Events

• January 11 - First recorded lottery in England.
• March 13 - Battle of Jarnac - Royalist troops under Marshal Gaspard de Tavannes surprise and defeat the Huguenots under the Prince of Condé, who is captured and murdered. A substantial proportion of the Huguenot army manages to escape under Gaspard de Coligny.
• June 10 - German Protestant troops reinforce Coligny near Limoges
• July - September - Huguenot forces under Coligny and 15 year-old Prince Henry of Navarre besiege Poitiers
• August 24 - Battle of Orthez - Huguenot forces under Gabriel de Montgomery defeat Royalist forces under General Terride in French Navarre
• September - A Royalist army under the Duc d'Anjou and Marshal Tavannes forces Coligny to abandon the siege of Poitiers
• October 3 - Battle of Moncountour - The Royalist forces of Tavannaes and Anjou defeat Coligny's Huguenots.
• Gerardus Mercator devises the Mercator projection
• Assemblies of 3 Lithuanian provinces, Volhynia, Ukraine and Podlasie vote to be incorporated into Poland.
• Poland and Lithuania are united in the Union of Lublin. They form Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Births

Deaths

• March 13 - Louis I de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, Huguenot general (b. 1530)
• Pieter Brueghel the Elder - Flemish painter