1615
Siege of Osaka Castle
Ieyasu, now retired but watchful, besieged the last refuge of his rivals, the Toyotomi. After months of mines, cannonades, and treachery, Osaka Castle fell and was burned. Toyotomi Hideyori and his mother committed suicide in the flames. Tokugawa supremacy over Japan was complete and uncontested, and the great age of civil war that had convulsed the archipelago was finished.
Cervantes Publishes Don Quixote Part Two
Ten years after the first volume and goaded by a fraudulent sequel, Cervantes published the second part of his masterpiece. The aging Quixote, now aware of his own fame, moves through a world where fiction and reality have started to contaminate each other. It is funnier, darker, and unmistakably modern.
Dutch Seize the Moluccas from Portugal
VOC warships and marines methodically captured Portuguese forts across the Molucca Islands, the fabled Spice Islands where cloves grew on volcanic slopes and fortunes changed hands with the monsoon. Ternate and Tidore fell under Dutch influence. Lisbon's century-long monopoly on the world's most aromatic archipelago was crumbling island by island.
Hasekura Tsunenaga Reaches Spain
A samurai envoy named Hasekura Tsunenaga, dispatched by the lord of Sendai, arrived in Seville after crossing the Pacific and traversing New Spain. He was baptized, met the Pope, and sought a trade alliance. Japan's last diplomatic mission to Europe before two centuries of seclusion received polite applause and no commitments.