1513
Balboa Sights the Pacific
Hacking across the Isthmus of Panama with sixty-seven Spaniards and a force of Cueva allies, Vasco Nunez de Balboa climbed a ridge and saw, to the south, a great unknown ocean. He waded into the surf in full armor and claimed the Mar del Sur and all it touched for the crown of Castile.
Machiavelli Drafts The Prince
Exiled from Florence and tortured on suspicion of conspiracy, Niccolo Machiavelli retired to his farmhouse at Sant' Andrea and, at night, changed into courtly robes to converse with the ancients. In a few months he produced a short, icy handbook on how rulers should seize and keep power. His letter describing evenings in courtly dress after days with woodcutters is one of the most human documents of the Italian Renaissance.
Flodden Field Kills a Scottish King
James IV of Scotland invaded northern England to honor an old alliance with France. On a boggy hillside near the village of Branxton, English billmen cut down the Scottish pikemen, their king, twelve earls, and most of the Scottish nobility. A generation of leadership died in an afternoon. The defeat left Scotland with an infant king and a power vacuum that destabilized the kingdom for two decades.
Ponce de Leon Lands in Florida
Searching, perhaps, for a spring of eternal youth and certainly for gold and slaves, Juan Ponce de Leon stepped ashore on a coast of Spanish moss and flowering shrubs on Easter Sunday. He named it La Florida. The first European landfall on what would become the United States mainland had been quietly made.
Leo X Becomes Pope
Giovanni de Medici, forty-year-old second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was elected Pope Leo X and is supposed to have told his brother, Since God has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it. He did. Leo patronized Raphael, financed Saint Peter's through indulgences, and helped provoke Martin Luther's rebellion.
Swiss Pikemen Crush the French at Novara
A Swiss mercenary army surprised the French at dawn near Novara and butchered them with eighteen-foot pikes before a single cannon could be aimed. The French were flung out of Milan. Swiss infantry, briefly, seemed invincible, and Europe's princes lined up to hire them. The battle was won in less than an hour, proving that disciplined infantry could still overcome artillery through speed and shock.
Urbino Humanist Court
The small but brilliant court of the dukes of Urbino under Francesco Maria I della Rovere continued to attract painters, poets, and philosophers. The library of Federico da Montefeltro still held one of the finest collections of manuscripts in Europe, a memorial to the previous generation of humanist patronage. Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, set here, would immortalize the duchy as the embodiment of Renaissance refinement.