1476

1476 (MCDLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar, the 1476th year of the Common Era, the 76th year of the 15th century, and the 7th year of the 1470s decade.^[1] The year featured key military conflicts that influenced the balance of power in Europe, notably the Battle of Toro on March 1, where forces under Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile defeated a Portuguese-Castilian alliance, bolstering the Catholic Monarchs' consolidation of power in the Iberian Peninsula.^[2][3] In June, the Swiss Confederacy decisively repelled Burgundian Duke Charles the Bold at the Battle of Morat, contributing to the erosion of Burgundian influence and setting the stage for the duchy's fragmentation.^[4][5] Vlad III, Voivode of Wallachia, regained his throne for the third time on November 26 with Hungarian support under Stephen V Báthory and Moldavian aid from Stephen the Great before being killed in December during a skirmish against Ottoman forces, where he was reportedly pierced by multiple lances; renowned for his ruthless impalement of enemies as a deterrent against invaders, his death marked the end of a fierce resistance to Ottoman expansion in the Balkans.^[6] On December 26, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, was assassinated by disaffected nobles in Milan Cathedral, reflecting the internal instability of Italian city-states amid Renaissance patronage and political intrigue.^[7] Elsewhere, William Caxton established the first printing press in England at Westminster, facilitating the dissemination of printed works such as The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophers, which advanced vernacular literature and knowledge access in the realm.^[8]

Historical Context

European Political Landscape

In England, the aftermath of the Wars of the Roses had left the monarchy under Edward IV focused on restoring centralized authority following the Lancastrian readeption of 1470–1471, with the king prioritizing suppression of residual Yorkist-Lancastrian factions and economic recovery through parliamentary grants and trade regulations.^[9] By the mid-1470s, Edward's regime emphasized fiscal prudence and diplomatic maneuvering, such as negotiations with Brittany to neutralize exiled Lancastrian threats like Henry Tudor, reflecting a pragmatic consolidation of power amid depleted noble resources from prolonged civil conflict.^[10] Across the Channel, the Duchy of Burgundy under Charles the Bold exemplified aggressive dynastic expansionism, as the duke sought to forge an independent kingdom by annexing territories like Guelders in 1473 and pressing claims along the Rhine, which strained relations with the Holy Roman Empire and Swiss cantons.^[11] This policy of territorial contiguity, driven by Burgundy's economic wealth from Flemish trade and a professional standing army, intensified rivalries with France under Louis XI, who exploited alliances to counter Burgundian overreach without direct confrontation.^[12] In the Holy Roman Empire, Emperor Frederick III maintained tenuous control over fragmented principalities, devoting primary efforts to securing Habsburg domains in Austria against Hungarian incursions under Matthias Corvinus, whose occupation of Vienna from 1485 underscored the emperor's defensive posture over imperial unification.^[13] Dynastic intermarriages and electoral manipulations among electors like the Wittelsbachs and Hohenzollerns perpetuated decentralized power, with Frederick's longevity enabling gradual Habsburg entrenchment but little central reform amid ongoing feuds.^[14] The Italian peninsula remained a mosaic of competing city-states, where Milan under the Sforza dynasty clashed with Venetian maritime dominance and Florentine republicanism, fostering shifting leagues like the 1454 Peace of Lodi that masked underlying economic and territorial animosities.^[15] Papal influence under Sixtus IV further fueled intrigues, as familial ambitions intertwined with control over Romagna and Umbria, prioritizing balance-of-power diplomacy to avert French or imperial intervention.^[16] On the Iberian front, the 1469 marriage of Isabella of Castile to Ferdinand of Aragon initiated de facto dynastic union, bolstering Castilian claims against Portuguese-backed pretenders like Joanna la Beltraneja and enabling joint military ventures, though full integration awaited resolution of succession crises through 1479.^[17] This alliance shifted power dynamics from fragmented peninsular kingdoms toward consolidated monarchies, leveraging Castile's wool revenues and Aragon's Mediterranean holdings to counter external threats.^[18]

