Fall of Byzantine Empire 1204-1453
In 1204 soldiers of the Fourth Crusade overthrew the last Angeloi Emperor Alexios V and ended the Byzantine Empire centered at Constantinople. Both the Crusaders and the citizens of Constantinople agreed that the Angelos had to go.
Fourth Crusade and Sack of Constantinople 1198-1204
The Fourth Crusade (12-02-1204) was organised by Louis of Blois and Baldwin of Flanders. Its stated intent was to recapture the Muslim-controlled city of Jerusalem, by first defeating the powerful Egyptian Ayyubid Sultanate. However, a sequence of economic and political events culminated in the Crusader army's 1204 sack of Constantinople.
When the crusade entered Constantinople in 1203, Alexios III fled and was replaced by his nephew Alexios IV. The Greek resistance prompted Alexios IV to seek continued support from the crusade until he could fulfil his commitments. This ended with his murder in a violent anti-Latin revolt.
The sack of Constantinople occurred in April 1204 marked the culmination of the Crusade. Crusader armies captured, looted, and destroyed parts of the city. The Latin Empire was established and Baldwin was crowned Emperor Baldwin I of Constantinople in the Hagia Sophia.
The Empire was intended to supplant as titular successor to the Roman Empire in the east. The lands did not include all the former Byzantine possessions. The Byzantine rule fractured into the Greek successor-states of Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond.
Empire of Nicaea 1204-1261
The disintegration of the Byzantine Empire allowed the Bulgarians, the Serbs and the various Turcoman emirates to make gains. In Anatolia, the weakening of the Sultanate of Rûm following the Mongol Invasion in 1242-43 allowed many Beyliks and ghazis to set up their own principalities.
The Empire of Nicaea is the largest of the three Byzantine Greek rump states founded by the aristocracy of Byzantines (the Laskaris) that fled after Constantinople was occupied by the Western Europeans. It claimed to be the continuation of the Roman Empire and lasted to 1261 when the Byzantine Empire was restored in Constantinople.
Fifth to Eighth Crusades 1217-1270
Seven years after the failure of the Fifth Crusade (1217-1221), the Sixth Crusade (1228-1229) involved the diplomatic maneuvering of Emperor Frederick II resulted in the Kingdom of Jerusalem regaining some control over Jerusalem for much of the ensuing fifteen years.
The Seventh Crusade (1248-1254) was the first of the two Crusades led by Louis IX of France (r. 1226-1270). Commonly known as Saint Louis, he was the most illustrious of the Direct Capetians.
The Crusade was conducted in response to the loss of the Holy City (Jerusalem) in 1244, and was preached by Innocent IV in conjunction with a crusade against Frederick II, Baltic rebellions and Mongol incursions.
The Crusade initially met with success but ended in defeat, with most of the army including the king, captured by the Muslims. Following his release, Louis stayed in the Holy Land for 4 years until 1254, doing what he could towards the re-establishment of the kingdom.
Early in 1253, Louis learned that a Mongol prince, son of Batu Khan, had been converted to Christianity. He immediately sent a contingent to urge him to come to the aid of his fellow Christians in Syria. But no further contract would occur prior to Louis' departure.
In Egypt, a brutal power struggle developed between Mamluk leaders and the remaining weak Ayyubid rulers. The threat presented by the Mongols'invasion led to one of the competing Mamluk leaders, Qutuz, seizing the sultanate in 1259 and uniting with another faction led by Baibars to defeat the Mongols.
The Mamluks then quickly gained control of Damascus and Aleppo before Qutuz was assassinated and Baibers assumed control.
Louis continued to send financial aid and military support to the settlements in Outremer from 1254 to 1266. While the "crusade" of the King's brother Charles of Anjou against the Hohenstaufen Kingdom of Sicily occupied Papal attention for some years, the advance of Baibars in Syria during the early 1260s became increasingly alarming to Christendom.
Between 1265 and 1271, Baibars drove the Franks to a few small coastal outposts. Baibars intended to prevent an alliance between the Latins and the Mongols, and to maintain access to a supply of slave recruits from the Russian steppes.
In 1270 Charles turned his brother King Louis IX's crusade, known as the Eighth Crusade, to his own advantage by persuading him to attack Tunis. The crusader army was devastated by disease, and Louis himself died at Tunis on August. This ended the last significant crusading effort in the eastern Mediterranean.
Palaiologan dynasty 1261-1453
In 1259, Michael VIII Palaiologos became co-emperor to the young John IV Laskaris through a coup and in 1261, following the recapture of Constantinople from the Latin Empire, John IV was deposed.
His reign (1261-1282) saw considerable recovery of Byzantine power, including the enlargement of the Byzantine army and navy. It would also include the reconstruction of the city of Constantinople.
However, Michael's successors ruled the Byzantine Empire at its weakest point in history, and much of the Palaiologan period was a time of political and economical decline, partly due to external enemies such as the Bulgarians, Serbs and Turks, and partly due to frequent civil wars.
The Turks had since 1263 been raiding and expanding into Byzantine territory in Asia Minor. Anatolia, which had formed the very heart of the shrinking empire, was systematically lost to post-Seljuk Anatolian beyliks, most notably that of Osman, later called the Ottomans.
Numerous civil wars allowed the Serbian and Bulgarian to overrun most of the empire's remaining territory. By 1380, the empire consisted of the capital Constantinople and a few other isolated exclaves, which only nominally recognized the Byzantine Emperor as their lord.
By the time the Byzantine civil wars had ended, the Ottomans had defeated the Serbians, Bulgarian and subjugated them as vassals. Following the Battle of Kosovo, much of the Balkans became dominated by the Ottomans.
Fall of Constantinople 1453
Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans after a two-month siege in May 1453. The Fall of Constantinople marked the end of the Roman Empire, an imperial state which had lasted for nearly 1,500 years, and was marked by large amounts of Greek refugees escaping Turkic rule into Europe via Italy and thus accelerating the Italian Renaissance.
Houses of Plantagenet and Valois, the Hundred Years' War 1216-1485
Historians generally refer to King Henry II of England and his sons as the Angevins due to their vast continental Empire. they instead begin the Plantagenet line from Henry III, son of King John of Angevins, when the House of Plantagenet became more English in nature.
House of Plantagenet 1216-1399
The reign of Edward I (r. 1272-1307) was rather more successful. He enacted numerous laws strengthening the powers of his government, and he summoned the first officially sanctioned Parliaments of England (such as his Model Parliament). He conquered Wales and attempted to use a succession dispute to gain control of the Kingdom of Scotland. Afterwards, the heir apparent to the English monarch has borne the title "Prince of Wales".
| Name | King From | King Until | Claim | Death |
| Henry III, Henry of Wincheste | Oct 1216 | Nov 1272 | Son of John of Angevins (primogeniture) | Aged 65 |
| Edward I, Longshanks | Nov 1272 | July 1307 | son of Henry III (primogeniture) | Aged 68 |
| Edward II, Edward of Caernarfon | July 1307 | Sep 1327 | Son of Edward I (primogeniture) | Aged 43 (murdered) |
| Edward III | Jan 1327 | June 1377 | Son of Edward II (primogeniture) | Aged 64 |
| Richard II | June 1377 | Sept 1399 | Grandson of Edward III (primogeniture); Son of Edward the Black Prince | Aged 33, probably from starvation |
His son, Edward II, was a weak man who preferred to engage in activities like thatching and ditch-digging rather than jousting, hunting, or the usual entertainments of kings.
Edward III (r. 1327-1377), son of Edward II, was crowned at age fourteen after his father was deposed by his mother and her consort Roger Mortimer. At age seventeen he led a successful coup against Mortimer, the de facto ruler of the country, and began his personal reign. He restored royal authority and went on to transform the Kingdom of England into the most efficient military power in Europe.
His reign saw vital developments in legislature and government, in particular the evolution of the English parliament, as well as the ravages of the Black Death.
After defeating, but not subjugating, the Kingdom of Scotland, he declared himself rightful heir to the French throne in 1338, but his claim was denied due to the Salic law. This started what would become known as the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453).
Through his mother, Isabella of France, Edward III was the grandson of Philip IV of France and nephew of Charles IV of France, the last king of the senior line of the House of Capet.
House of Capet 1223–1328
In France, King Louis VIII, the eldest son and heir of Philip Augustus, married Blanche of Castile, a granddaughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England. In her name, he claimed the crown of England, invading at the invitation of the English barons, and briefly being acclaimed. However, the Capetians failed to establish themselves in England.
King Louis IX (Saint Louis) succeeded Louis VIII as a child. He too proved a largely acclaimed King – though he expended much money and effort on the Crusades, as a French king he was admired for his austerity, strength, bravery, justice, and his devotion to France.
Dynastically, he established two notable Capetian houses: the House of Anjou (which he created by bestowing the County of Anjou upon his brother, Charles I (1227–1285)), and the House of Bourbon (which he established by bestowing Clermont on his son Robert (1256–1317) in 1268. .The first house would go on to rule Sicily, Naples and Hungary; the second would eventually succeed to the French throne, collecting Navarre along the way.
