1330
Edward III seizes power from Mortimer
The eighteen-year-old king and a small band of companions slipped through a secret tunnel into Nottingham Castle and arrested his mother's lover. Mortimer was hanged at Tyburn within a month, his body left dangling for two days as a public spectacle. Edward, freed from regency, would embark on a half-century of wars that would define the Hundred Years' conflict.
Brocard of Mount Carmel and eastern Christian decline
The Carmelite general in the Holy Land documented the dwindling of Latin Christian communities in the Mamluk Levant. Crusader hopes of return had given way to a small resident diplomatic and mercantile presence under Mamluk toleration. Western pilgrimage to Jerusalem never quite stopped, but it became rare and protected by treaty.
Yusuf I of Granada begins building the Alhambra's palaces
The Nasrid emir, ruling the last Muslim toehold in Iberia, expanded his ancestors' hilltop citadel into a hall of fountains and stucco arabesques. The Comares Tower would soon rise over Granada like a bejeweled lantern, its ceiling a wooden cosmos of interlocking stars. Christian armies pressed against the borders even as the palace got more beautiful.
Battle of Posada: Wallachia born in defiance
The Hungarian king Charles Robert led a punitive expedition into the Carpathians and was ambushed by Basarab I in a forested defile. Hungarian knights died under boulders rolled from above while archers picked off survivors from the tree line. Wallachia would emerge from the wreck as a separate principality and pay no more tribute to Buda.