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By their marriage in October 1469, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile initiated a confederation of the two kingdoms that became the basis for the unification of Spain. By their support of the explorations of Christopher Columbus, they also laid the foundations for Spain's colonies in the New World.
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In May 1532, More resigned as Lord Chancellor, leaving Cromwell as Henry's chief minister. With the Act of Succession 1533, Catherine's daughter, Mary, was declared illegitimate; Henry's marriage to Anne was declared legitimate; and Anne's issue was declared to be next in the line of succession.
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Elizabeth succeeded to the throne on her half-sister's death in November 1558. She was very well-educated and had inherited intelligence, determination, and shrewdness from both parents. Her 45-year reign is generally considered one of the most glorious in English history.
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The Edict of Nantes, issued under Henry of Navarre after he ascended to the French throne as Henry IV, effectively ended the French Wars of Religion by granting official tolerance to Protestantism. Henry of Navarre had been a Calvinist, but before he was crowned, he converted to Catholicism.
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On January 16, 1605, Miguel de Cervantes' El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, better known as Don Quixote, is published. The book is considered by many to be the first modern novel and one of the greatest novels of all time.
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Petition of Right (signed 1628 retroactive to 1627) The Petition of Right was sent by English Parliament to King Charles I to complain about a series of breaches of law he had made. He was compelled to agree to the petition in order to receive money for his lifestyle and policies. -
Louis XIV, also known as Louis the Great or the Sun King, was King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest of any sovereign in history whose date is verifiable. -
On 24 October 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia was signed, marking the end of the Thirty Years' War. Ratification of the Peace of Münster. -
England entered the period known as the English Interregnum or the English Commonwealth when England was governed as a republic led by Oliver Cromwell.
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Peter the Great adopted the title of Emperor in place of the old title of Tsar in 1721 and founded and developed the city of Saint Petersburg, which remained the capital of Russia until 1918.
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The English Bill of Rights clearly established that the monarchy could not rule without consent of Parliament. The English Bill put in place a constitutional form of government in which the rights and liberties of the individual were protected under English law.
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The Glorious Revolution is the term first used in 1689 to summarise events leading to the deposition of James II and VII of England, Ireland, and Scotland in November 1688, and his replacement by his daughter Mary II and her husband and James's nephew William III of Orange, de facto ruler of the Dutch Republic.
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Two Treatises of Government, major statement of the political philosophy of the English philosopher John Locke, published in 1689 but substantially composed some years before then.
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Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published on 25 April 1719. The first edition credited the work's protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents.
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Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboards works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schubler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. -
Gulliver's Travels, or Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift, satirizing both human nature and the "travelers' tales" literary subgenre.
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Frederick II ruled Prussia from 1740 until his death, leading his nation through multiple wars with Austria and its allies. His daring military tactics expanded and consolidated Prussian lands, while his domestic policies transformed his kingdom into a modern state and formidable European power. -
In this book, Baron de Montesquieu tried to work out the application of his views to the particular case of Rome, and in so doing to discourage the use of Rome as a model for contemporary governments. Parts of Considerations were incorporated into The Spirit of the Laws, which he published in 1748.
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The Encyclopédie, Ou Dictionnaire Raisonné Des Sciences, Des Arts Et Des Métiers, often referred to simply as Encyclopédie or Diderot's Encyclopedia, is a twenty-eight-volume reference book published between 1751 and 1772 by André Le Breton and edited by translator and philosopher Denis Diderot.
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The Seven Years' War was a global conflict that involved most of the European great powers, and was fought primarily in Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Other concurrent conflicts include the French and Indian War, the Carnatic Wars and the Anglo-Spanish War. -
George III was born on 4 June 1738 in London, the eldest son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. He became heir to the throne on the death of his father in 1751, succeeding his grandfather, George II, in 1760.
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Rousseau's purpose was to outline a theory of society and government in which a social contract among people would preserve their freedom.
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Catherine II, most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter III.
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The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791.
