Middle Ages
Siege of Belgrade (1456): John Hunyadi Halts Mehmed II
Hungarian and crusader victory; Mehmed II lifted the siege, and Belgrade remained in Hungarian hands until 1521.
Era · c. 500 – 1500
Middle Ages
Kingdoms, crusades and plagues: the medieval world from the end of the Western Roman Empire to the fall of Constantinople.
Middle Ages
Matthias Corvinus: Renaissance King of Hungary, 1458–1490
Matthias made Hungary a major Central European power and a Renaissance centre, but his conquests and reforms did not outlast his death in 1490.
Middle Ages
Ngazargamu (c. 1460): Walled Capital of the Bornu Kingdom
Ngazargamu gave the Sayfawa dynasty a fixed, fortified capital in Bornu and became the centre of a powerful Sahelian state until Fulani forces sacked it in 1808.
Middle Ages
Battle of Towton (1461): The Bloodiest Battle on English Soil
Decisive Yorkist victory; Edward IV secured the throne and Henry VI fled to Scotland.
Middle Ages
Fall of Trebizond (1461): The Last Byzantine Successor State
Trebizond surrendered to the Ottomans, ending the last Byzantine Greek empire; Emperor David and most of his family were executed in 1463.
Middle Ages
Ivan III the Great: Gathering the Russian Lands, 1462–1505
Ivan III tripled the territory ruled from Moscow, ended Tatar overlordship and laid the foundations of a centralised Russian state.
Middle Ages
Kano under Muhammad Rumfa (1463-1499): Hausa City Reforms
Rumfa turned Kano into a walled Islamic commercial capital with a new palace, a central market and royal institutions that lasted for centuries.
Middle Ages
Onin War (1467-1477): Kyoto Burns and Sengoku Japan Begins
No clear victor; Kyoto was largely destroyed, the Ashikaga shoguns lost real power, and Japan slid into more than a century of regional warfare.
Middle Ages
Sunni Ali Seizes Timbuktu (1468): Rise of the Songhai Empire
Sunni Ali drove the Tuareg from Timbuktu, went on to take Djenne and turned the kingdom of Gao into the Songhai Empire, the largest state in West African history.
Middle Ages
Ferdinand and Isabella (1469): The Marriage That Made Spain
The marriage united the heirs of Castile and Aragon; after Isabella won the War of the Castilian Succession, the two crowns were ruled jointly from 1479.
Middle Ages
Inca Conquest of Chimor (c. 1470): Fall of the Chimu Kingdom
Chimor was absorbed into the Inca Empire; its ruler was taken to Cusco and many of its skilled craftsmen were resettled in the Inca capital.
Middle Ages
Topa Inca Yupanqui: The Inca Conqueror of Chimor and Chile
Topa Inca Yupanqui more than doubled the territory of the Inca Empire and strengthened its administration before his death around 1493.