At the death of Louis IX on 1270, France under the Capetians stood as the pre-eminent power in Western Europe by his sucessors Philip III (1245-1285) and Philip IV (1268-1314).
| Name | King From | King Until | Relationship with Predecessor(s) | Title |
| Philip II Augustus | 18 Sept 1180 | 14 July 1223 | Son of Louis VII | King of the Franks; King of France; |
| Louis VIII the Lion | 14 July 1223 | 8 Nov 1226 | Son of Philip II Augustus | King of France |
| Louis IX the Saint | 8 Nov 1226 | 25 August 1270 | Son of Louis VIII | King of France |
| Philip III the Bold | 25 Aug 1270 | 5 Oct 1285 | Son of Louis IX | King of France |
| Philip IV the Fair, the Iron King | 5 Oct 1285 | 29 Nov 1314 | Son of Philip III | King of France and of Navarre |
| Louis X the Quarreller | 29 Nov 1314 | 5 June 1316 | Son of Philip IV | King of France and of Navarre |
| John I the Posthumous | 15 Nov 1316 | 20 Nov 1316 | Son of Louis X | King of France and of Navarre |
| Philip V the Tall | 20 Nov 1316 | 3 Jan 1322 | Son of Philip IV, Younger brother of Louis X | King of France and of Navarre |
| Charles IV the Fair | 3 Jan 1322 | 1 Feb 1328 | Son of Philip IV, Younger brother of Louis X | King of France and of Navarre |
House of Valois 1328–1422
The House of Valois succeeded the House of Capet to the French throne on 1328. Junior members of the family founded cadet branches in Alençon, Anjou, Burgundy and Orléans. They descended from Charles, Count of Valois (1270-1325), the third son of King Philip III of France (r. 1270-1285).
In 1316, a principle was established denying women succession to the French throne. When Charles IV died in 1328, Edward III of England claimed the throne of France for himself, but a French Assembly chose Philip of Valois as King Philip VI of France.
| Name | King From | King Until | Relationship with Predecessor(s) | Title |
| Philip VI of Valois, the Fortunate | 1 Apr 1328 | 22 Aug 1350 | Grandson of Philip III of France | King of France; |
| John II the Good | 22 Aug 1350 | 8 Apr 1364 | Son of Philip VI | King of France |
| Charles V the Wise | 8 Apr 1364 | 16 Sept 1380 | Son of John II | King of France |
| Charles VI the Beloved, the Mad | 16 Sept 1380 | 21 Oct 1422 | Son of Charles V | King of France |
For about nine years 1328-37, the English had accepted the Valois succession to the French throne. However, when Phillip VI confiscated the Duchy of Aquitaine from England in 1337, Edward III responded by pressing his claim to the French throne, beginning the war.
The Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) was a series of conflicts fought between the Houses of Plantagenet and Valois for control of the Kingdom of France.
Hundred Years' War of 1340-1360
Edward III formally assumed the title 'King of France and the French Royal Arms'. In June 1340, the English attacked the French fleet off the port of Sluis. The French fleet was almost destroyed in what became known as the Battle of Sluys. England dominated the English Channel for the rest of the war, preventing French invasions.
Several overwhelming English victories: the Battle of Crécy (August 1346) and Battle of Poitiers (September 1356, when King John II of France was captured) raised the prospects of an ultimate English triumph. His eldest son Edward the Black Prince was the most successful English commanders during this phase of war.
Prince Edward sailed with his father again in 1359 and wished to seize the throne. They moved on to Paris but retreated after a few skirmishes in the suburbs. Disaster struck in a freak hailstorm on the encamped army on the Easter of 1360.
This devastated Edward's army and resulted in the Treaty of Brétigny on 8 May 1360, when the whole of the province of Aquitaine, together with Calais, Guisnes, and Ponthieu, were ceded to Edward III of England.
House of Lancaster 1399-1461
House of Lancaster descended from Edward III's third surviving son, John of Gaunt. Henry IV seized power from Richard II, son of Prince Edward. The next in line to the throne, Edmund Mortimer (then aged 7), a descendant of Edward III's second son, Lionel of Antwerp was also displaced.
| Name | King From | King Until | Claim | Death |
| Henry IV, Bolingbroke | 30 Sept 1399 | 20 March 1413 | Grandson and heir male of Edward III (usurpation / agnatic primogeniture); Son of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster | Aged 45 or 46 |
| Henry V, The Star | 20 March 1413 | 31 August 1422 | Son of Henry IV (agnatic primogeniture) | Aged 34-35 |
| Henry VI | 31 August 1422 | 21 May 1471 | Son of Henry V and Catherine of Valois (agnatic primogeniture) | Aged 49 |
Henry V renewed hostilities with France and began a set of military campaigns which are considered a new phase of the Hundred Years War, referred to as the Lancastrian War.
English began to rise in prestige during the reign of Henry V. Around 1430, the Court of Chancery in Westminster began using English in its official documents, and a new standard form of Middle English, known as Chancery Standard, developed from the dialects of London and the East Midlands.
Lancastrian War 1413-1453
Henry V culminated in his famous victory at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and saw him come close to conquering France. He retook much of Normandy, including Caen in 1417, and Rouen in 1419. A formal alliance was made with the Duchy of Burgundy, which had taken Paris in 1419.
In 1420 He met with King Charles VI of France and they signed the Treaty of Troyes. Henry V was given the power to succeed the current ruler of France, Charles VI. The Treaty also provided that he would marry Charles VI's daughter, Catherine of Valois and they married in 1421.
The Dauphin, Charles VII, was declared illegitimate. Henry formally entered Paris later that year and the agreement was ratified by the Estates-General. However, Henry died of dysentery a year later in August 1422, leaving a number of unfulfilled plans, including his plan to take over as King of France.
Following Henry V's sudden and unexpected death in France, and the elderly and insane Charles VI of France died two months later in October 1422. Henry left an only child and he was succeeded by his nine-month-old son. Henry VI, son of Henry V and Catherine of Valois, became king in 1422 as an infant. While he was growing up, England was ruled by the Regency Government of England (1422-1437).
House of Lancaster in France 1422-1453
The Regency Council attempted to install Henry VI as the King of France, in accordance with the Treaty of Troyes, and led English forces to take over areas of France. It appeared they might succeed due to the poor political position of the son of King Charles VI, who had claimed to be the rightful king as Charles VII of France.
| Name | King From | King Until | Claim | Title |
| Henry VI of England | 21 Oct 1422 | 19 Oct 1453 | By right of his father Henry V of England by the Treaty of Troyes become heir and regent to the French throne | King of France (disputed) |
King Henry's claim to de jure sovereignty and legitimacy as king of France was only recognized in the English and allied-controlled territories of France which were under the domination of his French regency council, while the Dauphin Charles VII ruled as King of France in part of the realm south of the Loire.
House of Valois 1422-1498
Joan of Arc's (1412-1431, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans") appearance sparked a revival of French spirit and the tide began to turn against the English. With her help, the French forces were able to push the English forces back and to regain control of French territory. She was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint.
Joan of Arc 1428-1431
In 1428, the English laid siege to Orléans, Joan convinced the Dauphin to send her to the siege in 1429, saying she had received visions from God to drive out the English. She raised the morale of the troops and they attacked the English redoubts, forcing the English to lift the siege. This victory opened the way for the Dauphin to march to Reims for his coronation as Charles VII in July 1429.
However, in May 1430, she was captured at Compiègne by the Burgundian faction, a group of French nobles allied with the English. She was later handed over to the English. After her guilty was declared by the English, she was burned at the stake in May 1431, dying at about nineteen years of age.
| Name | King From | King Until | Relationship with Predecessor(s) | Title |
| Charles VII the Victorious, the Well-Served | 21 October 1422 | 22 July 1461 | Son of Charles VI | King of France; |
| Louis XI the Prudent, the Cunning, the Universal Spider | 22 July 1461 | 30 August 1483 | Son of Charles VII | King of France |
| Charles VIII the Affable | 30 August 1483 | 7 April 1498 | Son of Louis XI | King of France |
In 1435, the Duke of Burgundy, released from his obligations to Henry VI by a papal legate, recognized Charles VII as the rightful king of France. The unification of duke of Orleans and Burgundy under the Valois crown made an English victory all but impossible.
End of Hundred Years' War 1453
The dual monarchy of Henry VI of England came to an end with the capture of Bordeaux by Charles VII's forces on 19 October 1453 following their final victory at the Battle of Castillon on 17 July 1453, thus bringing the Hundred Years' War to a conclusion. The English were expelled from all of the territories which they had controlled in France.
The war almost resumed in 1474, when the duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy-Valois, counting on English support, took up arms against Louis XI. Louis managed to isolate the Burgundians by buying Edward IV of England off with a large cash sum and an annual pension, in the Treaty of Picquigny of 1475. The treaty formally ended the war with Edward renouncing his claim to the throne of France.
With the death in 1477 of Charles the Bold during the Burgundian Wars (1474-1477) , France and the Habsburgs began a long process of dividing his rich Burgundian lands, leading to numerous wars. Duchy of Burgundy was incorporated into the Kingdom of France while the Burgundian Netherlands passed to the Habsburgs.
