1358
Jacquerie: peasants of the Beauvaisis rise
Crushed by raids, taxes, and ransom levies, the peasants of the Ile-de-France attacked the country chateaux of nobles they accused of cowardice at Poitiers. Manor houses burned, women and children were murdered on both sides, atrocity met atrocity in a spiral of class hatred. Within three weeks royal and Navarrese troops slaughtered the rebels by the thousands.
Hayam Wuruk crowned king of Majapahit
The sixteen-year-old prince ascended the throne of Java's premier kingdom under the steely hand of his prime minister Gajah Mada. Together they would push Majapahit's claims of suzerainty across the Indonesian archipelago, from Aceh to New Guinea, in what the court poet Prapanca grandly described as a maritime empire binding the seas under Javanese authority.
Étienne Marcel assassinated in Paris
Suspected of plotting to admit English-aligned troops into the city, the merchant provost was hacked down at the Saint-Antoine gate by his own former allies. The dauphin Charles re-entered the capital to cheering crowds. The Parisian experiment in constitutional restraint of the crown collapsed and would not be revived for four centuries, until the States-General of 1789.
Hanseatic League establishes its Kontor at Bruges
German merchants formalized their trading post in the Flemish cloth capital, joining the existing kontors at Novgorod, Bergen, and London. The four factories formed the corners of a commercial empire that moved Baltic grain, English wool, Norwegian cod, and Russian furs across northern Europe without owning a single acre of sovereign territory or maintaining a standing army.