More Spanish reinforcements arrive in the Philippines in 1570, prompting López de Legazpi to leave Cebu, taking two hundred and fifty soldiers and six hundred native warriors to explore the regions of Leyte and Panay.

Hairun, the ruling Muslim sultan of Ternate, discovers that the island’s Portuguese trader-colonists have been retaining more than their stipulated share of profits from the lucrative spice trade.

In the interests of avoiding bloodshed, Hairun swears on the Koran, and the Portuguese administrator on the Bible, to maintain peace, but Hairun is murdered the next day while visiting the Portuguese fortress.

Baahbullah, his son and successor, swears vengeance and besieges the fortress.

Nobunaga’s former allies turn against him in fear of the rise of a strong central authority.

When civil war erupts in 1570, remaining Nobunaga loyalists include only Tokugawa Iyeyasu, daimyo of Mikawa, and minor daimyos of Ise.

When Nobunaga launches a campaign into the Asakura clan's domain, Azai Nagamasa, to whom his sister Oichi is married, breaks the alliance with Oda to honor the Azai-Asakura alliance which has lasted for generations.

The anti-Nobunaga alliance, with the help of Ikko rebels—a small, militant, offshoot from Jodo Shinshu Buddhism—springs into full force, taking a heavy toll on the Oda clan.

Nobunaga, along with Tokugawa Ieyasu, lays siege to the castles of Odani and Yokoyama, the fortresses of the Asai and Asakura families.

As warriors pour from the castles, the battle becomes a melee fought in the middle of the shallow river.

For a time, Nobunaga's forces, supplemented by five hundred arquebusiers, fight the Asai, while the Tokugawa warriors battle the Asakura a short distance upstream.

After the Tokugawa forces finish off the Asakura, they then turn and attack the Asai right flank.

Inaba Ittetsu, who had been held in reserve, now advances to strike the Asai left flank.

Many of the besiegers of Yokoyama even leave their positions to aid in the battle, which ends in defeat for the combined forces of the Asakura and Azai clans.

Nobunga’s military commander Shibata Katsuie, once betrothed to his sister Oichi, is not present at the battle of Anegawa as he is besieged at Chokoji Castle by four thousand Rokkakku soldiers; he eventually wins via an all-out attack that inspires the Rokkakku to retreat; this, along with a series of brilliant victories, gains him renown as "Oni Shibata".

The Ikkō-ikki, mobs of fanatically religious warrior monks and peasants, control the Ishiyama Hongan-ji fortress, and stand in the way of Nobunaga's bid to conquer all of Japan.

Nobunaga has fought the Ikki before, crushing their armies of Mikawa Province and other areas, and their twin fortresses of Ishiyama Hongan-ji and Nagashima are their last bastions of strength.

He besieges both fortresses simultaneously, attacking Ishiyama in August 1570.

Leaving his castle in Gifu with thirty thousand troops, he orders the building of fortresses around the Ishiyama.

On September 12th, the Ikkō-ikki launch a midnight stealth attack with three thousand arquebusiers, destroying several of these forts, and pushing Oda's army back.

While Oda himself will focus on the sieges of the Nagashima fortress and other campaigns, his armies remain encamped here, assigned to monitor the Ikki's fortress, and take it if they can.

Lodovico Castelvetro, an Influential Italian critic, teacher, and theorist excommunicated by the Inquisition and living in exile in Vienna, translates and writes an illuminating, scholarly commentary on Aristotle's Poetics called La poetica di Aristotele vulgarizzata ("Aristotle's Poetics Popularized").

Published in 1570, La poetica, though often erroneous in transmitting Aristotle's ideas, punctures the hoary Platonic concept that poets are possessed by divinely inspired madness and that only a cultural elite can enjoy art, asserting that this is a myth perpetuated by the ignorant masses and by poets themselves.

Castelvetro disagrees with Horace's notion of the didactic and pleasurable function of art, defended poetry as a means of pleasure alone.

In emphasizing realism in drama, Castelvetro clarifies the distinction between rhetoric and poetry, and defends the dramatic unities of time, place, and action.

A papal nuncio takes up permanent residence in Warsaw in 1570.

Poland’s three Protestant churches—Lutheran, Reformed Calvinist, and Unity of Brethren—reach an agreement, the Concensus Poloniae, which, although not uniting them, provides a basis for mutual coexistence.

Flemish composer Roland de Lassus, chapelmaster at the Munich court of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, completes his expressive setting of the Seven Penitential Psalms in 1570.

The Swedes, triumphant in Danish-ruled Norway in the Danish-Swedish War of 1563-1570 (Northern, or Scandinavian, Seven Years War), had subsequently lost their captured territory, while the Danes had similarly been unable to retain their conquests.

John ends the Scandinavian Seven Years' War in 1570 without many Swedish concessions: by the terms of the peace signed at Stettin, the borders of the two nations remain essentially unchanged: Denmark receives Gotland and Elfsborg (Alvsborg), along with some monetary reparations, from Sweden.

Denmark is provisionally granted the right to display the Swedish triple-crown insignia, but Sweden is barred from incorporating Danish or Norwegian arms.

János Sigismund Zápolya, first prince of Transylvania and, as John, or János, II, titular king of Hungary, gives up the royal Hungarian title in 1570.

Transylvania under his rule has become largely Calvinist and separate from Hungary.

The Ottoman Empire, during Sokollu’s tenure as grand vizier, fights a war with Venice from 1570.

Negotiations between Cyprus’s Jewish community and Joseph Nasi, who has from 1553 held leading diplomatic and financial positions in the service of Suleiman and his son and successor, Selim II, have been uncovered by the Venetians and, as a result, the Jewish population of Famagusta (with the exception of Jews who are natives of the city) is expelled.

It is believed that Nasi had intended parts of Cyprus to be a Jewish colony, and has encouraged the Ottoman annexation of Cyprus in the war to this end; he has been granted a coat of arms by Selim that indicates he would be given viceregal rank in that colony.

Nasi's relative Abraham Beneviste is arrested in 1570, on charges of having set fire to the Venetian Arsenal on Nasi's instigation.