Events January–March January 12 – The Basque witch trials are started in Spain as the court of the Inquisition at Logroño receives a letter from the commissioner of the village of Zugarramurdi, and orders the arrest of four women, including María de Jureteguía and María Chipía de Barrenetxea. January 15 – One of the world's first newspapers, Avisa Relation oder Zeitung, begins publication in Wolfenbüttel (Holy Roman Empire). January 31 – The Bank of Amsterdam is established. February 4 – The last day of Keichō 慶長 13 (according to the Japanese lunar calendar). March 11 – The Swedish Army, under the command of General Jacob De la Gardie, begins marching east from Vyborg (at the time, part of the Swedish Empire, now of Russia) in order to defend the Russian Empire against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the course of the Polish–Muscovite War. March 19 – The Dutch warship Mauritius sinks off of the coast of the Cape of Cape Lopes Gonçalves at what is now the West African nation of Gabon. The wreckage of the Mauritius will not be located until 375 years later, in 1985. March 24 – Led by the Grand Hetman of Lithuania, Jan Karol Chodkiewicz, the Lithuanian Navy breaks the blockade of Riga by sinking two Swedish Navy warships off of the coast of Salacgrīva. March 25 – Johann Wilhelm, the Roman Catholic Duke of the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg in Germany, dies at the capital in Düsseldorf with no heirs. On April 2, his widow, Duchess Antoinette of Lorraine establishes a regency to determine who the successor will be, prompting the War of the Jülich Succession between the states of the Protestant Union and the states of the Catholic League. April–June April 4 King Philip III of Spain signs an edict to expel of all Moriscos from his country (see September 11). English explorer Henry Hudson, in the service of the Dutch East India Company, sets out from Amsterdam in the Halve Maen. April 5 – Invasion of Ryukyu in Japan: Soldiers of the Shimazu clan capture the castle on Ryukyu Island, beginning to make the Ryukyu Kingdom a vassal of Satsuma Han. But Ryukyu was still allowed to keep itself a tribute state of Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty. April 9 – The Netherlands and Spain agree to the Twelve Years' Truce (which lasts from 1609 to 1621) in the Eighty Years' War, with