The Age of Absolutism

By caicedocc
  • Period: Jan 1, 1400 to

    The Age of Absolution

  • Aug 1, 1429

    1429 Isabella financed Colombus's voyage to the Americas.

    Isabella financed Colombus's voyage to the Americas.
  • Oct 20, 1485

    1485 - 1603 England was ruled by the Tudor Dynasty

  • Oct 1, 1519

    1519 Charles V inherits a huge empire.

    1519 Charles V inherits a huge empire.
  • Oct 19, 1550

    1550-1650 Spain's Golden Age

  • Oct 19, 1556

    1556 Charles V gave up his titles and entered a monastery

  • Oct 19, 1560

    1560's Riots against the Inquistition sparked a general uprising in the Netherlands.

  • Oct 19, 1561

    1560s-1590s religious wats between Huguenots (French Protestants) and the Catholic majority tore France apart.

  • Oct 20, 1561

    1560's "The most high and absolute power in the realm consists in the Parliament," wrote an English statesman

  • Oct 19, 1571

    1571 Spain and Italian allies soundly defeated an Ottoman fleet in the Mediterranean

  • Aug 8, 1572

    1572 St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.

  • Oct 19, 1580

    1580's Philip II saw England's Queen Elizabeth I as his chief Protestant enemy.

  • Oct 19, 1581

    1581 The nothern, largetly Protestant provinces declared their independence from spain and became known as the Dutch Netherlands.

  • 1588 The Armada sailed with more than 130 ships, 20,000 men, and 2,400 pieces of artillery.

  • 1589 Huguenor prince inherited the French throne as Henry IV.

  • 1598 Edict of Nanted is issued.

  • 1600s and 1700s, Dutch, English, and French fleets challenges and surpassed Spanish power bothin Europe and around the world.

  • 1600s Hohenzollern family tuled scattered lands across north Germany.

  • 1600s Russia was still a medieval state, untouched by the Renaissance and Reformation and largely isolated from Western Europe

  • 1603 Elizabeth I dies

  • 1603 A monarch with far different ideas took the throne of England.

  • 1603 End of the Tudor Dynasty

  • 1610 Henry IV was killed by an assassin.

  • 1613 The reign of the first Romanov czar restored a measure of order

  • 1614-1789 Estates General did not meet.

  • 1618 Rebellious Protestant noblemen tossed two royal officials out of a castle window in Prague.

  • 1624 Louis XIII appointed Cardinal Armand Richelieu as his chief minister.

  • 1625 Charles I inherits the throne

  • 1628 Charles' need to raise taxes forced him to summon Parliament.

  • 1629 Charles dissolved Parliament

  • 1637 Charles and Laud tried to impose the Anglican prayer book on Scotland.

  • 1640 Parliament is finally summoned

  • 1640 Parliament became known as the Long Parliament because it lasted until 1653

  • 1642 Civil War starts

  • 1642 Charles led the troops into the House of Commons to arrest its most radical leaders.

  • 1643 Louis XIV inherited the throne

  • 1647 The king was in the hands of parliamentary forces

  • 1648 Dutch Netherlands earn recognition.

  • 1648 Peace of Westphalia

  • 1649 Charles I stood on a scaffold surrounded by his foes. "I am a martyr of the people," he declared.

  • 1649 Civil War ends

  • 1652 Parliament passed a law exiling most Catholics to barrenland in the west of Ireland.

  • 1653 Parliament is gone

  • 1653 Cromwell took the title Lord Protector

  • 1660 Cheering crowds welcomed Charles II back to London

  • 1660 Newly selected Parliament invited Charles II to return to England from exile

  • 1661 Mazarin dies and Louis resolves to take over the government himself.

  • 1682 A czar emerged who was strong enough to regain the absolute power of earlier czars

  • 1685 Edict of Nantes is revoked by Louis XIV

  • 1685 James II inheritss the throne

  • 1688 Alarmed parliamentary leaders invited James's Prtestant daughter, Mary, and her Dutch Protestant husband, William II of Orange, to become rulers of England

  • 1689 English Bill of Rights is established

  • 1689 Toleration Act granted limited religious freedom to Puritans, Quakers and other dissenters, though not yet to Catholics

  • 1689 Peter the Great didn't take control over the government until 1689

  • Late 1600s France had replaced Spain as the most powerful European nation. Louis XIV was absolute monarch of France and the most powerful ruler in Europe.

  • 1697 Peter set out to study western technology himself

  • 1700 Louis's grandson Philip V inherited the throne of Spain.

  • 1700 Peter began a long war against the kingdom of Sweden

  • 1700s Hapsburg empire already included Germans, Magyars, Slavs, and others.

  • 1700s (early) Emperor Charles VI faced a new crisis, he had no son.

  • 1700s (early) Peter hired the Danish navigator Vitus Bering to explore the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska

  • 1700s Russia would be invreasingly involved in the affairs of Western Europe

  • 1709 Peter defeated the Swedes and won land along the Baltic Sea

  • 1713 War of the Spanish Succession ended.

  • 1715 Louis XIV dies and five-year-old great-grandson inherited the throne as Louis XV

  • 1725 Peter The Great died and left a mixed legacy

  • 1740 Frederick II of Prussia sized the rich Hapsburg province of Silesia

  • 1740 By then, Prussia was strong enough to challenge its rival Austria

  • 1740 Frederick II is crowned king, doesn't loose any time in using his army.

  • 1756 Seven Years' War starts

  • 1762 Catherine The Great's husband was killed by a group of Russian army officers

  • 1763 Seven Years' War ends

  • 1770s Catherine The Great, Frederick The Great, and Emperor Joseph II divided Poland into three parts.

  • 1772 The first partition happened. Catherine The Great took part of eastern Poland

  • 1793 Poland was partitioned again

  • 1795 Poland was again partitioned

  • 1919 Free Polish state reappears