House of York 1461-1485
The House of York inherited its name from the fourth surviving son of Edward III, Edmund, 1st Duke of York, but claimed the right to the throne through Edward III's second surviving son, Lionel of Antwerp.
When England lost the Hundred Years' War in August 1453, Henry VI fell into a period of mental breakdown that lasted until Christmas 1454. With his inability to control the feuding nobles, civil war began in 1455.
| Name | King From | King Until | Claim | Death |
| Edward IV | Mar 1461, April 1471 | Oct 1470, April 1483 | Great-great-grandson and heir general of Edward III (seizure of the crown / cognatic primogeniture) | Aged 40 |
| Henry VI of Lancaster (restored) | Oct 1470 | April 1471 | Son of Henry V of Lancaster (seizure of the crown) | Aged 49 (murdered by the York brothers) |
| Edward V | April 1483 | June 1483 | Son of Edward IV (primogeniture) | Aged about 12 (cause of death unknown) |
| Richard II | June 1483 | 1485 | Brother of Edward IV | Aged 32 (killed in battle) |
The Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) saw the throne pass back and forth between the rival houses of Lancaster and York. A series of civil wars fought over control of the English throne, fought between supporters of two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet.
The wars extinguished the male lines of the two dynasties, leading to the Tudor family inheriting the Lancastrian claim in 1485.
Holy Roman Empire, Houses of Luxemburg, Wittelsbach and Habsburg 1250-1519
Interregnum 1254-1273
After the death of Frederick II in 1250, the German kingdom was divided between his son Conrad IV and the anti-king, William of Holland. Conrad's death in 1254 was followed by the Interregnum, during which no king could achieve universal recognition, allowing the princes to consolidate their holdings and become even more independent rulers.
| Name | House | King | Emperor | Ended | Note |
| Henry Raspe | Thuringia | 22 May 1246 | – | 16 Feb 1247 | Rival King to Frederick II and great-great-great grandson of Henry IV |
| William of Holland | Holland | 23 Oct 1247 | – | 28 Jan 1256 | Rival King to Frederick II and Conrad IV, 1247–1254 |
| Richard of Cornwall | Plantagenet | 13 Jan 1257 | – | 2 April 1272 | Brother-in-law of Frederik II; rival king to Alfonso of Castile; held no real authority. |
| Alfonso of Castile | Burgundy | 1 April 1257 | – | 1275 | Grandson of Philip; rival king to Richard of Cornwall; held no authority; later opposed by Rudolf I; relinquished claims 1275 |
After 1257, the crown was contested between Richard of Cornwall, who was supported by the Guelph party, and Alfonso X of Castile, who was recognized by the Hohenstaufen party but never set foot on German soil. After Richard's death in 1273, the Interregnum ended with the unanimous election of Rudolf I of Habsburg, a minor pro-Staufen count.
Prince-Electors 1257
Pope Urban IV's letter suggests that by "immemorial custom", seven princes: The three Archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne; the King of Bohemia, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Saxony and Margrave of Brandenburg; had the right to elect the King and future Emperor. The seven have been mentioned as the vote-casters in the election of 1257 that resulted in two kings becoming elected.
The Count Palatine of the Rhine held most of the former Duchy of Franconia after the last Duke died in 1039. The Margrave of Brandenburg became an Elector when the Duchy of Swabia was dissolved in 1268. Duchy of Saxony, even with diminished territory, retained its eminent position.
Houses of Habsburg, Luxemburg and Wittelsbach 1273-1437
Originally a Swabian count, Rudolf was the first Habsburg to acquire the duchies of Austria and Styria against his mighty rival, the Přemyslid king Ottokar II of Bohemia, whom he defeated in the 1278 Battle on the Marchfeld.
The territories would remain under Habsburg rule for more than 600 years, forming the core of the Habsburg Austria. In Vienna, it took a relatively long time for the Habsburgs to establish as their Capital City, because partisans of Ottokar remained strong for a long time.
This development probably best symbolizes the emerging duality between emperor and realm (Kaiser und Reich), which were no longer considered identical. The Emperor now was to be elected by a majority rather than by consent of all seven electors. For Electors the title became hereditary, and they were given the right to mint coins and to exercise jurisdiction.
| Name | House | King | Emperor | Ended | Notes |
| Rudolf I | Habsburg | 29 Sept 1273 | – | 15 July 1291 | First of the Habsburgs |
| Adolf of Nassau | Nassau | 5 May 1292 | – | 23 June 1298 | According to some historians, Adolf's election was preceded by the short-lived kingship of Conrad II of Teck |
| Albert I | Habsburg | 24 June 1298 | – | 1 May 1308 | Son of Rudolf I; Rival king to Adolf of Nassau, 1298 |
| Henry VII | Luxembourg | 27 Nov 1308 | 13 June 1311 | 24 Aug 1313 | First of the Luxembourg. |
| Louis IV | Wittelsbach | 20 Oct 1314 | 17 Jan 1328 | 11 Oct 1347 | Grandson of Rudolf I; rival king to Frederick the Fair, 1314–1322 |
| Frederick the Fair | Habsburg | 19 Oct 1314 5 Sept 1325 |
– | 28 Sept 1322 13 Jan 1330 |
Son of Albert I; rival king to Louis IV, 1314-1322; associate king with Louis IV, 1325-1330 |
| Charles IV | Luxembourg | 11 July 1346 | 5 April 1355 | 29 Nov 1378 | Grandson of Henry VII; rival king to Louis IV, 1346–1347; also King of Bohemia |
| Günther von Schwarzburg | Schwarzburg | 30 Jan 1349 | – | 24 May 1349 | Rival king to Charles IV |
| Wenceslaus | Luxembourg | 10 June 1376 | – | 20 Aug 1400 | Son of Charles IV; king of Germany under his father 1376-1378; deposed 1400; also by inheritance King of Bohemia; died 1419 |
| Rupert of Palatinate | Wittelsbach | 21 Aug 1400 | – | 18 May 1410 | Great-grandnephew of Louis IV |
| Sigismund | Luxembourg | Sept 1410 / July 1411 | 3 May 1433 | 9 Dec 1437 | Son of Charles IV |
| Jobst of Moravia | Luxembourg | 1 Oct 1410 | – | 8 Jan 1411 | Nephew of Charles IV; rival king to Sigismund |
The Kings increasingly relied on the lands of their respective dynasties to support their power:
- Rudolf I lent Austria and Styria to his own sons in 1282;
- Louis IV of Wittelsbach relied on his lands in Bavaria;
- Charles IV of Luxembourg drew strength from his own lands in Bohemia.
Interestingly, it was thus increasingly in the king's own interest to strengthen the power of the territories, since the king profited from such a benefit in his own lands as well.
With the Luxembourg emperors, Prague became the imperial residence and Vienna stood in its shadow. The early Habsburgs attempted to extend it in order to keep up. Duke Albert II, for example, had the gothic choir of the Stephansdom built in 1327.
Duchy of Luxemburg 1353-1443
The Duchy of Luxemburg was the ancestral homeland of the noble House of Luxembourg. They became one of the most important political forces in the 14th century, competing against the House of Habsburg for supremacy in Central Europe. They would be the heirs to the Přemyslid dynasty in the Kingdom of Bohemia, succeeding the Kingdom of Hungary and contributing four Holy Roman Emperors until their own line of male heirs came to an end and the Habsburgs got the pieces that the two Houses had originally agreed upon in the Treaty of Brünn in 1364.
In 1354, Emperor Charles IV elevated it to the status of a duchy for his brother Wenceslaus. The ducal lands had been formed in 1353 by integration of the old County of Luxembourg, the counties of Durbuy and Laroche.
In 1411, Sigismund of Luxembourg lost the duchy to his niece Elisabeth because he defaulted on a loan. Elizabeth later sold the duchy to the Duke Philip the Good of the House of Valois-Burgundy, who paid her off in 1444.
Holy Roman Emperors also crowned King of Italy 1311-1433
In Italy, conflict continued between Ghibellines and Guelfs, but these conflicts bore less and less relation to the origins of the parties in question. The Italian campaigns of the Holy Roman Emperors decreased, but the Kingdom did not become wholly meaningless.
In 1310 the Luxembourg King Henry VII with 5,000 men again crossed the Alps, moved into Milan and had himself crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy, sparking Guelph rebellions. Henry restored the rule of Matteo I Visconti and proceeded to Rome, where he was crowned Emperor in place of Pope Clement V in 1312.
Successive emperors in the 14th and 15th centuries were bound in the struggle between the rivaling Luxembourg, Habsburg and Wittelsbach dynasties. In the conflict with Frederick the Fair, King Louis IV had himself crowned Emperor in Rome by Antipope Nicholas V in 1328.
His successor Charles IV also returned to Rome to be crowned in 1355. None of the Emperors forgot their theoretical claims to dominion as Kings of Italy.
