The Mongol Yüan Dynasty of Kublai Khan and his successors lasts until 1368, when massive peasant uprisings, led by a lowborn Buddhist monk turned warlord, Zhu Yuanzhang, topple Mongol rule; the Chinese use gunpowder to expel their overlords.

The successful peasant revolt spawns the indigenous Ming dynasty, whose first emperor, Zhu, takes the reign title of Hongwu (Hung-wu) and rules from Nanjing in the south.

Kaifeng becomes the capital of Henan province fom 1368.

Ming emperor Hongwu takes the Mongol capital of Beijing in 1368 and institutes despotic rule on a scale unprecedented in China.

Many of China’s Mongol inhabitants, never having assimilated into the population during the century of Mongol rule, return first driving the Mongols first to Shang-to and then to Outer Mongolia.

Wallachia and ...

…Severin again acknowledge Hungarian sovereignty in about 1368, as do parts of Serbia and northern Bulgaria.

Peter of Cyprus attempts to again raise a force in Europe in 1368, but is unsuccessful.

Urban V again counsels peace, and Peter is compelled to join the Pope and the Venetians in making a treaty with Egypt.

While in Rome, he receives an appeal from the barons of Armenia, nominating him as King and imploring him to deliver their country from the Turks.

French historian and poet Jean Froissart is twenty-three-years old in 1360 when he begins work on his “Chronicles,” an account of European affairs beginning in 1325.

Borrowed from the work of his elder contemporary Jean Le Bel for the period up to 1356; he bases his account of subsequent events on eyewitness reports.

A writer of lyric poetry as well as a historian, Froissart expresses the courtly view of life in “Meliador,” a long Arthurian verse romance.

What little is known of Froissart's life comes mainly from his historical writings and from archival sources which mention him in the service of aristocrats or receiving gifts from them.

Although his poems have also been used in the past to reconstruct aspects of his biography, this approach is in fact flawed, as the 'I' persona which appears in many of the poems should not be construed as a reliable reference to the historical author.

Froissart comes from Valenciennes in the County of Hainaut, situated in the western tip of the Holy Roman Empire, bordering France.

Earlier scholars have suggested that his father was a painter of armorial bearings, but there is actually little evidence for this.

Other suggestions include that he began working as a merchant but soon gave that up to become a cleric.

For this conclusion there is also no real evidence, as the poems which have been cited to support these interpretations are not really autobiographical.

By about age twenty-four, Froissart leaves Hainault and enters the service of Philippa of Hainault, queen consort of Edward III of England, in 1361 or 1362.

This service, which will have lasted until the queen's death in 1369, has often been presented as including a position of court poet and/or official historiographer.

Based on surviving archives of the English court, Croenen has concluded instead that this service did not entail an official position at court, and probably was more a literary construction, in which a courtly poet dedicated poems to his 'lady' and in return received occasional gifts as remuneration.

Froissart takes a serious approach to his work.

He travels in England, Scotland, Wales, France, Flanders and Spain gathering material and firsthand accounts for his Chronicles.

He travels with Lionel, Duke of Clarence, to Milan to attend and chronicle the duke's wedding to Violante, the thirteen-year-old daughter of Galeazzo Visconti, in May 1368.

At this wedding, two other significant writers of the Middle Ages are present: Chaucer and Petrarch.

The Moors retake Algeciras from Castile in 1368.

The city is destroyed on the orders of Muhammed V of Granada and will subsequently be abandoned.

John of Gaunt, English king Edward III’s fourth son, secures the large holdings of his wife, Blanche, heiress of Lancaster, at her death in 1368 and becomes duke of Lancaster.

The town of Pegu, which had declined when the Burmese conquered the area in the eleventh century, becomes the capital of the revived Mon kingdom in 1369.