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Isabella I unified Spain through her marriage to Ferdinand II of Aragon, and she financed the expedition of Christopher Columbus, leading to the discovery of the Americas.
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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, 1598. 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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Don Quixote is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, its full title is The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha or, in Spanish, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha.
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The Thirty Years' War was a 17th-century religious conflict fought primarily in central Europe. It remains one of the longest and most brutal wars in human history, with more than 8 million casualties resulting from military battles as well as from the famine and disease caused by the conflict.
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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.
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Charles II (May 29, 1630 – February 6, 1685) was the King of England, King of Scots, and King of Ireland from January 30, 1649 (de jure) or May 29, 1660 (de facto) until his death.
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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).
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Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil, commonly referred to as Leviathan, is a book written by Thomas Hobbes and published in 1651. Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan.
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Peter I (1672–1725), tsar of Russia (1682–1725). Peter the Great's reign was marked by a program of extensive reform known as Westernization and by the establishment of Russia as a major European power.
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Johann Sebastian Bach, (born March 21 [March 31, New Style], 1685, Eisenach, Thuringia, Ernestine Saxon Duchies [Germany]—died July 28, 1750, Leipzig), composer of the Baroque era, the most celebrated member of a large family of north German musicians.
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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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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.
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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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Joseph II (German: Josef Benedikt Anton Michael Adam; English: Joseph Benedict Anthony Michael Adam; 13 March 1741 – 20 February 1790) was Holy Roman Emperor from 18 August 1765 and sole ruler of the Habsburg lands from 29 November 1780 until his death. He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Theresa and her husband, Emperor Francis I, and the brother of Marie Antoinette, Maria Carolina of Austria and Maria Amalia, Duchess of Parma.
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Montesquieu's greatest work, De l'esprit des lois (The Spirit of Laws), was published in 1748. It is a comparative study of three types of government: republic, monarchy, and despotism. Montesquieu held that governmental powers should be separated and balanced to guarantee individual rights and freedom.
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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 French and Indian War was the North American conflict in a larger imperial war between Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years' War. The French and Indian War began in 1754 and ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1763.
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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.
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George III, who ruled between 1760 and 1820, was the first truly British monarch of the Hanoverian kings.
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The Social Contract, originally published as On the Social Contract; or, Principles of Political Right (French: Du contrat social; ou, Principes du droit politique), is a 1762 French-language book by the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The book theorizes about the best way to establish a political community in the face of the problems of commercial society, which Rousseau had already identified in his Discourse on Inequality (1755).
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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. 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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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, satirising both human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary subgenre.
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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.
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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.
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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 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.
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The Wealth of Nations was published 9 March 1776, during the Scottish Enlightenment and the Scottish Agricultural Revolution. It influenced a number of authors and economists, as well as governments and organizations.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation's first constitution, in 1789. Originally comprising seven articles, it delineates the national frame and constraints of government.
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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.
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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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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 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.
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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.
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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 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 Committee of Public Safety was created by the National Convention in 1793 with the intent to defend the nation against foreign and domestic enemies, as well as to oversee the new functions of the executive government. Members were elected and served for a period of one month.
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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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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 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.
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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 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.
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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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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.
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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.