Ottoman Expansion and Eastern Frontiers

The conquest of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmed II on May 29, 1453, eliminated the last major Byzantine stronghold and positioned the Ottoman Empire to dominate the Bosphorus straits, facilitating accelerated military projections into the European theater. This victory, achieved through a siege involving approximately 80,000 Ottoman troops against a defending force of around 7,000, not only ended the Byzantine Empire but also redirected Ottoman resources toward systematic subjugation of remaining Balkan holdouts, imposing vassalage via tribute and territorial annexations that extracted manpower and wealth to fuel further campaigns.^[19] Post-1453 Ottoman offensives targeted fragmented Christian polities, annexing the Serbian Despotate in 1459 after the fall of Smederevo and incorporating Bosnia in 1463 through direct invasion, which reduced local resistances to tributary status and integrated them into the Ottoman timar land-grant system for sustaining sipahi cavalry forces. Wallachia, already nominal tributary since 1417, faced intensified coercion, including demands for the devshirme levy of Christian youths trained as Janissaries, exacerbating demographic pressures and enabling Ottoman interference in princely successions to install compliant rulers. These conquests compelled defensive adaptations among upstream powers; Hungary under Matthias Corvinus (r. 1458–1490) mobilized the Black Army—a professional standing force of roughly 10,000–15,000 mercenaries—and fortified southern border castles to repel raids, while limited Polish-Hungarian coordination focused on repulsing border incursions rather than offensive crusades.^[20][21][19] The resultant vulnerabilities in Wallachia prompted a transient revival under Vlad III (r. 1456–1462), who, backed by Hungarian allies, ascended amid Ottoman-backed rivals and waged asymmetric warfare, reportedly impaling over 20,000 Ottoman-aligned subjects and refusing tribute to disrupt supply lines and deter incursions. This resistance culminated in scorched-earth tactics against Mehmed II's 1462 invasion, estimated at 60,000 troops, though Ottoman support for Vlad's brother Radu ultimately secured a puppet regime, reinstating tribute flows that included annual payments in specie alongside human levies to underwrite the empire's expansionist momentum. Such resource extraction—encompassing taxes, provisions, and recruits from vassals—sustained Ottoman field armies of 50,000–100,000 in Balkan operations, underscoring the causal linkage between conquest-driven economics and persistent eastern frontier threats to Christian coalitions.^[21][6][22]

Technological and Cultural Shifts

The development of movable-type printing, pioneered by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz around 1440, had spread across continental Europe by the mid-1460s, with presses operating in cities like Strasbourg, Bamberg, and Venice by 1465. This innovation mechanized book production, reducing costs and enabling the replication of texts at scales unattainable by scribes, which supported the standardization of legal codes, administrative records, and religious materials essential for centralized monarchies facing fragmented feudal structures.^[23] In northern Europe, itinerant printers from Gutenberg's circle disseminated the technology, fostering vernacular publications that bypassed Latin exclusivity and accelerated literacy among lay administrators and clergy.^[24] By the early 1470s, English merchant William Caxton encountered the process during travels to Cologne, where he apprenticed briefly around 1471–1472, laying groundwork for its adaptation to English contexts through typefaces suited to Middle English orthography.^[25] Portuguese advancements in maritime technology, including the caravel ship's lateen sails and improved rudders, enabled systematic Atlantic probing from the 1410s under Infante Henry the Navigator. Expeditions claimed Madeira in 1419 and the Azores by 1432, while coastal voyages southward yielded gold from West African entrepôts like Arguim by 1445, driven by incentives to secure bullion inflows and evade trans-Saharan Muslim trade monopolies rather than proselytization alone.^[26] These efforts, yielding over 235,000 gold cruzados annually by the 1450s from African sources, demonstrated causal links between navigational empiricism and resource acquisition, bolstering Portugal's fiscal capacity amid Iberian rivalries and indirect European defenses against eastern pressures.^[27] In Italy, Renaissance humanism's classical revival, initiated by Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) and advanced by Leonardo Bruni and Lorenzo Valla in the early 15th century, prioritized philological recovery of Greek and Roman authors, emphasizing rhetoric and moral philosophy over abstract theology.^[28] This shift recovered texts like Cicero's orations and Plato's dialogues through Byzantine émigrés post-1453, promoting human agency and civic virtue as antidotes to scholastic nominalism, though Valla's 1440 demonstration that the Donation of Constantine was an 8th-century forgery exemplified how textual criticism could erode unquestioned ecclesiastical claims.^[29] While core humanists like Marsilio Ficino integrated Neoplatonism with Trinitarian doctrine via his 1460s Plato translations, the movement's secular textual focus occasionally diluted patristic primacy, fostering interpretive autonomy that prefigured confessional fractures without outright heresy in most practitioners.^[30]