Counts and Dukes of the Netherlands 1064-1482
The Treaty of Ribemont in 880 added the Kingdom of Lotharingia -of which the Low Countries were part- to East Francia, which attempted to integrate it. However, there were no connections like there were between the four German Stem Duchies of East Francia. Lotharingia took a separate position with a large amount of self-determination.
In 1064, Emperor Henry IV donated lands belonging to the county of Holland, 'west of the Vlie and around the banks of the Rhine' to William, Bishop of Utrecht, on whose support the Emperor could count. In 1101, the name "Holland" first appears in a deed.
The Hook and Cod Wars were a series of wars and battles in Holland between 1350 and 1490. Most of these wars were fought over the title of count, but some have argued that the underlying reason was because of the power struggle of the bourgeois in the cities against the ruling nobility.
By the end of the Hook and Cod Wars, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, had taken control of Holland in 1432. Leading noblemen in Holland had invited the duke to conquer Holland, even though he had no historical claim to it.
Burgundian Netherlands 1433-1482
Under the Burgundian, Holland's trade developed rapidly, especially in the areas of shipping and transport. The new rulers defended Dutch trading interests. The fleets of Holland defeated the fleets of the Hanseatic League several times. Amsterdam grew and in the 15th century became the primary trading port in Europe for grain from the Baltic region.
| Name | Reign start | Reign end | Notes |
| Philip I, Philip the Good | 1433 | 1467 | Philip III of Burgundy |
| Charles I, Charles the Bold | 1467 | 1477 | Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Limburg, Guelder and Luxembourg, Count of Flanders, Hainaut, Holland,Zeeland, Zutphen |
| Mary, Mary the Rich | 1477 | 1482 | Daughter of Charles I |
The Burgundian Netherlands (present day Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) fell to the Habsburg dynasty in 1482 after the death of the Burgundy duke Charles the Bold at the Burgundy Wars in 1477.
Swiss Confederacy 1300-1513
Swiss Confederacy was a precursor of the today Switzerland, a loose confederation of independent small states (cantons) which formed during the 14th century. The nucleus of the Old Swiss Confederacy was an alliance among the valley communities of the central Alps to facilitate management of common interests (such as trade) and ensure peace along trade routes through the mountains.
The initial pact was augmented by pacts with the cities of Lucerne, Zürich, and Berne. This union of rural and urban communes, which enjoyed the status of imperial immediacy within the Empire, was engendered by pressure from Habsburg dukes and kings who had ruled much of the land. In several battles with Habsburg armies, the Swiss were victorious; they conquered the rural areas of Glarus and Zug, which became members of the confederacy.
The Burgundy Wars (1474-1477) prompted a further enlargement of the confederacy; Fribourg and Solothurn were accepted in 1481. In the Swabian War in 1499 against the Emperor Maximilian I, the Swiss were victorious and exempted from imperial legislation. The associated cities of Basel and Schaffhausen joined the confederacy as a result of that conflict, and Appenzell followed suit in 1513 as the thirteenth member.
Habsburg Monarchy 1438-1564
Habsburg Monarchy, or Habsburg Empire is a term to denote the numerous lands and kingdoms of the Habsburg dynasty, especially for those of the Austrian line.
The throne of the Holy Roman Empire was occupied by the Habsburg between 1438 and 1806 except for a short break (1740-1745), and followed by a close relative of the Habsburg. The house also produced emperors and kings of the Bohemia, Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Illyria, Portugal, and Spain, and rulers of several Dutch and Italian principalities.
By marrying Elisabeth of Luxembourg, the daughter of Emperor Sigismund in 1437, duke Albert V of Habsburg became the ruler of Bohemia and Hungary, expanding the family's political horizons. Albert was crowned as the King of the Romans as Albert II next year. Frederick III was chosen to succeed Albert II after his death in 1439.
One of Frederick's main achievements was the Siege of Neuss (1474-75), in which he forced Charles the Bold of Burgundy to give his daughter Mary of Burgundy as wife to Frederick's son Maximilian. After Mary's early death in 1482, Maximilian finally secured the Burgundian inheritance to one of his and Mary's children Philip the Handsome.
| Name | House | King | Emperor | Ended | Notes |
| Albert II | Habsburg | 18 Mar 1438 | 27 Oct 1439 | 4th in descent from Albert I; son-in-law of Sigismund | |
| Habsburg | 2 Feb 1440 | 16 Mar 1452 | 19 Aug 1493 | 4th in descent from Albert I; 2nd cousin of Albert II | |
| Maximilian I | Habsburg | 16 Feb 1486 | 4 Feb 1508 Emperor-Elect | 12 Jan 1519 | Son of Frederick III; King of Germany under his father, 1486–1493; adopted the title Emperor-elect in 1508 with the pope's approval |
| Habsburg | 28 June 1519 | 24 Feb 1530 | 3 Aug 1556 | Grandson of Maximilian I; King of Spain (Charles I) 1516-1556; died 21 Sept 1558 | |
| Habsburg | 5 Jan 1531 | 14 Mar 1558 Emperor-elect | 25 July 1564 | Grandson of Maximilian I; brother of Charles V; King of Germany under his brother Charles V 1531-1556 |
After the failure of his attempt to march to Rome and be crowned by the pope, in 1508, Maximilian proclaimed himself as the "chosen Emperor" (Emperor-elect) and this was also recognized by the Pope due to changes in political alliances.
This had a historical consequence that the Roman King would automatically become emperor, without needing the Pope's consent. In 1530, his grandson Charles became the last person to be crowned as the Emperor by the Pope. Afterwards all Habsburg emperors were merely emperors-elect, although they were normally referred to as emperors.
Maximilian's rule was a time of great expansion for the Habsburgs. Through marriage of his son Philip the Handsome to eventual queen Joanna of Castile in 1498, Maximilian helped to establish the Habsburg dynasty in Spain, which allowed his grandson Charles to be the first King of Spain, Charles I in 1516.
The Habsburg dynasty achieved the position of a true world power by the time of election of Charles as Emperor Charles V in 1519. He brought together under his rule extensive territories of in Spanish Empire, Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg Netherlands in Europe.
Following the death of Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia in the Battle of Mohács against the Turks, his brother-in-law Archduke Ferdinand of Austria (younger brother of Charles V) was elected the next King of Bohemia and Hungary in 1526, according to the treaty signed by Louis II and Maximilian I at the Congress of Vienna in 1515.
The Habsburg Monarchy was then a union of crowns, with territories inside and outside the Holy Roman Empire (Austria, Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia) that were united only in the person of the monarch.
Catholic Monarchs in Hispania 1369-1516
The House of Trastámara was a dynasty of kings in the Iberian Peninsula, which first governed in Castile beginning in 1369 before expanding its rule into Aragón, Navarre and Naples. They were an illegitimate cadet line of the House of Burgundy.
House of Trastámara 1369-1504
Henry II (c. 1334-1379), the illegitimate son of Alfonso XI, was the first king of Castile and León from the House of Trastámara. He became king in 1369 by defeating his half-brother Peter the Cruel of Castile, after numerous rebellions and battles. Under Henry, a new nobility rose in prominence to gain land grants of large estates and vast royal privileges.
Henry II made an agreement with the ruler of Aragon, Peter IV, to have their children wed. Henry's son, John, was married to Peter IV's daughter, Eleanor, on June 1375. This marriage by Henry's son would eventually put the Trastámaras in control of both Castile and Aragon, comprising a majority of the Iberian Peninsula.
Catholic Monarchs 1474-1516
The death of King Henry IV of Castile in 1474 set off a struggle for power called the War of the Castilian Succession (1475-1479). Contenders for the throne were Henry's daugther and one-time heir Joanna La Beltraneja, supported by Portugal and France, and Henry's half-sister Queen Isabella I of Castile, supported by the Kingdom of Aragon and by the Castilian nobility.
Isabella retained the throne and ruled jointly with her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. Isabella and Ferdinand had married in 1469 in Valladolid. They began a familial union of the two kingdoms and became known as the Catholic Monarchs (los Reyes Católicos). Ferdinand became Jure uxoris King of Castile in 1474.
| Name | Reign start | Reign end | Notes |
| Isabella I the Catholic | 1474 in Castile | 1504 in Castile | Daughter of John II of Castile and Isabella of Portugal |
| Ferdinand II the Catholic | 1475 in Castile 1479 in Aragon | 1504 in Castile 1516 in Aragon | Son of John II of Aragon |
| Joanna the Mad | 1504 in Castile 1516 in Aragon | 1555 in Spain | Daughter of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon |
| Philip I the Handsome | June 1506 in Castile | Sept 1506 in Castile | Son of Maximilian I of Habsburg and Mary of Burgundy |
When Ferdinand succeeded his father as King of Aragon in 1479, the Crown of Castile and the various territories of the Crown of Aragon were united in a personal union creating for the first time since the 8th century a single political unit referred to as España (Spain).
Isabella ensured long-term political stability in Spain by arranging strategic marriages for each of her five children. Her firstborn daughter Isabella married Afonso of Portugal, but Isabella soon died before giving birth to an heir.
