to drive the Confederates back and reassert his control over the Val Levantina.

The Milanese army reaches Magadino on Lake Maggiore, about fourteen kilometers (8.7 miles) from Bellinzona, on December 16.

However, the Confederates have already retired, after a fourteen-day siege of Bellinzona, to the Gotthard Pass.

Only a one hundred and seventy-five man-strong reserve army, reinforced by about four hundred soldiers from the Val Levantina, are guarding the rear at Giornico in the Levantina valley.

The entire Milanese army reaches Giornico on December 28, outnumbering the defenders by about twenty to one.

The Milanese army is confined in a narrow valley, struggling for foothold on the December snow and ice.

The Swiss ambush the army from above, creating confusion by rolling large boulders down the hillside.

They reportedly also wore crampons for better foothold.

Against this attack, the Milanese army is helpless regardless of their superior number, and are forced to flee, leaving an estimated fourteen hundred dead.

Following this decisive defeat,Ludovico Sforza withdraws from the Levantina, leaving it under Uri's control.

To consolidate his power in Bellinzona, Sforza builds the small Sasso Corbaro castle near the town of Bellinzona.

Donato Bramante had received his architectural training in Urbino and in all likelihood was employed in the workshops of the Ducal Palace constructed from 1462 to 1470 under the direction of Luciano Laurana and Francesco di Giorgio.

The new ruler of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, had summoned Bramante to Milan in 1477.

At thirty-four, he begins work the following year on the enlargement of the church of Santa Maria presso San Satiro.

Bramante’s plan calls for a reorientation of the church.

He turns the old nave into a transept and constructs a new nave at right angles to it.

As the sight is too limited to permit construction of a full chancel, Bramante builds a false choir that appears (in an early example of illusionistic architecture in the Renaissance) to continue the structural system of the nave.

Gentile Bellini's early training had been in his father Jacopo's shop, where he had helped on several of the important commissions given to Jacopo in the 1460s.

After this period of apprenticeship Gentile had quickly become one of the most highly regarded painters in Venice.

He had in 1469 been made a “Cavaliere of Venice” and a Palatine Count by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, and in 1479 he is sent by the Venetian senate to Constantinople at the request of Sultan Mehmed II.

The artistic talent of Leonardo da Vinci must have revealed itself early: the illegitimate son of a Florentine notary, Piero da Vinci, and a young woman named Caterina, he had been apprenticed at seventeen to leading master Andrea del Verrocchio in around 1469.

He enters the painters' guild in 1472, the date of his earliest (extant) works.

One of the many paintings produced by Verrocchio's Florentine workshop, The Baptism of Christ, painted around 1475, bears clear evidence of Verrocchio's hand and also that of the young Leonardo, who contributes a (later-famous) angel.

Other examples of Leonardo's activity in the workshop are the Annunciation, painted around 1473; the beautiful portrait Ginevra dei Benci, painted in about 1474; and the Madonna with a Carnation, painted in about 1475. (These three paintings, although rather traditional, include such details as the curling hair of Ginevra, that could have been conceived and painted only by Leonardo.)

Leonardo had remained in this versatile workshop until 1476, acquiring a variety of skills.

In 1478 he is commissioned to paint an altarpiece for the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.