Key Events

Iberian Conflicts

The War of the Castilian Succession (1475–1479) saw Portuguese intervention in 1476 to back Joanna la Beltraneja's claim to the Castilian throne, amid doubts over her paternity raised by contemporaries who alleged she was the daughter of courtier Beltrán de la Cueva rather than the late King Henry IV. Afonso V of Portugal, aiming to annex Castile through marriage to Joanna, invaded in 1475, prompting Castilian-Aragonese forces under Ferdinand II of Aragon—husband and co-ruler with Isabella I—to mobilize against the incursion. This dynastic rivalry, rooted in Henry IV's will favoring Isabella but contested by pro-Portuguese nobles, escalated into open conflict, with Portugal deploying around 8,000–10,000 troops to enforce its claims.^[31] On March 1, 1476, the pivotal Battle of Toro unfolded near the Duero River west of Toro, pitting Ferdinand's Castilian-Aragonese army, estimated at 6,000–8,000 strong, against Afonso V's Portuguese force of similar size. Ferdinand, aged 24, actively sought a pitched engagement to break the stalemate, employing a battle-seeking strategy to rally domestic support and deter further invasion; his forces included infantry, cavalry, and early field artillery, which disrupted Portuguese knightly advances despite traditional melee dominance. The fighting featured fragmented engagements: Portuguese Prince John defeated the Castilian right wing, but Ferdinand's center held, leading to a tactical draw as both armies disengaged amid fog and exhaustion, with neither side inflicting decisive losses—casualties likely numbered in the hundreds on each side, though exact figures remain unrecorded in primary accounts.^[32] Both commanders proclaimed victory—Ferdinand via Castilian chronicles emphasizing field control, Afonso through Portuguese reports of partial gains—but the battle's strategic import favored the Castilians, as Afonso's army withdrew without exploiting gains, failing to capitalize on reinforcements or besiege key strongholds like Zamora. Artillery's deployment by Ferdinand highlighted a shift from chivalric charges to combined arms, foreshadowing its role in Iberian warfare, though knightly elements still prevailed. The outcome eroded Portuguese momentum, as neutral Castilian factions swung toward Isabella, underscoring the intervention's ultimate failure to sustain Joanna's pretensions amid eroding legitimacy and logistical strains.^[31]