Joanna, Isabella's second daughter, married into the Habsburg dynasty when she wed Philip the Handsome, the son of Maximilian I, entitled to the crown of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Isabella's only son, Juan, married Margaret of Austria, further maintaining ties with the Habsburg dynasty. However, the death of Juan in 1497 enabled his younger sister Joanna to be the heir of Castile.
Isabella's fourth child, Maria, married Manuel I of Portugal, strengthening the link forged by her older sister's marriage. Her fifth child, Catherine, married King Henry VIII of England and was mother to Queen Mary I of England.
End of Muslim rule in Iberia 1492
Ferdinand and Isabella completed the Reconquista with a war against the Emirate of Granada that started in 1482 and ended with Granada's surrender in January 1492.
Many of the Muslim elite, including Granada's former Emir Muhammad XII, who had been given the area of the Alpujarras mountains as a principality, found life under Christian rule intolerable and emigrated to Tlemcen in North Africa.
During the Islamic administration, Christians and Jews were allowed to retain their religions by paying a tax (jizya). Penalty for not paying it was imprisonment. However, the new Christian hierarchy demanded heavy taxes from non-Christians and gave them rights, such as in the Treaty of Granada (1491) only for Moors in recently Islamic Granada.
In July 1492, all the Jewish community -some 200,000 people- were forcibly expelled. In 1502, Queen Isabella I declared conversion to Catholicism compulsory within the Kingdom of Castile.
Formation of Kingdom of Spain 1504-1516
In 1504, Isabella I died, and although Ferdinand II tried to maintain his position over Castile in the wake of her death, the Castilian Cortes Generales (the royal court of Spain) chose to crown Isabella's daughter Joanna as queen. Her husband Philip I was declared jure uxoris king, but he died later that year under mysterious circumstances, possibly poisoned by his father-in-law, Ferdinand II.
Due to Joanna perceived mental illness and her oldest son Charles was only six, the Cortes reluctantly allowed Joanna's father Ferdinand II to rule the country as the regent of Joanna and Charles. Spain was now in personal union under Ferdinand II of Aragon (1506-1516).
As undisputed ruler in most of the Peninsula, Ferdinand adopted a more aggressive policy than he had as Isabella's husband, going on to crystallize his long-running designs over Navarre into a full-blown invasion led initially by a Castilian military expedition, and supported later by Aragonese troops (1512).
On Ferdinand II's death in 1516, the two thrones of Castile and Aragon were finally united under one monarch, Joanna and Charles I. Charles I was proclaimed as king of Castile and of Aragon (in authority) jointly with his mother Joanna I as the Queen of Aragon (in name). As the first royal to reign over both Castile and Aragon he may be considered as the first King of Spain.
It comes before the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus, and the period of the Portuguese and Spanish colonial empires which followed. In 1492 the Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon funded Christopher Columbus's plan to sail west to reach the Indies by crossing the Atlantic. He landed on a continent uncharted by Europeans and seen as a new world, the Americas.
Italian City States and the Renaissance 1250-1500
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, urban settlements in Italy generally enjoyed a greater continuity than in the rest of Europe. Many of these towns were survivors of earlier Etruscan, Umbrian and Roman towns which had existed within the Empire. Some feudal lords existed with a servile labour force and huge tracts of land. By the 11th century, many cities had become large trading metropolis, able to obtain independence from their formal sovereigns.
The Peace of Constance of 1183 was signed by the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and representatives of the Italian Lombard League. The agreement confirmed the 1177 Treaty of Venice. The cities retained several regalia of local jurisdiction over their territories, and had the freedom to elect their own councils and to enact their own legislation.
The Lombard League was an alliance included cities of northern Italy: Milan, Piacenza, Cremona, Mantua, Crema, Bergamo, Brescia, Bologna, Padua, Treviso, Vicenza, Verona, Lodi, Reggio Emilia and Parma. It was formed in 1167 to counter the attempts by the Hohenstaufens Emperors to assert the influence of the Holy Roman Empire over Italy.
The new conflict was fought between the second Lombard League and Emperor Frederick II between 1226 and 1250.
Republic of Venice 810-1797
Venice originated during the 5th century as a collection of lagoon communities, who banded together for mutual defense from the Lombards, Huns, and other invading peoples as the power of the Western Roman Empire dwindled in northern Italy. During the 7th century, Venice became the only remaining Byzantine possession in the north.
After Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as "Emperor of the Romans" in 800, Nikephoros I of the Byzantine and Charlemagne tried to settle their imperial boundaries in 803. By a peace treaty of the Pax Nicephori (803-814) and the negotiations followed between Byzantium and the Franks, the two emperors had recognized that Venice belonged to the Byzantine sphere of influence. Many centuries later, the Venetians claimed that the treaty had recognized Venetian de facto independence.
Duchy of Milan 1395–1499
Prior history of Milan was the tale of the struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, eventually, the Visconti family was able to seize power, based on their "Ghibelline" friendship with the German Kings. In 1395, Luxemburg King Wenceslas raised the Milanese to the dignity of a duchy, Gian Galeazzo Visconti became duke of Milan.
The Visconti family was to retain power in Milan until the end of the Visconti line in 1447. The Ambrosian Republic was then enacted, taking its name from St. Ambrose, popular patron saint of the city. Both the Guelph and the Ghibelline factions worked together to bring about the Ambrosian Republic. Nonetheless, the Republic collapsed when, in 1450, Milan was conquered by Francesco of the House of Sforza, which made Milan one of the leading cities of the Italian Renaissance.
Ludovico Sforza (r. 1495-1499), the last independent ruler of Milan, was famed as a patron of Leonardo da Vinci and other artists, and presided over the final and most productive stage of the Milanese.
Republic of Florence 1115-1512
The republic originated in 1115, when the Florentine people rebelled against the Margraviate of Tuscany upon the death of Matilda of Tuscany, who controlled vast territories that included the city of Florence. The Florentines formed a commune in her successors' place. The republic was ruled by a council known as the Signoria of Florence, which was chosen by the gonfaloniere.
During the Republic's history, Florence was an important cultural, economic, political and artistic force in Europe. Its coin, the florin, became a world monetary standard. The republic had a checkered history of coups and counter-coups against various factions. The Medici faction gained governance and kept control of the city (1434-1494). Giovanni de' Medici (later Pope Leo X) re-conquered the republic in 1512.
Duchy of Savoy 1416-1500
The Duchy was created in 1416 following Emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg awarded the title Duke to Count Amadeus VIII. The territory of the Duchy then included Moriana, the Valle d'Aosta, and Piedmont.
Being landlocked at its conception in 1388, the then-County of Savoy acquired a few kilometers of coastline around Nice. During this period, France was more or less free to control the affairs of Savoy, which bound Piedmont to the crown in Paris.
Renaissance Period 1350-1500
By the Late Middle Ages (1300 onward), Latium, the former heartland of the Roman Empire, and southern Italy were generally poorer than the North. Rome was a city of ancient ruins, and the Papal States were loosely administered, and vulnerable to external interference of France and later Spain. In contrast Northern and Central Italy had become far more prosperous.
Moreover, of all the Italian dialects, Tuscan has the greatest similarity in morphology and phonology from Classical Latin, which makes it harmonize best with the Italian traditions of Latin culture. The Tuscan-derived Italian language came to be used in the courts of every state in the peninsula.
Italian towns had appeared to have exited from Feudalism, so that their society was based on merchants and commerce. The independent communes and merchant republics enjoyed relative political freedom that boosted scientific and artistic advancement, ultimately creating the conditions for the artistic and intellectual changes produced by the Renaissance.
In the late 1300s, Florence had become a rich city. Wealthy merchants and businessmen had the money to hire artisans and craftspeople. This inspired competitions among artists and thinkers. Art began to flourish and new thoughts began to emerge. In the 1400's the Medici family came into power in Florence. They were wealthy bankers and helped the arts along by sponsoring many artists and using their personal funds to further the humanist movement.
The migration waves of Byzantine scholars in the period following the Crusader sacking of Constantinople in 1204 and the later Fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, is considered by many scholars key to the revival of Greek and Roman studies that led to the development of the Renaissance humanism and science. They brought to Western Europe the relatively well-preserved remnants and accumulated knowledge of their own (Greek) civilization, which had mostly not survived during the end of Western Roman Empire.
During Renaissance period, the Tuscan dialect of the descendant of Vulgar Latin language began to dominate. This may have happened because Tuscany's central position in Italy and because of the aggressive commerce of its most important city Florence.
Age of Discovery and the Portuguese Empire 1415-1580
The Age of Discovery from the 15th century to the 18th century, is a loosely defined European historical period marking the time period in which extensive overseas exploration emerged as a powerful factor in European culture and the beginning of globalization.
Global exploration started with the Portuguese discoveries of the Atlantic archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores, and the sea route to India along the coast of Africa in 1498; and, on behalf of the Crown of Castile, the trans-Atlantic Voyages of Christopher Columbus between 1492 and 1502, and the first circumnavigation of the globe in 1519-1522. These discoveries led to numerous naval expeditions across the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans.
The Portuguese began systematically exploring the Atlantic coast of Africa from 1418, under the sponsorship of Prince Henry. In 1488 Bartolomeu Dias reached the Indian Ocean.
