1355
Stefan Dušan dies suddenly in Macedonia
Marching to attack Constantinople, the Serbian emperor collapsed and died at forty-six, possibly of poisoning. Without his force of personality, the polyglot Serbian empire fragmented within a generation among feuding nobles. Byzantium got a reprieve. The Balkans drifted toward the rising Ottoman threat without a coordinating Christian power to organize resistance.
Jacquerie of the Cloth: Chinese paper money collapses
Yuan attempts to cover military expenses by printing paper currency reached their limit as confidence in the notes evaporated. Prices spiraled; merchants refused the notes, demanding silver or barter. Peasant discontent compounded natural disasters and religious millenarianism. Within a decade the Red Turban revolts would have made Yuan authority a fiction across most of China south of the Yangtze.
Charles IV crowned emperor in Rome
The Bohemian king made a swift trip south, took the imperial crown at Rome with minimal ceremony, and returned home before Italy could trap him. He cared more for Prague than for empire. The next year his Golden Bull would formalize the German princes' right to elect emperors without papal interference.
Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice, beheaded for treason
The seventy-five-year-old doge plotted with arsenal workers to overthrow the patrician oligarchy and become prince of Venice. The plot leaked. Faliero was tried by his own Council of Ten and decapitated on the staircase of the Doge's Palace. His portrait in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio was painted over with black.