Boleslaw, refusing to recognize that Lusatia and Upper Lusatia are his only as fiefs, has not aided Henry in his Italian campaign.

He had instead supported Crescentian antipope Gregory and intrigued against Henry II in Italy, who had denied Gregory his support in Pöhlde.

Henry II had started his Italian campaign in the fall of 1013, defeated the allies of the Crescentians and had pope Benedict VIII crown him Holy Roman Emperor in Rome on February 14, 1014.

Bohemian duke Oldrich (Udalrich) meanwhile captures Boleslaw I's son, Mieszko, and turns him over to Henry II, who, however, releases him.

Stephen, the first king of Hungary, integrates the territory north of the Carpathians, which is to become known as Transylvania, into his kingdom.

Bagrat III’s son, George I, inherits a longstanding claim to the succession of David III of Tao.

While Basil is preoccupied with his Bulgarian campaigns, George gains momentum to invade Tao/Tayk and Basean in 1014.

Henry, having dealt with Arduin, goes straight to Rome, where Pope Benedict VIII, who had been forced to flee Rome on the ascension of the antipope Gregory IV and has now returned, crowns him Holy Roman Emperor on February 14, 1014.

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol of the Faith is used for the first time during the Roman Mass after the newly crowned Henry II asks the Pope to add it together with the filioque clause.

Prior to this date, the Creed was not used at all during the liturgy.

Henry takes his duties in Italy seriously and appoints German officials to administer the country.

He returns to Germany in May.

Benedict will remain on good terms with Henry for his entire pontificate.

Hammad ibn Buluggin, a Berber who had been placed as governor of central Maghreb, in 1014 declares himself independent from the Zirids, who rule most of the Maghreb from Morocco to Tunisia, and obtains the recognition from the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad.

Hammad founds a new capital in Qalaat Beni Hammad.

The Zirids send an army.

Two years later, a peace will be signed, although the new Zirid ruler will not recognize the Hammadid legitimacy until 1018.

Sweyn has proven himself to be a general greater than any other Viking leader of his generation, but the situation in England changes suddenly on February 3, 1014, when he dies.

His older son Harold is chosen by the Danes to succeed him as king in Denmark.

The crews of the Danish ships in the Trent that had supported Sweyn immediately swear their allegiance to Sweyn's younger son Cnut, but leading English noblemen send a deputation to Æthelred to negotiate his restoration to the throne.

He is required to declare his loyalty to them, to bring in reforms regarding everything that they dislike and to forgive all that had been said and done against him in his previous reign.

The terms of this agreement are of great constitutional interest in early English history as they are the first recorded pact between a King and his subjects and are also widely regarded as showing that many English noblemen had submitted to Sweyn simply because of their distrust of Æthelred.

Æthelred, having returned in March, now launches an expedition against Cnut and his allies, the men of Lindsey.

Cnut's army has not completed its preparations and, in April 1014, Cnut decides to withdraw from England without a fight, leaving his Lindsey allies to suffer Æthelred's revenge and returning to Denmark to enforce his rule there.

Máel Mórda mac Murchad, the King of Leinster, had in 1012 started a rebellion against Brian Boru that eventually ends on April 23, 1014 at the Battle of Clontarf, in which the High King’s army decisively routs a coalition of his Danish Viking and Irish enemies.

The seventy-three-year-old Brian, too old to take part in the battle, is murdered by a few Norsemen who stumble upon his tent while fleeing.

Emperor Basil II launches his annual campaign against Bulgaria in the summer of 1014.

From Western Thrace via Serres, he reaches the valley of the Strumeshnitsa river where his troops are halted by a thick palisade guarded by an army under the personal command of the Bulgarian Emperor.

To divert the attention of the enemy, Samuel sends a large force under his general Nestoritsa to the south to attack the second largest city of the Empire, Thessaloniki.

Several days later, Nestoritsa reaches the fields to the west of the city or, according to other historians near the river of Galik, where the Bulgarians confronts a strong army led by the doux (governor) of Thessalonica, Theophylactus Botaniates and his son Michael.

The latter charges the Bulgarians but is surrounded.

In the fierce fighting, the Bulgarians suffer many casualties and pull back under the cover of archers.

A second attack of Michael and the Greek cavalry results in a complete defeat for Nestoritsa's troops and they flee.

The victorious Greeks capture many soldiers.

After securing Thessalonica, Botaniates joins Basil's army at Belasitsa.

Later in the summer, Botaniates and his army are defeated in the gorges to the south of Strumitsa and he perishes in the battle, killed by Samuel's son Gavril Radomir.

Nestoritsa, who survived the defeat, will surrender to Basil II four years later in 1018, after the Emperor enters the capital of Bulgaria, Ohrid.

Basil, having in recent years of ruthless campaigning taken northern and central Bulgaria from Samuel, advances toward the tsar’s capital, Ochrida.

Overwhelming Samuel’s forces in the Battle of Belasitsa on July 29, 1014, Basil wins the crushing victory that gives him his byname, Bulgaroctonus, “Slayer of the Bulgars”.

At Basil's order, the Bulgarian prisoners (said to number between fourteen thousand and fifteen thousand) are blinded, leaving one eye to each hundredth man, so that the soldiers might be led back to their aged tsar, who faints from shock at the terrible spectacle and dies shortly afterward.