Burgundian Wars

In 1476, the Burgundian Wars reached a critical juncture as the Swiss Confederation repelled Duke Charles the Bold's aggressive campaigns to assert feudal overlordship over the fragmented Alpine territories, highlighting the tactical superiority of decentralized cantonal militias organized in dense pike formations over Burgundy's professional but rigid forces reliant on heavy cavalry and early gunpowder artillery.^[33][34] Charles's prior execution of Swiss defenders at Grandson in February—numbering around 400 men hanged despite their surrender—provoked a unified Swiss response, underscoring how Burgundian centralizing ambitions alienated local autonomies and invited reprisals that eroded morale.^[35] The Battle of Grandson on March 2 saw approximately 17,000 Swiss troops, drawn from multiple cantons in a loose confederal levy, advance in compact columns to recapture the fortress from Charles's 30,000-man army encamped nearby; the Swiss exploited terrain cover and launched a surprise assault that shattered Burgundian lines, with pike squares halting cavalry charges and forcing a rout that yielded vast spoils including artillery and treasure.^[33][36] In the aftermath, the Swiss executed 412 Burgundian prisoners by drowning or beheading as direct reprisal for the earlier atrocities, a harsh measure rooted in customary vendettas that deterred further Burgundian incursions but also reflected the militias' autonomy in dispensing battlefield justice without centralized oversight.^[35] This victory demonstrated how Swiss resilience stemmed from rapid mobilization of experienced halberdiers and pikemen—trained in communal musters rather than standing armies—countering narratives that prioritize Burgundy's cultural splendor under Charles while downplaying his strategic overextension into defensible Swiss heartlands.^[34] By June, Charles besieged Morat (Murten) to regain initiative, but on June 22, a Swiss relief force of about 10,000-12,000, reinforced by Fribourg and Bernese allies, encircled and overwhelmed his 20,000-25,000 besiegers in a dawn attack that pinned Burgundian wings against Lake Morat and forested rises, leading to up to 10,000 enemy dead or drowned amid chaotic flight.^[37][38] The Swiss Gewalthaufen—massive square formations of interlocked pikes up to 18 feet long—proved decisive in repulsing Burgundian counterattacks, exploiting the duke's failure to adapt to infantry-dominant warfare amid logistical strains from prolonged campaigning.^[36] Heavy rains and exposure during the ensuing retreat presaged winter hardships that weakened Burgundian cohesion ahead of later sieges, causally reinforcing the Confederation's model of confederal defense where local terrain knowledge and militia zeal curbed monarchical expansionism.^[38] These 1476 engagements not only checked Charles's bid for a consolidated kingdom bridging the Holy Roman Empire and France but affirmed decentralized governance's military viability against feudal consolidation.^[34]

Italian Political Intrigues

On December 26, 1476, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan since 1466, was stabbed to death by three nobles—Girolamo Olgiati, Carlo Visconti, and Andrea da Lampugnano—inside Milan Cathedral during Christmas Mass.^[39][40] The attackers, supported by a small group of accomplices, struck amid crowds, inflicting multiple wounds to his abdomen and body before fleeing; Olgiati reportedly justified the act as tyrannicide against a ruler whose cruelties included arbitrary killings of rivals, forced conscriptions, and personal vices such as the alleged rape of nuns and virgins.^[39][40] These motives stemmed from factional resentments in a court rife with corruption, where Galeazzo's heavy taxation—funding lavish expenditures on tournaments, hunts, and foreign mercenaries—burdened Milanese merchants and nobles, eroding loyalty in a duchy lacking deep hereditary legitimacy, as the Sforza line originated from mercenary founders rather than feudal nobility.^[41][40] The assassination exposed the fragility of princely rule in northern Italy, where realpolitik favored opportunistic alliances over republican ideals inherited from communal eras; the conspirators invoked classical tyrannicide precedents, echoing broader discontent with despotic signorie that suppressed guilds and imposed personal whims, yet their plot failed to restore communal governance, instead accelerating intra-family power grabs.^[40] Bona of Savoy, Galeazzo's widow, assumed regency for their seven-year-old son Gian Galeazzo Sforza, but her administration quickly faltered amid court cabals, enabling the duke's brother Ludovico Sforza—known as il Moro—to infiltrate the council and orchestrate her ousting by 1479 through forged documents and noble defections.^[42] Ludovico's ascent, disguising ambition as familial duty, exemplified Renaissance factionalism, as he consolidated control by 1480 via marriages and pacts, sidelining Gian Galeazzo and prioritizing Milanese expansion against rivals like Venice, while exploiting the power vacuum to negotiate with Florence's Lorenzo de' Medici in the fragile Italian balance.^[42][43] These Milanese intrigues intersected with papal maneuvers under Sixtus IV, whose nepotism—elevating relatives like Girolamo Riario to lordships in Imola and Romagna—stoked territorial rivalries, prompting defensive leagues among city-states that indirectly bolstered Ludovico's position against Florentine-Papal tensions.^[44] The events underscored causal drivers of instability: not abstract ideals, but concrete incentives of factional self-preservation, where assassination resolved immediate grievances but perpetuated cycles of regency exploitation and dynastic maneuvering in lieu of stable succession mechanisms.^[40][42]

