1499
Year 1499 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar.
Events
January–March
- January 8 - Louis XII of France marries Anne of Brittany, in accordance with a law set by his predecessor, Charles VIII.
- February 4 - Hans, King of Denmark is formally crowned as King of Sweden and his wife Christina of Saxony crowned as Queen Consort.
- February 9 - The Treaty of Blois is signed between the Kingdom of France and the Republic of Venice as a secret military alliance between the two nations to attack the Duchy of Milan.
- February 20 - The Battle of Hard is fought near the village of Hard in modern-day western Austria as the Swiss Confederacy defeats the troops of the Holy Roman Empire in the first large-scale confrontation of the Swabian War.
- March 22 - At the Battle of Bruderholz, the Swiss Confederation defeats a larger force of troops from the Swabian League near Basel.
April–June
- April 11 - The Battle of Schwaderloh is won by the Swiss Confederacy over the Swabian League with more than 1,400 of the Swabian troops killed.
- April 20 - The Swiss Confederacy defeats the forces of the Holy Roman Empire in the Battle of Frastanz, with more than 2,000 Imperial troops killed.
- April 30 - The University of Valencia is founded in Spain with the passage of the University Statutes by the magistrates of Valencia.
- May 19 - Catherine of Aragon, the future first wife of Henry VIII, is married by proxy to his brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales.
- June 1 - Pedro Alonso Niño, who had accompanied Columbus on his first voyage to the New World in 1492, departs from Palos in Spain toward South America on a 7-month voyage to the New World. Niño sets sail in a small caravel with 33 men
- June 10 - Pope Alexander VI informs the Roman Catholic cardinals that the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire has amassed a fleet of 300 ships to lay siege to the city of Rhodes.
- June 15 - The Great Epidemic of plague reaches London, forcing King Henry and Queen Anne to flee to the capital to Langley on June 25 and then to Abingdon.
- June 20 - Queen Isabella of Spain orders Christopher Columbus to liberate and repatriate Indians from the New World, declaring that nobody had authorized him to kidnap any of her subjects.
July–September
- July 22 - Battle of Dornach: The Swiss decisively defeat the army of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor.
- July 28 - First Battle of Lepanto: The Turkish navy wins a decisive victory over the Venetians.
- August 24 - Lake Maracaibo is discovered, by Alonso de Ojeda and Amerigo Vespucci.
- August - Polydore Vergil completes De inventoribus rerum, the first modern history of inventions.
- September 18 - Vasco da Gama arrives at Lisbon, returning from India, and is received by King Manuel of Portugal.
- September 22 - Treaty of Basel: Maximilian is forced to grant the Swiss de facto independence.
October–December
- October 26 - King Louis XII of France and his troops seize Milan, driving out Duke Ludovico Sforza, and Leonardo da Vinci flees to Venice.
- October 25 - The Pont Notre-Dame in Paris, constructed under Charles VI of France, collapses into the Seine.
- November 5 - The Catholicon is published in Tréguier. This Breton–greek–Latin dictionary had been written in 1464 by Jehan Lagadeuc. It is the first dictionary of either French or Breton.
- November 23 - Perkin Warbeck, pretender to the throne of England, is hanged for reportedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London.
- November 28 - Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick, last male member of the House of York, is executed for reportedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London.
- December 18 - The Rebellion of the Alpujarras begins in the Kingdom of Granada against the forced conversions of Muslims in Spain.
Date unknown
- Montenegro, the last free monarchy in the Balkans, is annexed by the Ottoman Empire, as part of the sanjak of Shkodër, and Stefan II Crnojević is removed from office.
- Johannes Trithemius inadvertently reveals interests in magic by writing a letter to a Carmelite friar about a treatise he is writing on steganography.
- Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa matriculates at Cologne University.
- Giggleswick School is founded by Reverend James Carr in England.