1593
Henry IV Converts to Catholicism
The Protestant king of France Henry of Bourbon, unable to enter Paris while it held out under the Catholic League, abjured Calvinism and attended Mass at Saint-Denis. Paris is worth a mass, he reportedly quipped. Within a year he would ride unopposed into his capital and begin the slow business of reconciliation.
Pyongyang Retaken
A joint Ming Chinese and Korean force under the Ming general Li Rusong stormed Pyongyang in a snowy winter assault, driving Konishi Yukinaga's garrison south in disorder. The Japanese advance collapsed. Peace negotiations dragged on for years while Korean cities counted their dead. The battle established the pattern of Sino-Korean alliance against Japanese aggression shaping East Asian geopolitics for centuries.
Marlowe Killed in Deptford
The playwright Christopher Marlowe, author of Doctor Faustus and Tamburlaine, was stabbed to death in a Deptford tavern during a dispute over the bill, supposedly. He was twenty-nine. The details remained murky, and many suspected government agents had silenced a troublesome atheist and probable spy. The circumstances, in a house with intelligence connections, have spawned four centuries of conspiracy theories about state secrets.
Hideyoshi's Peace Negotiations with Ming
After the military stalemate in Korea, Japanese and Chinese negotiators began talks on the terms of withdrawal. The negotiations were marred by mutual deception; interpreters on both sides sometimes invented entire messages. Hideyoshi, enraged when he finally learned the Ming position, would launch a second invasion in 1597. Interpreters on both sides invented messages, producing one of East Asian diplomacy's most farcical episodes.
Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis
With the London theaters closed by plague, Shakespeare turned to narrative poetry and published Venus and Adonis, an erotic Ovidian epyllion dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton. It became a bestseller among university students and circulated in multiple editions. Shakespeare had made his name as a poet before he made it as a dramatist.