Timeline

Non-military Military
  • 853 - The Swiss canton of Uri is given the freedom to rule itself


  • 1240 - The Swiss canton of Schwyz is given the same freedoms as Uri by Emperor Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire





  • 1310 - Dante's Divine Comedy












  • 1347-1350 - The Bubonic Plague (Black Plague) killed almost 1/3 of the population
  • 1381 - English Peasants' Revolt

  • 1400 - Beginning of the Italian Renaissance



  • 1429-1431 - Appearance of Joan of Arc
  • 1450 - Printing Press
  • 1452 - Leonardo da Vinci born
  • 1469 - Marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella



  • 1492 - Discovery of the New World - Commissioned by the King of Spain, Columbus set on his famous voyage to find a passage to India, but instead found the Americas, where he claimed it in the name of Spain
  • 1503-1505/1507 - Leonardo da Vinci paints Mona Lisa
  • 1520 - Protestant Reformation begun by Martin Luther
  • 1564 - William Shakespeare baptized
  • 1543 - Copernicus publishes essays stating that the solar system is Heliocentric
  • c. 1595 - Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream written
  • c. 1599 - Shakespeare's Julius Caesar written




  • 1609 - Galileo constructs first telescope
  • 1611 - Shakespeare's The Tempest written
  • 1630s - Puritans begin settlement in Massachusetts


  • 1233 - King James I of Aragon attacks Valencia with army of mostly men owing feudal service (not regular army); four years after the finish of the sixth crusade
  • 1262 - Rudolf I of Habsburg defeats the Swiss with men armed with Danish broad axes. It is theorized that the Swiss created the halberds off this weapon
  • 1314 - Battle of Bannockburn
  • 1315 - Battle of Morgarten
  • 1327 - King Edward III England marches on Scotland with a large army of largely conscripted soldiers; three years after the first real handgun was invented in Florence
  • 1337-1453 - Hundred Year's War
  • 1346 - Battle of Crecy




  • 1386 - Battle of Sempach

  • 1415 - Battle of Agincourt
  • 1422 - Battle of Arbedo - After this defeat, the Swiss begin shifting their primary weapons from halberds to pikes




  • 1475 - The Swiss pikemen have reached the height of their prestige in Europe


















  • 1600's - National armies begin to grow precipitously
  • 1607 - Jacob DeGheyn finishes and publishes "The Renaissance Drill Book" detailing how one should drill using a pike or musket; Jamestown Virginia is settled