Tommaso Portinari, the Medici agent in Bruges, commissions an altarpiece from Hugo van der Goes for his family church in Florence

With Constantinople in Turkish hands, Moscow begins to see itself as the centre of Orthodox Christianity - or the third Rome

Edward IV, landing at Calais with a large army, is bought off at Picquigny with a bribe - ending his attempt to revive the Hundred Years' War

Giovanni Bellini becomes the key figure in the development of the Renaissance style in Venice

The Swiss win a decisive victory at Morat over the army of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy

Caxton establishes the first English printing press in London, after working in the new trade in Bruges

Ptolemy's concept of the world, with the Atlantic stretching to China and India, is printed in Bologna – fifteen years before Columbus sails west

Maximilian, heir to Austria, weds Mary, heiress to Burgundy, in the first of the great marriage alliances which form the Habsburg empire

A plot by the Pazzi family, with papal connivance, results in the murder of Guiliano de' Medici during high mass in Florence's cathedral

Ivan III subdues proudly independent Novgorod, removing the city's famous bell

Leonardo da Vinci takes a professional interest in the new science of fortification

The name of Constantinople changes to Istanbul, a word based on the everyday Greek name for the city

Botticelli paints the Birth of Venus and Spring for the villa of a Medici cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent

Ivan III, grand prince of Russia, becomes the first to deny the Mongols of the Golden Horde their annual tribute of tax

Civil war between squabbling Swiss cantons is averted by the diplomcy of a hermit, Brother Klaus, at the Convention of Stans

The English king Edward IV dies and his succeeded by his 12-year-old son as Edward V

The two royal princes, Edward V and his younger brother, are confined in the Tower of London by their uncle - soon to be Richard III

Richard III has himself proclaimed king by a parliament held at Westminster, and begins a short reign of only two years

Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, captures Vienna and makes the city his capital

Henry Tudor kills Richard III at Bosworth Field and takes the crown as Henry VII

Henry VII, whose mother is Lancastrian, marries the Yorkist heiress Elizabeth and thus unites the roses - in the Tudor rose

Lambert Simnel, supposedly a nephew of Edward IV, is crowned in Dublin - but ends up working in the royal kitchens of Henry VII

The Fuggers make their first loan to a Habsburg archduke, beginning a profitable link with the dynasty

Boiardo publishes a romantic epic, Orlando Innamorato, about Roland's love for a bewitching princess

On the death of his father, James III, James IV becomes king of Scotland