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The Kingdom of Spain charts its origin in the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1469. Their union, and their rule, triggered a war that forged the modern world.
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Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled.
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Elizabeth succeeded to the throne on her half-sister's death in November 1558. She was very well-educated (fluent in five languages), 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 was signed into law on April 13, 1598 by King Henry IV of France. The Edict of Nantes definition is that it provided religious tolerance as well as civil rights for the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants) in a predominantly Roman Catholic country.
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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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The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, lasting from 1618 to 1648.
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In 1628 the English Parliament sent this statement of civil liberties to King Charles I. The next recorded milestone in the development of human rights was the Petition of Right, produced in 1628 by the English Parliament and sent to Charles I as a statement of civil liberties.
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The reign of Louis XIV is often referred to as “Le Grand Siècle” (the Great Century), forever associated with the image of an absolute monarch and a strong, centralised state. Coming to the throne at a tender age, tutored by Cardinal Mazarin, the Sun King embodied the principles of absolutism.
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The Long Parliament was an English Parliament which lasted from 1640 until 1660. It followed the fiasco of the Short Parliament, which had convened for only three weeks during the spring of 1640 after an 11-year parliamentary absence.
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On 24 October 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia was signed, marking the end of the Thirty Years' War. Ratification of the Peace of Münster (Gerard ter Borch, Münster, 1648).Oct 10, 1998 -
Hobbes wrote many books and contributed to many academic fields, but his 1651 book Leviathan or the matter, forme and power of a commonwealth ecclesiasticall and civil is the one he is best remembered for.
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With his charm and flashing wit, young Charles II was a popular ruler. He reopened theaters and taverns and presided over a lively court in the manner of Louis XIV.
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Peter I, Russian in full Pyotr Alekseyevich, byname Peter the Great, Russian Pyotr Veliky, (born June 9), 1672, Moscow, Russia—died February 8 [January 28], 1725, St. Petersburg), tsar of Russia who reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V (1682–96). -
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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The Bill of Rights 1689: An Act declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject, and settling the Succession of the Crown. -
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. -
By the mid-1700s, wealthy middle-class people commissioned works and hired musicians to perform them. Among the towering musical figures of the era was Johann Sebastian Bach. -
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. -
Frederick II (1712-1786) 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.
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In this treatise Montesquieu argues that political institutions need, for their success, to reflect the social and geographical aspects of the particular community. He pleads for a constitutional system of government with separation of powers, the preservation of legality and civil liberties, and the end of slavery.
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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.
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Candide, ou l'Optimisme is a French satire written by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, first published in 1759. The novella has been widely translated, with English versions titled Candide: or, All for the Best; Candide: or, The Optimist; and Candide: Optimism. -
1760-1820) 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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The Social Contract, originally published as On the Social Contract; or, Principles of Political Right, is a 1762 French-language book by the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
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Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels was first published in 1726 under the title Travels into several Remote Nations of the World. The fantastical narrative was initially presented as a factual account written by 'Lemuel Gulliver, first a surgeon, and then a captain of several ships'.
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She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter III. Under her long reign, inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, Russia experienced a renaissance of culture and sciences, which led to the founding of many new cities, universities, and theatres, along with large-scale immigration from the rest of Europe and the recognition of Russia as one of the great powers of Europe.
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He was thus the first ruler in the Austrian dominions of the union of the Houses of Habsburg and Lorraine, styled Habsburg-Lorraine.
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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 Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. -
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. -
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. -
The Wealth of Nations is a profoundly influential work in the study of economics and examines exactly how nations become wealthy. Adam Smith advocates that by allowing individuals to freely pursue their own self-interest in a free market, without government regulation, nations will prosper.
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The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence occurred primarily on August 2, 1776, at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia, later to become known as Independence Hall. -
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 Treaty of Paris, signed in Paris by representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States on September 3, 1783, officially ended the American Revolutionary War and overall state of conflict between the two countries.
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Written in 1787, ratified in 1788, and in operation since 1789, the United States Constitution is the world's longest surviving written charter of government.
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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 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.
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On 20 June 1789, the members of the French Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath in the tennis court which had been built in 1686 for the use of the Versailles palace. -
The Women's March on Versailles, also known as the October March, the October Days or simply the March on Versailles, was one of the earliest and most significant events of the French Revolution. -
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.
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The National Convention was the constituent assembly of the Kingdom of France for one day and the French First Republic for the rest of its existence during the French Revolution, following the two-year National Constituent Assembly and the one-year Legislative Assembly.
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The years 1792-95 marked the radical phase of the French Revolution. They included events like the attack on the Tuileries, the September Massacres, the trial and execution of the king and the unfolding Reign of Terror.
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Supplementing the Committee of General Defence, created in early January 1793, the Committee of Public Safety was created in April 1793 by the National Convention. It was charged with protecting the new republic against its foreign and domestic enemies, fighting the First Coalition and the Vendée revolt. -
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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Between 1795 and 1799, 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. 2. This government was formed after the passing of the Constitution of Year III in mid-1795.
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In May 1804, he 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.
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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.
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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 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. -
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. -
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 had been exiled to St. Helena after he was defeated by the British at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Having escaped his previous exile from Elba, off the coast of Italy, the French emperor was a flight risk to his fellow European rulers who wanted rid of him.