1388
Yi Seong-gye returns his army to seize Goryeo
Ordered to invade Ming China, the Korean general turned his troops around at the Yalu River and marched on the capital instead, deposing the king. Within four years he would found the Joseon dynasty that would govern Korea for five centuries. The about-face at the Yalu was Korea's most consequential military decision.
Cairo Mamluk Sultan Barquq consolidates power
The Circassian-born Burji Mamluk, having seized the Egyptian throne from the Bahri line, stabilized Cairo's treasury after decades of plague and palace coups. He extended Mamluk influence into Syria and Anatolia and fortified the Syrian frontier against Timur's advancing armies. Under Barquq, Cairo remained one of the great cities of the Islamic world, rivalled only by Samarkand.
Battle of Otterburn: Hotspur captured by Scots
Scottish raiders under James Douglas met an English force led by Henry Percy, called Hotspur, in a moonlit Northumbrian valley. Douglas was killed but his men won, taking Hotspur prisoner. The battle became one of the great set-pieces of Anglo-Scottish border warfare. The ballad of Chevy Chase preserved the fight in border memory long after the political stakes had been forgotten.
Ming forces decimate Northern Yuan at Buyur Lake
Hongwu's general Lan Yu pursued the Mongol khan deep into the steppes north of the Gobi and crushed his army on the shores of a Mongolian lake. The capture of his court and seventy-seven thousand prisoners broke the Northern Yuan's pretensions to recovering China and confirmed Ming control of the old frontier.
Ming census records sixty million subjects
Hongwu ordered a comprehensive population registration - the Yellow Registers - that counted roughly sixty million people in the empire, organized by household, occupation, and tax obligation. Each household was classified as military, civilian, or artisan, binding families to their roles across generations. It was the most ambitious census since the Roman Empire and the administrative backbone of the Ming state's fiscal reach.