Eastern European and Ottoman Campaigns

In early 1476, Vlad III participated in Hungarian military operations against Ottoman holdings, fighting in Bosnia under King Matthias Corvinus and serving as joint commander in raids targeting Ottoman territories in the Balkans.^[6] These actions aligned with broader Hungarian efforts to curb Ottoman expansion along the Danube frontier, where Wallachia served as a buffer state subjected to annual tributes, including demands for Christian boys under the Ottoman devshirme system for janissary recruitment.^[45] By November 1476, Vlad, supported by Hungarian forces led by Stephen V Báthory and Moldavian troops under Stephen III, defeated the Ottoman-installed voivode Basarab Laiotă near Bucharest, restoring Vlad to the Wallachian throne on November 26 for his third reign.^[46] This brief restoration reflected coordinated Christian resistance to Ottoman control, as Wallachian rulers navigated vassalage that entailed not only monetary tribute but also facilitation of Ottoman slave raids and military levies on local populations.^[22] Vlad's rule ended abruptly in late December 1476 when Basarab, backed by Ottoman reinforcements, ambushed Vlad's forces near Snagov or Bărbătești, resulting in Vlad's death and the decapitation of his body; his head was preserved and dispatched to Sultan Mehmed II in Constantinople as a trophy.^[6][47] The exact date remains disputed, with contemporary accounts placing it between December 10 and Christmas, underscoring the precariousness of anti-Ottoman alliances amid internal betrayals and Ottoman reprisals.^[48] These events highlighted the defensive imperatives driving Wallachian campaigns, where figures like Vlad employed extreme measures—such as the mass impalements of 1462, estimated at thousands in response to Ottoman invasions—to deter aggressors employing similar terror tactics, including widespread enslavement and punitive executions, though Western narratives often amplified Vlad's brutality due to Saxon merchant interests conflicting with his trade policies.^[49][45]

Other Global Developments

In the Americas, the Inca Empire under Topa Inca Yupanqui expanded significantly, incorporating the Chimú Empire's territories by 1476 after a decisive conquest that ended the Chimú's independence as a major coastal power in northern Peru.^[50] This campaign, involving military subjugation and integration of irrigation systems and urban centers like Chan Chan, marked a peak in Inca territorial consolidation without external disruptions from across the Atlantic.^[51] In Mesoamerica, the Mexica (Aztec) Empire, ruled by Axayacatl (r. 1469–1481), launched initial military campaigns against the Tarascan (Purépecha) Empire around 1476–1477, initiating a series of conflicts over border regions and resources that persisted until the Spanish arrival.^[52] These wars highlighted ongoing indigenous rivalries, with the Tarascans repelling early Aztec incursions through superior metallurgy and defensive strategies, underscoring the absence of any transoceanic influences altering regional power dynamics at this time.^[52] A disputed account from circa 1476, attributed to a Bristol merchant's report relayed via Spanish channels, describes an English ship from Bristol discovering an island named Brasil to the west, where crews harvested brazilwood before losing the route on return voyages.^[53] This narrative, preserved in secondary diplomatic records and lacking direct contemporary corroboration, suggests tentative English maritime exploration beyond known Atlantic routes, though historians debate its veracity and precise timing amid broader Bristol interests in western fisheries and trade by the late 1470s.^[53][54] In East Asia, the Ming dynasty under the Chenghua Emperor (r. 1464–1487) maintained internal administrative continuity, with no major recorded upheavals in 1476; the death of Minister of War Ma Ang that year prompted routine bureaucratic adjustments rather than policy shifts.^[55] This period reflected sustained agrarian stability and eunuch influence in court politics, isolated from contemporaneous European or American developments.^[55]