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The death of Maria Theresa on 29 November 1780 left Joseph free to pursue his own policy, and he immediately directed his government on a new course, attempting to realize his ideal of enlightened despotism acting on a definite system for the good of all. -
The Boston Massacre was a confrontation in Boston on March 5, 1770, in which a group of nine British soldiers shot five people of a crowd of three or four hundred who were harassing them verbally and throwing various projectiles. -
The Intolerable Acts were a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea Party. The laws aimed to punish Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in the Tea Party protest of the Tea Act, a tax measure enacted by Parliament in May 1773.
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The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. -
The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. The battles were fought on April 19, 1775, in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay, within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy, and Cambridge. -
Adam Smith, a Scottish moral philosopher by trade, wrote the book to describe the industrialized capitalist system that was upending the mercantilist system. Mercantilism held that wealth was fixed and finite. The only way to prosper was to hoard gold and place tariffs on products from abroad.
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The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. It was engrossed on parchment and on August 2, 1776, delegates began signing it. -
The siege of Yorktown, also known as the Battle of Yorktown, the surrender at Yorktown, or the German battle because of the presence of Germans in all three armies, began September 28, 1781, and ended on October 19, 1781, in Yorktown, Virginia. -
The French Revolution was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799.
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The Storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris, France, on 14 July 1789, when revolutionary insurgents stormed and seized control of the medieval armoury, fortress, and political prison known as the Bastille. At the time, the Bastille represented royal authority in the centre of Paris. -
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, set by France's National Constituent Assembly in 1789, is a human civil rights document from the French Revolution.
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The Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen, also known as the Declaration of the Rights of Woman, was written on 14 September 1791 by French activist, feminist, and playwright Olympe de Gouges in response to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
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A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects, written by British philosopher and women's rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. -
The radical phase of the French Revolution is usually defined as occurring between August 1792 and July 1794. Individuals see the beginning of the radical phase as the attack on the Tuileries Palace and ending with the Thermidorian Reaction. During this period, more radical forces took the lead in pushing the revolution forward, including the urban working and artisan class. A high level of violence also characterized this time period.
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The National Convention was elected to provide a new constitution for the country after the overthrow of the monarchy (August 10, 1792). The Convention numbered 749 deputies, including businessmen, tradesmen, and many professional men. -
The Committee of Public Safety was a committee of the National Convention which formed the provisional government and war cabinet during the Reign of Terror, a violent phase of the French Revolution.
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The Reign of Terror was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, anticlerical sentiment, and accusations of treason by the Committee of Public Safety.
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France was ruled by a five-man executive committee called the Directory and a legislature of two chambers: the Council of Five Hundred and the Council of Ancients. This government was formed after the passing of the Constitution of Year III in mid-1795.
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The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts fought between the First French Empire under Napoleon and a fluctuating array of European coalitions.
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In May 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte became Emperor of the French under the name of Napoleon I, and was the architect of France's recovery following the Revolution before setting out to conquer Europe, which led to his downfall. -
The Battle of Trafalgar was a naval engagement that took place on 21 October 1805 between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French and Spanish Navies during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars. -
The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of the most important and decisive engagements of the Napoleonic Wars. The battle occurred near the town of Austerlitz in the Austrian Empire. -
The Battle of Leipzig, also known as the Battle of the Nations, was fought from 16 to 19 October 1813 at Leipzig, Saxony. The Coalition armies of Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Russia, led by Tsar Alexander I and Karl von Schwarzenberg, decisively defeated the Grande Armée of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. -
The Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
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Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from the island the next year, only to be defeated at Waterloo. This time, his enemies wanted to incarcerate him in a place from which he could definitely not escape. They chose St Helena. This island of 47 square miles lies in the South Atlantic Ocean, some 1,200 miles from the nearest land.
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On April 11, 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France and one of the greatest military leaders in history, abdicates the throne, and, in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, is banished to the Mediterranean island of Elba. The future emperor was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, on August 15, 1769.