The 14th century

In 1301, the title Prince of Wales was conferred on the English king's eldest son (Wales).

In 1302, Flemish militia destroyed a French knightly army at Courtrai, the Battle of the Golden Spurs (Flanders).

In 1303, Boniface VIII was seized at Anagni by French agents, an episode that broke papal claims to temporal supremacy (Italy).

In 1304, Petrarch was born at Arezzo (Italy).

In 1305, William Wallace was executed at London (Scotland).

In 1306, Robert the Bruce was crowned king of Scots (Scotland).

In 1307, Philip IV had the Knights Templar arrested across France on a single day (France).

In 1308, Henry VII was elected king of Germany, the first Luxembourg to hold the title (Central Europe).

In 1309, the papacy moved to Avignon, where it remained for sixty-eight years (France).

In 1310, Dante was at work on the Divine Comedy in exile from Florence (Italy).

In 1311, the Council of Vienne opened to judge the Templars and settle the Franciscan dispute over poverty (Europe).

In 1312, the Council of Vienne suppressed the Knights Templar (Europe).

In 1313, Henry VII died in Italy, and Dante's hopes for an imperial restoration died with him (Central Europe).

In 1314, Robert the Bruce's victory at Bannockburn secured Scottish independence in practice (Scotland).

In 1315, the Great Famine began after successive harvest failures, killing perhaps a tenth of the population over three years (Northern Europe).

In 1316, the birth and death of John I within five days produced the shortest reign in French history (France).

In 1317, the French crown adopted the rule excluding women from the succession, later called Salic law (France).

In 1318, a cattle plague followed the Great Famine, compounding the crisis across northern Europe (Europe).

In 1319, the Scottish victory at Myton was known as the Chapter of Myton for the number of clergy killed (Scotland).

In 1320, the Declaration of Arbroath asserted Scottish independence in a letter to the pope (Scotland).

In 1321, Dante died shortly after completing the Divine Comedy, whose three canticles of thirty-three cantos each set the vernacular on equal terms with Latin (Italy).

In 1322, Edward II defeated the baronial opposition at Boroughbridge (England).

In 1323, the Treaty of Noteborg fixed the first Swedish-Novgorodian border in Finland (Northern Europe).

In 1324, Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca distributed so much gold in Cairo that its value was depressed for years (West Africa and Egypt).

In 1325, Tenochtitlan was founded on an island in Lake Texcoco, and Mexico City stands on the site (Mesoamerica).

In 1326, the Ottomans captured Bursa and made it their capital (Anatolia).

In 1327, Edward II was deposed by parliament, the first English king removed in this way (England).

In 1328, the Capetian line failed and the Valois succeeded, the dispute that underlay the Hundred Years' War (France).

In 1329, Robert the Bruce died, having secured recognition of Scottish independence (Scotland).

In 1330, Edward III took power from Mortimer in a coup at Nottingham Castle (England).

In 1331, Stefan Dusan took the Serbian throne and expanded the state to its greatest extent (Serbia).

In 1332, the Disinherited invaded Scotland and won at Dupplin Moor, reopening the wars of independence (Scotland).

In 1333, the Kamakura shogunate fell and imperial rule was briefly restored (Japan).

In 1334, construction of the Palais des Papes began at Avignon (France).

In 1335, the Congress of Visegrad settled trade routes among Hungary, Poland and Bohemia bypassing Vienna (Central Europe).

In 1336, the Vijayanagara Empire was founded in southern India (South Asia).

In 1337, the Hundred Years' War began over the French succession and the duchy of Aquitaine (France and England).

In 1338, the Ashikaga shogunate was established at Kyoto (Japan).

In 1339, the Hundred Years' War opened with English raids across northern France (France).

In 1340, the English destroyed the French fleet at Sluys, giving England control of the Channel for a generation (Flanders).

In 1341, the Breton war of succession began, a proxy conflict between England and France that ran for twenty-three years (Brittany).

In 1342, Louis the Great began a reign that made Hungary a major power (Hungary).

In 1343, the English parliament divided into two chambers, Lords and Commons (England).

In 1344, Algeciras fell to Castile after a siege in which gunpowder artillery was recorded on both sides (Iberia).

In 1345, the Bardi and Peruzzi banks of Florence failed after English default, an early sovereign debt crisis (Italy).

In 1346, the English longbow decided the battle of Crecy, where cannon were also used in a European field battle for one of the first times (France).

In 1347, the Black Death reached Mediterranean ports and spread north, killing between a third and a half of Europe within four years (Europe).

In 1348, the Black Death reached England, and the resulting labour shortage broke the manorial economy (England).

In 1349, persecutions of Jewish communities accompanied the Black Death across the Rhineland and beyond (Central Europe).

In 1350, the second Jubilee drew pilgrims to Rome in the immediate aftermath of the plague (Europe).

