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The Spanish Armada was an enormous 130-ship naval fleet dispatched by Spain in 1588 as part of a planned invasion of England. Following years of hostilities between Spain and England, King Philip II of Spain assembled the flotilla in the hope of removing Protestant Queen Elizabeth I from the throne and restoring the Roman Catholic faith in England. -
Signed by Henry IV of France at Nantes on April 13th, 1598, the edict put a temporary end to the ferocious religious wars between Roman Catholics and Protestants which had torn France apart since the 1560s. -
Between 1642 and 1651, armies loyal to King Charles I and Parliament faced off in three civil wars over longstanding disputes about religious freedom and how the “three kingdoms” of England, Scotland and Ireland should be governed. -
As a result of the Treaty of Westphalia, the Netherlands gained independence from Spain, Sweden gained control of the Baltic and France was acknowledged as the preeminent Western power. The power of the Holy Roman Emperor was broken and the German states were again able to determine the religion of their lands. -
In 1660, in what is known as the English Restoration, General George Monck met with Charles and arranged to restore him in exchange for a promise of amnesty and religious toleration for his former enemies. -
The English Bill of Rights was an act signed into law in 1689 by William III and Mary II, who became co-rulers in England after the overthrow of King James II. The bill outlined specific constitutional and civil rights and ultimately gave Parliament power over the monarchy. -
Peter himself chose the site of the new city, laying the foundation stone for the Peter Paul Fortress and the city at its walls in May 1703. Peter and his associates were boating around the Neva Delta, inspecting various islands. -
In desperation at the financial crisis, King Louis XVI summoned a so-called Estates General in 1789 to approve new taxation. This was a representative body that had not met since 1614, but once it had been called, it developed a momentum of its own. -
The National Assembly was created amidst the turmoil of the Estates-General that Louis XVI called in 1789 to deal with the looming economic crisis in France. Unfortunately, the three estates could not decide how to vote during the Estates-General and the meeting failed. -
Finding themselves locked out of their usual meeting hall at Versailles on June 20 and thinking that the king was forcing them to disband, they moved to a nearby indoor tennis court. There they took an oath never to separate until a written constitution had been established for France. -
On 14 July 1789, a state prison on the east side of Paris, known as the Bastille, was attacked by an angry and aggressive mob. The prison had become a symbol of the monarchy's dictatorial rule, and the event became one of the defining moments in the Revolution that followed. -
The basic principle of the Declaration was that all “men are born and remain free and equal in rights”, which were specified as the rights of liberty, private property, the inviolability of the person, and resistance to oppression. -
The Women’s March on Versailles was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution. On the morning of October 5, 1789, women were near rioting in the Paris marketplace over the high price and scarcity of bread. Their demonstrations quickly became intertwined with the activities of revolutionaries, who were seeking liberal political reforms and a constitutional monarchy for France. -
The Constitution of 1791 was the revolutionary government's first attempt at a written constitutional document. Motivated by Enlightenment ideas and the American Revolution, it was intended to define the limits of power in the new government. -
One day after being convicted of conspiracy with foreign powers and sentenced to death by the French National Convention, King Louis XVI is executed by guillotine in the Place de la Revolution in Paris. -
On July 27, 1793, Robespierre was elected to the Committee of Public Safety, which was formed in April to protect France against its enemies, foreign and domestic, and to oversee the government. Under his leadership, the committee came to exercise virtual dictatorial control over the French government. -
On September 5, 1793, a group of Parisian radicals petitioned the National Convention to place “terror on the order of the day.” Seizing that mandate, the Committee of Public Safety in Paris responded with ruthless efficiency to real and perceived threats to its rule. -
On July 27, 1794, Robespierre and a number of his followers were arrested at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris. The next day Robespierre and 21 of his followers were taken to the Place de la Révolution, where they were executed by guillotine before a cheering crowd. -
The Battle of Waterloo, which took place in Belgium on June 18, 1815, marked the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, who conquered much of Europe in the early 19th century. -
During his reign, he worked to modernize Russia and transform it into an empire that rivaled anything in Europe. He instituted a series of reforms to make Russia more closely resemble European states, brought the church under his control, moved the capital and consolidated his power by taking it from the noble class.