In 1492 the Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon funded Christopher Columbus's plan to sail west to reach the Indies by crossing the Atlantic. He landed on a continent uncharted by Europeans and seen as a new world, the Americas. To prevent conflict between Portugal and Castile, the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed in June 1494 divided the New-world outside Europe between the Portuguese Empire and the Spanish Empire (Crown of Castile), where each had exclusive rights to claim newly discovered lands.
In 1498, a Portuguese expedition commanded by Vasco da Gama reached India by sailing around Africa, opening up direct trade with Asia. While other exploratory fleets were sent from Portugal to northern North America, in the following years Portuguese India Armadas also extended this Eastern oceanic route, touching sometimes South America and by this way opening a circuit from the New World to Asia (starting in 1500, under the command of Pedro Alvares Cabral), and explored islands in the Southern Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Soon, the Portuguese sailed further eastward, to the valuable spice islands in 1512, landing in China one year later.
In 1513, Spanish Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached the "other sea" from the New World. Thus, Europe first received news of the eastern and western Pacific within a one-year span around 1512. East and west exploration overlapped in 1522, when a Castilian (Spanish) expedition, led by Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and later by Spanish Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano, sailing Westward, completed the first circumnavigation of the world, while Spanish conquistadors explored the inland of the Americas, and later, some of the South Pacific islands.
First Portuguese Empire 1415-1580
The First Portuguese Empire or the Portuguese Colonial Empire, was composed of the overseas colonies, factories, and the later overseas territories governed by Portugal. The empire originated at the beginning of the Age of Discovery, and the power and influence of the Kingdom of Portugal would eventually expand across the globe.
Kingdom of Portugal 1280-1385
The history of Portugal in the period between the death of Afonso III in 1279 and the beginning of the Portuguese Empire in 1415 includes the 1383-1385 Portuguese interregnum and the subsequent transition from the Portuguese House of Burgundy to the House of Aviz.
In 1383, King Ferdinand I of Portugal was dying. From his marriage only a girl, Princess Beatrice of Portugal, survived. Her marriage was the major political issue of the day since it would determine the future of the kingdom.
Several political factions lobbied for possible husbands, which included English and French princes. Finally, the king settled for his wife's first choice, King John I of Castile. Ferdinand had waged three wars against Castile during his reign, and the marriage, celebrated in May 1383, was intended to put an end to hostilities by a union of the two crowns, but that was not a widely-accepted solution. The dynastic union meant that Portugal would lose independence to Castile. Many nobles were fiercely opposed to that possibility but were not united under a common pretender to the crown.
On October 22, 1383, King Ferdinand died. Dowager Queen Leonor assumed regency in the name of her daughter Beatrice and son-in-law, John I of Castile. Since diplomatic opposition was no longer possible, the party for independence took more drastic measures, which started the 1383-1385 crisis.
The malcontents chose John, grand-master of the knights of Aviz and illegitimate son of Pedro the Severe, as their leader, and organized a revolt in Lisbon. Leonora fled to Santarém and summoned aid from Castile, while John of Aviz was proclaimed defender of Portugal. In 1384 a Castilian army invested Lisbon, but encountered a heroic resistance, and after five months an outbreak of plague compelled them to raise the siege. On April 16, 1385, John of Aviz was elected king of Portugal.
House of Aviz 1385-1580
John I of Portugal (r. 1385-1433), first king of House of Aviz, was pursuing the economic development of his realm. The only significant military action was the siege and conquest of the city of Ceuta, the Muslim port on the North African coast across the Straits of Gibraltar from the Iberian Peninsula, in 1415.
By this step he aimed to control navigation of the African coast, but this was also the first step in Portuguese expansion beyond the Iberian Peninsula.
Prince Henry the Navigator (c.1394-1460, fourth son of John I) was a central figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire and in the 15th-century European maritime discoveries and maritime expansion. Through his administrative direction, he is regarded as the main initiator of what would be known as the Age of Discovery.
John II (r. 1481-1495) famously restored the policies of Atlantic exploration, reviving the work of his great-uncle, Henry the Navigator. The Portuguese explorations were his main priority in government, pushing south the known coast of Africa with the purpose of discovering the maritime route to India.
Manuel I (r. 1495-1521) ruled over a period of intensive expansion. His sponsorship of Vasco da Gama led to the Portuguese discovery of the sea route to India in 1498, resulting in the creation of the Portuguese India Armadas, which guaranteed Portugal's monopoly on the spice trade.
Under John III (r. 1521-1557), Portuguese possessions were extended the New World through the Portuguese colonization of Brazil. During his reign, the Portuguese became the first Europeans to make contact with both China, under the Ming Dynasty, and Japan, during the Muromachi period.
Sebastian I (r. 1557-1578) was the penultimate Portuguese monarch of the House of Aviz. He was the grandson of King John III of Portugal and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. He disappeared (presumably killed in action) in a battle against the Saadians of Morocco.
Sebastian I is often referred to as The Desired or The Asleep, as the Portuguese people longed for his return to end the decline of Portugal that began after his death.
Sebastian was born heir-apparent to the throne of Portugal, his birth in 1554 occurred two weeks after the death of his father. Soon his mother Joanna of Spain left her infant son to serve as regent of Spain for her father, Emperor Charles V. After his abdication in 1556, she served in the same capacity for her brother Philip II of Spain. Joanna remained in Spain until her death in 1573, never to see her son again.
Sebastian succeeded to the throne at the age of three, on the death of his paternal grandfather King John III in 1557. After attaining his majority in 1568, he strengthened ties with the Holy Roman Empire, England and France through diplomatic efforts. He also restructured much of the administrative, judicial and military life in his kingdom.
When the Moroccan Abdallah Mohammed II lost his throne in 1576 and fled to Portugal, he asked for the king's assistance in defeating his Turkish-backed uncle and rival Abd al-Malik. Despite his lack of a son and heir, King Sebastian embarked on his crusade in 1578. The Portuguese army of 17,000 men, including almost all of the country's nobility, sailed at the beginning of June from Lisbon.
At Arzila, Sebastian joined his ally Abu Abdullah, who had around 6,000 Moorish soldiers and, against the advice of his commanders, marched into the interior. At the Battle of Alcácer Quibir (Battle of the Three Kings), the Portuguese army was routed by Abd Al-Malik at the head of more than 60,000 men.
Emperor Charles V and his Spanish Empire 1516-1640
Charles of Habsburg was the heir of three of Europe's leading dynasties: Valois of Burgundy, Habsburg of Austria, and Trastámara of Spain.
1. As heir of the House of Burgundy, he inherited areas in the Netherlands and around the eastern border of France (Burgundian Netherlands) after the death of his father Philip the Handsome in 1506;
2. As a grandson of the Catholic Monarchs from the Spanish House of Trastámara he inherited the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon, which included a Mediterranean empire extending to southern Italy. Charles was the first king to rule Castile and Aragon simultaneously as a unified Spain in 1516;
3. As a Habsburg and with the death of his paternal grandfather Maximilian I in 1519, he inherited Austria and other lands in central Europe, and was a candidate to succeed his grandfather as Holy Roman Emperor.
Habsburg Netherlands 1482-1581
Charles was born (1500) and raised in the Flemish city of Ghent; he spoke French. In 1515 he left to become king of Spain. Charles turned over control to regents (his close relatives), and in practice rule was exercised by Spaniards he controlled. In 1548, he granted the Netherlands status as an entity in which many of the laws of the Holy Roman Empire became obsolete.
| Name | Reign start | Reign end | Notes |
| Maximilian I | 1482 | 1494 | Holy Roman Emperor; Husband of Mary of Burgundy |
| Philip II the Handsome | 1494 | 1506 | Philip I of Castile; Son of Maximilian I and Mary of Burgundy |
| Charles II | 1506 | 1555 | Son of Philip the Handsome;Charles I of Spain Holy Roman Emperor Charles V Regent: Maximilian I (1506-1515); Margaret of Austria (1507-1530) and Mary of Austria (1531-1555) |
| Philip III | 1555 | 1581 | King Philip II of Spain and Lord of the Netherlands; Son of Charles I of Spain; Governors: Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy (1555-1559) and Margaret of Parma (1559-1567) |
After Charles V had re-acquired the Duchy of Guelders by the 1543 Treaty of Venlo, the Seventeen Provinces comprised:
Habsburg Spain 1516-1700
By the time of election of Charles as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1519, under his rule was the extensive territories of Spanish Empire, Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg Netherlands in Europe, and the Spanish colonies in the Americas and Asia. He was the "World Emperor" ruling an "Empire on which the sun never sets".
The Spanish Empire had grown substantially since the days of Ferdinand and Isabella. The Aztec and Inca Empires were conquered during Charles' reign (1519-1521 and 1540-1558 respectively). Spanish settlements were established in the New World: Mexico City, the most important colonial city established in 1524 to be the primary center of administration in the New World; Florida, colonized in the 1560s; Buenos Aires, established in 1536; and New Granada (modern Colombia), colonized in the 1530s.