In 1351, the Statute of Labourers tried to fix wages at pre-plague levels, and its failure reshaped rural society (England).

In 1352, Ibn Battuta crossed the Sahara to Mali, and his account is a principal source for the empire (West Africa).

In 1353, the Statute of Praemunire restricted appeals from English courts to Rome (England).

In 1354, the Ottomans took Gallipoli, their first permanent foothold in Europe (Balkans).

In 1355, Charles IV was crowned emperor at Rome, and confirmed the Golden Bull the following year (Italy).

In 1356, the Golden Bull fixed the number of imperial electors at seven and the procedure for choosing an emperor (Central Europe).

In 1357, Peter I began a reign remembered for summary royal justice and the cult of Ines de Castro (Portugal).

In 1358, the Jacquerie rising of French peasants was suppressed within weeks (France).

In 1359, the principality of Moldavia was founded (Balkans).

In 1360, the Treaty of Bretigny gave England a third of France in return for renouncing the French crown (France).

In 1361, a second wave of plague struck, and it fell heavily on those born since the first (Europe).

In 1362, the Statute of Pleading required English rather than French in the royal courts (England).

In 1363, Philip the Bold received Burgundy, beginning the duchy that rivalled France for a century (Burgundy).

In 1364, Charles V became king and began the recovery of territory lost at Bretigny (France).

In 1365, the University of Vienna was founded (Central Europe).

In 1366, the Statutes of Kilkenny tried to stop the English settlers in Ireland adopting Irish law and language (Ireland).

In 1367, the English won at Najera in the Castilian civil war, at heavy cost and to no lasting effect (Iberia).

In 1368, the Ming dynasty was founded and the Mongols were driven out of China (China).

In 1369, the war resumed, and Charles V recovered most of the English gains within a decade (France).

In 1370, Timur took power at Samarkand and began three decades of campaigning (Central Asia).

In 1371, Robert II became king, the first of the Stewart line (Scotland).

In 1372, a Castilian fleet destroyed an English squadron off La Rochelle, ending English command of the sea route to Bordeaux (Atlantic).

In 1373, the Anglo-Portuguese treaty was concluded, and it is the oldest alliance still in force (England and Portugal).

In 1374, Petrarch died, having recovered and edited much of the classical Latin canon (Italy).

In 1375, Boccaccio died, whose Decameron framed a hundred tales around the plague of 1348 (Italy).

In 1376, the Good Parliament impeached royal officials for the first time in English history (England).

In 1377, the papacy returned to Rome from Avignon (Italy).

In 1378, rival popes were elected at Rome and Avignon, beginning the Western Schism (Europe).

In 1379, New College was founded at Oxford, the first to be built around a quadrangle (England).

In 1380, Moscow's victory at Kulikovo was the first major defeat of the Golden Horde by Rus forces (Eastern Europe).

In 1381, the Peasants' Revolt reached London over the poll tax and the Statute of Labourers (England).

In 1382, the first complete English translation of the Bible was made by Wycliffe and his circle (England).

In 1383, the crisis of 1383 began, two years of war and interregnum that put the House of Aviz on the throne (Portugal).

In 1384, Flanders passed to the dukes of Burgundy by inheritance (Low Countries).

In 1385, the Portuguese victory at Aljubarrota secured independence from Castile (Portugal).

In 1386, the union of Poland and Lithuania created the largest state in Europe (Eastern Europe).

In 1387, Chaucer began the Canterbury Tales, written in English at a time when court literature was French (England).

In 1388, the Scots defeated an English force at Otterburn, the battle behind the Chevy Chase ballad (Scotland).

In 1389, the battle of Kosovo left both the Serbian and Ottoman rulers dead and became the central event of Serbian national memory (Balkans).

In 1390, the third Jubilee was proclaimed during the schism, with rival popes offering the same indulgence (Europe).

In 1391, anti-Jewish riots spread across Castile and Aragon, producing mass conversions and the converso question (Iberia).

In 1392, the Joseon dynasty was founded and ruled Korea for five centuries (Korea).

In 1393, John of Nepomuk was drowned in the Vltava on the king's order, later Bohemia's patron saint (Central Europe).

In 1394, Benedict XIII was elected at Avignon and refused for decades to resign (Europe).

In 1395, the Visconti bought the title of Duke of Milan from the emperor (Italy).

In 1396, the crusading army was destroyed at Nicopolis, ending western attempts to expel the Ottomans from the Balkans (Balkans).

In 1397, the Kalmar Union joined Denmark, Norway and Sweden under one monarch (Scandinavia).

In 1398, Timur sacked Delhi, and the sultanate never fully recovered (South Asia).

In 1399, Richard II was deposed by Henry Bolingbroke, beginning the Lancastrian line (England).

In 1400, Chaucer died and was buried in Westminster Abbey, beginning Poets' Corner (England).