1572

1550–1600	North America, South America, Europe [trade]	New agricultural products are exchanged between the New and Old Worlds. The Spanish introduce potatoes, tomatoes, quinine, cocoa, tapioca, and tobacco to Europe. From Europe, the New World gains barley, oats, rye, sugar cane, cattle, pigs, poultry, rabbits, and horses.
1569–1573	England, Ireland [wars]	James Fitzmaurice attempts to raise Ireland in Catholic rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I of England and the ‘Plantations’ (English colonies) in his native Munster and Leinster. Though the resistance succeeds in ejecting the colonists, he eventually surrenders to John Perrot, the English lord deputy of Ireland.
1572	Italy [houses]	The Villa d'Este in Tivoli, Rome, Italy, is completed to a design by the Italian architect Pirro Ligorio. The elaborate formal gardens of the villa are among the finest of the Renaissance.
1572	India, Mogul Empire [palaces]	The Fortress Palace at Ajmer in India, built by the Mogul king Akbar the Great, is completed.
1572	Portugal [poetry]	The Portuguese poet Luís Vaz de Camões publishes Os lusíadas/The Lusiads, a national epic based on the voyages of Vasco da Gama.
1572	Russia [political events]	The Tatars burn Moscow. The Russian tsar Ivan IV (‘the Terrible’), suspecting everyone of treason, abolishes the oprichnina (royal domain) and reverses the land grants made since 1565. Many peasants have fled east and south to become free Cossacks.
January 1572	England [births and deaths]	John Donne, the best-known English poet of the metaphysical school, born in London, England (–1631).
1 April - 22 April 1572	Spanish Netherlands, Holy Roman Empire [Dutch Revolt (1598–1609)]	The Watergeuzen (‘Sea Beggars’), Protestant rebel privateers led by Count Lumey van der Mark, capture the small ports of Brill in Holland and, on 22 April, Vlissingen in Zeeland, with the aid of an insurgent populace; these become the first permanent bases for the Dutch Revolt against Spanish Habsburg rule.
13 May 1572	Papal States, Italy [political events]	Ugo Buoncompagni is elected Pope Gregory XIII, 13 days after the death of his predecessor Pius V.
June - September 1572	Holy Roman Empire, Spanish Netherlands [Dutch Revolt (1598–1609)]	Dozens of towns in Guelders, then in Holland, Overijssel, and Limburg and, by early September, from Friesland to Brabant, revolt, declaring for William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and religious tolerance, and opposing the Spanish Habsburg governor of the Netherlands, Ferdinand, Duke of Alva (or Alba), and his rule of terror and excessive taxation.
11 June 1572	England [births and deaths]	Ben Jonson, a leading English dramatist, lyric poet, and critic of the Jacobean age, whose works include The Alchemist (1610), born in London, England (–1637).
7 July 1572	Poland-Lithuania [political events]	King Sigismund II Augustus of Poland dies, the last of the Jagiello dynasty; the Sejm (parliament) declares itself free to elect whomever it chooses as a successor.
19 July 1572	Spanish Netherlands, Holy Roman Empire [political events]	The assembly of the estates of Holland at Dordrecht elects William the Silent, Prince of Orange, as stadtholder (provincial executive officer), and recognizes him as stadtholder in Zeeland, Utrecht, and Friesland. At the suggestion of William's representative, Philip Marnix, Count van der Marck, is appointed lieutenant governor; standing ‘colleges’ of the admiralty, finance, and the Gecommitteerde Raad (for general administration) are created, and 500,000 florins of tax voted.
18 August 1572	France, Spain [political events]	The Huguenot Henri de Bourbon, king of Navarre since the death of his mother Jeanne d'Albret in June, marries Marguerite de Valois, sister of King Charles IX of France – the fruit of the reconciliation between Charles and the French Huguenot commander Admiral Gaspard de Coligny.
22 August - 25 August 1572	France [political events]	The agents of Henri, Duke of Guise, and Catherine de' Medici fail to assassinate the Huguenot (French Protestant) leader Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. Fearing discovery, Catherine persuades her son, King Charles IX of France, to authorize the slaughter of the Huguenots in Paris, France, on the night of 23 August; this ‘St Bartholomew's Day Massacre’ has some 3,000 victims, including Coligny, whom the Duke of Guise defenestrates. King Henry of Navarre and Henri de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, are spared, at the price of their conversion.
1 October - 2 December 1572	Holy Roman Empire, Spanish Netherlands [Dutch Revolt (1598–1609)]	The Spanish Habsburg army under Ferdinand, Duke of Alva (or Alba), successively takes the towns of Mechelen, Zutphen (14 November), and Naarden in the Netherlands from the Dutch rebels. In a reign of terror, the troops sack them with great brutality. The other rebel towns in Brabant surrender easily after Mechelen, a process repeated in the northeast after Zutphen; the utter destruction and massacre of the entire population of Naarden, however, merely strengthens resistance in Holland and Zeeland.
11 November 1572	Denmark [astronomy]	The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe observes a bright new star – a supernova – in the constellation Cassiopeia. It becomes known as ‘Tycho's Nova’.
24 November 1572	Scotland [births and deaths]	John Knox, Scottish religious reformer, leader of the Scottish Reformation, dies in Edinburgh, Scotland (c. 58).
December 1572 - June 1573	France [French Wars of Religion (1562–80)]	In the Fourth War of Religion in France, which follows the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre of Huguenots (French Protestants), a royal and Catholic army led (after February) by Henry, Duke of Anjou, fails in a siege of and numerous assaults on the Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle on the west coast of France.