Cultural and Scientific Milestones

Advancements in Printing and Scholarship

In 1476, William Caxton established England's first printing press with movable type near Westminster Abbey, importing the technology from continental Europe and initiating the mass production of books in the English vernacular.^[56] This development mechanized the reproduction of texts, dramatically increasing output compared to labor-intensive scribal copying, which had long been dominated by monastic and clerical institutions.^[57] Caxton's press produced early English imprints, such as devotional and philosophical works, enabling wider dissemination of knowledge beyond Latin-literate elites and fostering empirical verification through accessible multiples of texts.^[58] Concurrently on the continent, the astronomer Regiomontanus (Johannes Müller) commissioned the printing of his Calendarium in Venice by Erhard Ratdolt, a work featuring precise astronomical tables and diagrams that supported navigation and observational science.^[59] Regiomontanus had earlier established a dedicated scientific press in Nuremberg around 1471, producing texts like the Theoricae novae planetarum (1473–1474), which standardized astronomical content for broader scholarly use; his death on July 6, 1476, curtailed ambitious plans to print editions of Ptolemy's Almagest and other classical works, though his efforts underscored printing's role in enhancing accuracy via corrected, uniform copies.^[59] These initiatives in 1476 exemplified printing's capacity to amplify scholarly output, with Nuremberg and Venetian presses generating hundreds of editions that year, eroding the exclusivity of handwritten manuscripts.^[60] The proliferation of presses in 1476 directly facilitated vernacular translations, including early printed New Testaments in French, which bypassed Latin scriptural monopolies enforced by ecclesiastical authorities.^[61] By enabling lay access to religious texts without clerical intermediation, this shift promoted causal chains of doctrinal scrutiny and reform, as readers could independently assess interpretations against original languages, challenging centralized control over biblical exegesis.^[23] Empirical evidence from output metrics—such as the estimated 10–20 million books printed across Europe by 1500, building on 1476's expansions—demonstrates printing's transformative impact on scholarship, prioritizing verifiable replication over elite gatekeeping.^[60]

Artistic and Intellectual Contributions

In Florence, the death of Simonetta Vespucci on the night of April 26–27, 1476, from likely pulmonary tuberculosis at age 22, elicited widespread mourning among the city's elite, including the Medici circle where she was idealized as la bella Simonetta. This event reinforced her posthumous role as a symbol of ethereal beauty in Renaissance art, influencing Sandro Botticelli's later depictions of Venus-like figures that evoked classical ideals blended with Florentine courtly reverence, though direct evidence of her sitting as a model is absent and the connection remains interpretive rather than documentary. Such representations served Medici political ends, embedding personal icons within allegories of harmony and renewal to legitimize their de facto rule amid republican pretenses.^[62][63] The abrupt death of astronomer and mathematician Regiomontanus (Johannes Müller) on July 6, 1476, in Rome during a plague outbreak, curtailed ongoing refinements to his foundational trigonometric framework, first systematized in the unpublished 1464 treatise De triangulis omnimodis. This work pioneered modern plane and spherical trigonometry, providing computational tools indispensable for precise astronomical observations, celestial navigation, and emerging ballistics in artillery design, with its incomplete dissemination delaying broader application until posthumous editions in the 16th century. Regiomontanus's prior printed Calendarium (1474) had already advanced ephemerides for practical use, underscoring how his untimely end—potentially amid papal reform efforts—hindered the integration of empirical mathematics into European scientific practice.^[59][64] Patronage in 1476 reflected courts' strategic use of art amid fiscal and political pressures; in Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza's assassination on December 26 during Christmas Mass ended a regime that had sustained artistic projects to project ducal authority, though specific commissions that year prioritized music and architecture over painting. Florence's Medici, under Lorenzo, maintained investments in symbolic works despite war-related expenditures, as evidenced by affiliations like the Portinari Altarpiece (completed circa 1476 by Hugo van der Goes for their Bruges branch), which fused Northern detail with Italian humanism to affirm commercial and cultural reach. These efforts highlight patronage as a tool for stabilizing influence, not mere aesthetic indulgence, with empirical records showing allocations strained by conflicts like the Ottoman incursions indirectly affecting trade.^[65][66]