At that point, Emperor and King Charles (r. 1516-1556) was the most powerful man in Christendom. The accumulation of such power by one man and one dynasty greatly concerned Francis I of France (r. 1515-1547), who found himself encircled by Charles's empire while he still maintained ambitions in Italy. Much of Charles's reign was taken up by conflicts with France during the Italian Wars.
Given the vast dominions of the House of Habsburg, Charles was often on the road and needed deputies to govern his realms for the times he was absent from his territories. His first Governor of the Netherlands was Margaret of Austria (1507). His first Regent of Spain was Adrian of Utrecht (1520). For the regency and governorship of the Austrian hereditary lands, Charles named his younger brother Ferdinand Archduke in the Austrian lands under his authority at the Diet of Worms in 1521. Charles agreed to favor the election of Ferdinand as King of the Romans in Germany in 1531.
In 1556, at the end of the Italian wars, Charles voluntarily stepped down by a series of abdications in favor of his brother Ferdinand I as Holy Roman Emperor and his son Philip II as King of Spain and Netherlands. He retired to the monastery of Yuste (Extremadura, Spain) and died in 1558.
| Name | Reign start | Reign end | Notes |
| Charles I the Emperor | Mar 1516 | Jan 1556 (abdicated) | Son of Joanna and Philip I of Castile |
| Philip II the Prudent | Jan 1556 | Sept 1598 | Son of Charles I |
| Philip III the Pious | Sept 1598 | Mar 1621 | Son of Philip II |
| Philip IV the Great | Mar 1621 | Sept 1665 | Son of Philip III |
| Charles II the Bewitched | Sept 1665 | Nov 1700 | Son of Philip IV |
Philip II 1556-1598
Philip II became king on Charles I's abdication in 1556. Spain largely escaped the religious conflicts that were raging throughout the rest of Europe and remained firmly Roman Catholic. Philip saw himself as a champion of Catholicism, both against the Muslim Ottoman Empire and the Protestant heretics.
He aggressively conducted the war against France, crushing a French army at the Battle of St. Quentin in 1557 and defeating Henry II of France again at the Battle of Gravelines the following year. The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis, signed in 1559, permanently recognized Spanish claims in Italy.
France was stricken for the next thirty years by civil war and unrest (French Wars of Religion) and was unable to effectively compete with Spain and the Habsburgs in the European power struggle. Spain saw the apogee of its might and territorial reach in the period 1559-1643.
Kingdom of New Spain 1521-1821
Kingdom of New Spain, an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, was established during the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Its jurisdiction comprised a huge area that included what are now Mexico, Florida, Central America, northern parts of South America, and several Pacific Ocean archipelagos.
After the 1521 Spanish conquest of the Aztec empire, conqueror Hernán Cortés named the territory New Spain, and established the new capital of Mexico City on the site of the Tenochtitlan. Central Mexico became the base of expeditions of exploration and conquest, expanding the territory claimed by the Spanish Empire.
Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, both New Spain and Peru had dense indigenous populations at conquest as a source of labor and material wealth in the form of vast silver deposits, discovered and exploited beginning in the mid 1500s.
Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines 1565-1898
The Spaniards had been exploring the Philippines since the early 16th century. In 1543, Ruy López de Villalobos arrived at the islands of Leyte and Samar and named them Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain, at the time Prince of Asturias.
The Philippine Islands were ruled within Spanish East Indies, starting from 1565 under the New Spain control until the Philippine Revolution in 1898. In 1571, Spain invaded Luzon Island and built the Manila City, and declared it the capital of the Philippines, and thus of the entire Spanish East Indies.
Spanish Netherlands 1559-1648
In Spanish Netherlands (inherited from Charles and his Burgundian forebearers), he appointed Margaret of Parma as Governor when he left the low countries for Spain in 1559. There was discontent in the Netherlands about Philip's taxation demands and the incessant persecution of Protestants. In 1566, Calvinist-led riots prompted the Duke of Alva to conduct a military expedition to restore order.
In 1568, William the Silen tled a failed attempt to drive Alva from the Netherlands. This attempt is generally considered to signal the start of the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648) that ended with the independence of the United Provinces.
Philip III, Philip IV and Charles II 1598-1700
Philip II was succeeded by his son Philip III. In his reign (1598-1621) a ten-year truce with the Dutch was overshadowed in 1618 by Spain's involvement in the European-wide Thirty Years' War.
Philip III was succeeded by his son Philip IV (r. 1621-1665). Much of the policy was conducted by the minister Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares. In 1640, with the war in central Europe having no clear winner, both Portugal and Catalonia rebelled. Portugal was lost; in Italy and most of Catalonia, French forces were expelled and Catalonia's independence was suppressed.
In the reign of Philip's developmentally disabled son and successor Charles II (1665-1700), Spain was essentially left leaderless and was gradually being reduced to a second-rank power.
Iberian Union 1580-1640
The Iberian Union was the dynastic union of the Crown of Portugal and the Spanish Crown between 1580 and 1640, bringing the entire Iberian Peninsula, as well as Spanish and Portuguese overseas possessions, under the Spanish Habsburg kings Philip II, Philip III and Philip IV. The union began as a result of the Portuguese crisis of succession and lasted 60 years, until the Portuguese Restoration War in which the House of Braganza was established as Portugal's new ruling dynasty.
The unification of the peninsula had long been a goal of the region's monarchs with the intent of restoring the Visigothic monarchy. Sancho III of Navarre and Alfonso VII of León and Castile had both taken the title Imperator totius Hispaniae, meaning "Emperor of All Hispania”.
The Battle of Alcácer Quibir in 1578 saw both the death of the young king Sebastian and the end of the House of Aviz. Sebastian's successor, Henry of Portugal, was 70 years old at the time. Henry's death was followed by a succession crisis, with three grandchildren of Manuel I claiming the throne: Infanta Catarina, Duchess of Braganza, António, Prior of Crato, and Philip II of Spain.
Philip II of Spain prevailed in the succession struggle, and finallly he was crowned Philip I of Portugal in 1581 and the Philippine Dynasty began. When Philip left in 1583 to Madrid, he made his nephew Albert of Austria his viceroy in Lisbon. In Madrid he established a Council of Portugal to advise him on Portuguese affairs.
Italian Wars 1423–1559
Since the 13th century, as armies became primarily composed of mercenaries, prosperous city-states could field considerable forces. In the course of the 15th century, the most powerful city-states annexed their smaller neighbors. Florence took Pisa, Venice captured Padua and Verona, while the Duchy of Milan annexed a number of nearby areas including Pavia and Parma.
Lombardy Wars 1423-1454
During the Lombardy Wars, a series of conflicts between the Republic of Venice and the Duchy of Milan and their respective allies, the political structure of Italy was transformed: out of a competitive congeries of city-states emerged the five major territorial powers that would make up the map of Italy for the remainder of 15th century, viz. Venice, Milan, Florence, the Papal States and Naples.
After the war, there was a balance of power resulting in a period of stability lasting for 40 years. During this time, there was a mutual pledge of non-aggression between the five Italian powers, sometimes known as the Italic League.
Even there was frequent tension between Milan and Naples, the peace held remarkably well until the outbreak of the Great Italian Wars in 1494. Ludovico Sforza of Milan, seeking an ally against the Venice, encouraged Charles VIII of France (Valois) to invade Naples, using the Angevin claim to the throne of Naples as a pretext.
The Italian Wars involved, at various times, most of the city-states of Italy, the Papal States, most of the major states of Western Europe. The wars rapidly became a general struggle for power and territory among their various participants, and were marked with an increasing number of alliances, counter-alliances, and betrayals.
First Italian War 1494-1498
When Aargon Ferdinand I of Naples died in 1494, Charles VIII invaded the peninsula, French forces moved through Italy virtually unopposed. Charles VIII made triumphant entries into Pisa, Florence and entered Rome on December 1494. News of the French Army's sack of Naples in February 1495 provoked a reaction among the city-states of Northern Italy and the League of Venice was formed in March 1495.
As a result of Charles VIII's expedition, the city-states were shown to be both rich and comparatively weak, which sowed the seeds of the wars to come. In fact, the individual Italian states could not field armies comparable to those of the great feudal monarchies of Europe in numbers and equipment.
Ferdinand II, King of Naples, with the able assistance of the Spanish army, eventually reduced the French garrison in the Kingdom of Naples. Charles VIII lost all that he conquered in Italy and he died in April 1498, while all the French Army was expelled by 1498.
House of Orléans in France 1498-1559
Since his children predeceased him, Charles VIII was the last of the elder branch of the House of Valois in France. Upon his death, the throne passed to his brother-in-law and second cousin once removed, Louis II, Duke of Orléans as Louis XII of France.
| Name | Reign start | Reign end | Relationship with Predecessor(s) |
| Louis XII, Father of the People | April 1498 | January 1515 | Great-grandson of Charles V Second cousin, and by first marriage son-in-law of Louis XI By second marriage husband of Anne of Brittany, widow of Charles VIII |
| Francis I, the Father and Restorer of Letters | January 1515 | March 1547 | Great-great-grandson of Charles V First cousin once removed, and by first marriage son-in-law of Louis XII |
| Henry II | March 1547 | July 1559 | Son of Francis I |
Ludovico Sforza retained his throne in Milan until 1499, when Louis XII of France invaded Lombardy and seized Milan on September 1499. Louis XII justified his claim by right of his paternal grandfather, Louis duc d'Orléans having married Valentina Visconti in 1387.