Notable Individuals

Born in 1476

Italian nobility
Alfonso d'Este was born on 21 July 1476 in Ferrara to Ercole I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara and Modena, and his wife Leonora of Aragon, daughter of King Ferrante I of Naples.^[67] Anna Sforza was born on the same date in Milan to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, assassinated Duke of Milan, and Bona of Savoy, daughter of Duke Louis of Savoy.^[68] French nobility
Louise of Savoy was born on 11 September 1476 at Pont-d'Ain to Philip, Count of Bresse (a title held by the younger brother of Duke Amadeus IX of Savoy), and Margaret of Bourbon, daughter of John II, Count of Vendôme.^[69][70] Turkmen nobility
Ahmad Beg was born in 1476 in Istanbul to Uğurlu Mehmet Bey, exiled son of Aq Qoyunlu ruler Uzun Hasan, and Gevherhan Hatun, daughter of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II.^[71]

Died in 1476

Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan since 1466, was assassinated on December 26, 1476, by three young nobles—Girolamo Olgiati, Andrea da Lampugnano, and Carlo Visconti—driven by republican ideals and personal grudges against his tyrannical rule. His death at age 32 left the duchy to his seven-year-old son Gian Galeazzo Sforza under a regency led by his widow Bona of Savoy, amplifying internal factions and inviting external pressures on Sforza authority.^[72] Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia known as the Impaler, died in late December 1476 during a skirmish near Bucharest against Ottoman forces and local boyars, where he was reportedly pierced by lances amid battlefield chaos.^[6] His decapitated head was sent to Sultan Mehmed II as a trophy, ending his brief 1476 restoration and plunging Wallachia into further succession strife between Ottoman-backed Laiotă Basarab and Hungarian-supported candidates, underscoring the region's fragile independence.^[73] John de Mowbray, 4th Duke of Norfolk and a key Yorkist noble, died on January 14, 1476, at age 31 from an abrupt ailment, leaving no male heir.^[74] His sole heir, the four-year-old Anne de Mowbray, inherited vast estates, but the dukedom's 1397 creation lapsed extinct upon his death, redistributing lands through royal wardship and exposing the precarity of Mowbray dynastic continuity in England.^[75] Johannes Regiomontanus, the German mathematician and astronomer advancing Ptolemaic models through trigonometric tables, succumbed on July 6, 1476, likely to plague following Rome's Tiber flood earlier that year.^[59] His untimely end at 40 halted ongoing papal calendar reform efforts and left incomplete works on spherical astronomy, stalling empirical progress in predictive computations until successors like Copernicus built upon his printed editions.^[76] Simonetta Vespucci, the Florentine noblewoman idealized as a muse in Renaissance art and poetry, died on April 26, 1476, at age 23 from tuberculosis.^[77] Her early death, paraded openly through Florence per her wishes, amplified her posthumous symbolic role in Medici circles but carried no direct political succession, merely reinforcing cultural venerations of ephemeral beauty amid elite fragility.^[78] 1475 ← 1476 → 1477