Valentina Visconti was the heir to the Duchy of Milan; their marriage contract guaranteed that in failure of male heirs, Orléans would inherit the Visconti dominions. However, when the Visconti dynasty died out in 1447, the Milanese ignored the Orleans claim and re-established Milan as a republic. Bitter factionalism arose under the new republic which set the stage for Francesco Sforza to seize control of Milan in 1450.
Second Italian War 1499-1504
Louis was also entertaining an ambition to stake a claim to the Kingdom of Naples. The claim to the Kingdom of Naples was really King Charles VIII's claim. Louis demanded recognition of the claim solely because he was the successor to Charles VIII.
By 1500, a combined French and Spanish force had seized control of the Kingdom of Naples. This leading to a war between Louis of France and Ferdinand of Aargon. By 1503 , having been defeated at the Battle of Cerignola in April and Battle of Garigliano in December, France army was forced to withdraw from Naples.
Italian War of 1521-1526
After years of relative peace, the elevation of Charles I of Spain to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V on June 1519 led to a collapse of relations between France and the Habsburgs.
Louis XII died in 1515 and was succeeded by his nephew, Francis I of France. Francis I himself had been a candidate for election as Emperor before Charles V was chosen. Francis' candidacy for Emperor had been supported by Pope Leo X. This led to a personal rivalry between Francis I and Charles V that was to become one of the fundamental conflicts of the 16th century.
Just when Francis I began to count on the support of Pope Leo X in a war against Charles V, Pope Leo suddenly made peace with the Emperor and sided with the Holy Roman Empire against France. Charles V took Milan from the French in 1521 and returned it to Francesco II Sforza (son of Ludovico Sforza) in 1522. With Milan in Imperial hands, Francis personally led a French army into Lombardy in 1525, only to be utterly defeated and captured at the battle of Pavia on February 1525.
With Francis imprisoned in Spain, a series of diplomatic maneuvers centered around his release ensued, including a special French mission sent by Francis' mother Louise of Savoy to the court of Suleiman the Magnificent that would result in an Ottoman ultimatum to Charles –an unprecedented alliance between Christian and Muslim monarchs that would cause a scandal in the Christian world.
Suleiman later used the opportunity to invade Hungary in the summer of 1526, defeating Charles' allies at the Battle of Mohács in August 1526. Despite all these efforts, Francis was required to sign the Treaty of Madrid in January 1526, in which he surrendered his claims to Italy, Flanders and Burgundy in order to be released from prison.
Sack of Rome 1527
In 1526, Pope Clement VII, alarmed at the growing power of Charles V, formed the League of Cognac (an alliance including France, Pope Clement VII, Republic of Venice, Kingdom of England, Duchy of Milan and Republic of Florence) to drive Charles V from Italy.
Revolts broke out in the city of Milan against the rule of duke Francesco Sforza II. The uprising in the summer of 1526 was coordinated with the defenders of the "Castello" in Milan. Realizing that their goal of reconquering Milan was no longer on the table, the French army left Lombardy and headed back to France.
With the withdrawal of French forces from Lombardy, Charles V proceeded to subdue Florence, and, in 1527, Rome itself was sacked by mutinous Imperial forces. Clement was imprisoned by Imperial troops and offered no further resistance to Charles V. With the conclusion of the Treaty of Cambrai in 1529 and the League collapsed. Venice made peace with Charles V while Florence was placed again under the Medici.
Italian War of 1536-1538
The third war between them began with the death of Francesco II Sforza in November 1535. Upon his death, he left no heirs and the representatives of Charles V took charge of the Duchy of Milan. There were no protests or uprisings among the people of Milan. Nor were there any objections from any other Italian states. There were, however, objections from France. Francis I firmly believed that Genoa and Milan were all rightfully his.
When Charles bequeathed the Duchy to his son Philip, King Francis I invaded Italy. In late March 1536, a French army advanced into Piedmont, captured and entered Turin in early April 1536, but failed to take Milan. In response to the capture of Turin by the French, Charles V invaded Provence, advancing to Aix-en-Provence and took Aix in August 1536.
The Truce of Nice signed in June 1538 had ended the war. Subsequent wars between Charles V and Francis I continued in 1542-1546 until the death of King Francis I in 1547.
Ending of the War 1551-1559
Emperor Charles V of Habsburg was able to establish his dominance in Italy to a greater extent than any German Emperor since Frederick II. During the Italian Wars, he drove the French from Milan, prevented an attempt by the Italian princes, to reassert their independence in the League of Cognac, sacked Rome and brought the Medici pope Clement VII to submission, conquered Florence where he reinstalled the Medici as Dukes of Florence.
In 1556, at the end of the war, Emperor Charles V abdicated the Imperial throne as well as the throne of Spain, to his younger brother, who became Ferdinand I of Holy Roman Empire, and his son, who became King Philip II of Spain. His abdication split the Habsburg Empire that had surrounded France.
This new Imperial dominance, however, did not remain with the Holy Roman Empire, but rather was transferred to his son King Philip II of Spain. The Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis was signed among Elizabeth I of England, Henry II of France and Philip II of Spain in April 1559 at Le Cateau-Cambrésis.
Under its terms, France restored Piedmont and Savoy to the Duke of Savoy, and Corsica to the Republic of Genoa, but retained the Three Bishoprics: Metz, Toul, and Verdun. More importantly, the treaty confirmed Spanish direct control of Milan, Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, and indirectly (through dominance of the rulers of Tuscany, Genoa and other minor states) of northern Italy. The Pope was also their natural ally. The only truly independent entities on Italian soil were the Savoy and Venice.
Reformation and Thirty Years War 1517-1648
The Reformation was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church. The Reformation was the start of Protestantism and the split of the Western Church into Protestantism and what is now the Roman Catholic Church.
It is also one of the events that signify the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early Modern period in Europe.
Protestant Reformation 1517-1555
It began in 1517 with the publication of the Ninety-five Theses by Martin Luther (c.1483-1546), a German priest and professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Duchy of Saxony. Luther began by criticizing the sale of indulgences, insisting that the Pope had no authority over purgatory and that the Catholic doctrine of the merits of the saints had no foundation in the gospel.
Luther sent the Theses enclosed with a letter to Albert of Brandenburg, Archbishop of Mainz on 31 October 1517, a date now commemorated annually as Reformation Day. Luther may have also posted the Theses on the door of All Saints' Church and other churches in Wittenberg, in accordance with University custom, in mid-November. The Theses were quickly reprinted, translated and distributed throughout Germany and Europe.
Luther was excommunicated in January 1521 by Pope Leo X. The Diet of Worms of 1521 (a formal deliberative assembly) was called by Emperor Charles V and conducted in the Imperial Free City of Worms. Martin Luther was summoned to the Diet in order to renounce or reaffirm his views in response to a Papal bull of Pope Leo X. He defended these views and refused to recant them. At the end of the Diet, the Emperor issued the Edict of Wormsv in May 1521, a decree which condemned Luther as "a notorious heretic" and banned citizens of the Empire from propagating his ideas.
But the reformation spread rapidly, helped by Gutenberg's printing press and the Emperor Charles V's wars with France and the Ottoman Turks of that time. Hiding in the Wartburg Castle, Luther translated the Bible from Hebrew and ancient Greek to German vernacular.
Luther survived after being declared an outlaw due to the protection of Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony. The initial movement in Germany diversified, and other reformers such as Huldrych Zwingli (c. 1484-1531, a leader of the Reformation in Switzerland) and John Calvin (c.1509-1564), a French theologian, pastor and reformer in Geneva who found the Calvinism) arose. Luther himself found the Lutheranism, one of the largest branches of Protestantism.
Luther's German Bible and its widespread circulation facilitated the emergence of a standard, modern German language for the German-speaking peoples throughout the Empire. A curious fact is that Luther spoke a dialect which had minor importance in the German language of that time. After the publication of his Bible, his dialect suppressed the others and evolved into what is now the modern German.
Central and northeastern Germany were by this time almost wholly Protestant, whereas western and southern Germany remained predominantly Catholic. In 1547, Emperor Charles V defeated the Schmalkaldic League, an alliance of Protestant rulers. The Peace of Augsburg, signed by Charles V in 1555, ended the war between German Lutherans and Catholics and establishing that:
Lutheran Duchy of Prussia 1525
In 1525, during the Protestant Reformation, in accordance to the Treaty of Kraków, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Albert, secularized the order's Prussian territory, becoming Albert, Duke of Prussia. The duchy became the first Protestant state when Albert formally adopted Lutheranism the same year.
Tudor Dynasty and Reformation in England 1485-1603
Edmund Tudor was the son of Welsh courtier Owain Tewdwr (Tudur) and Catherine of Valois, the widowed queen consort of the Lancastrian King Henry V. When the House of Lancaster fell from power, the Tudors followed. Edmund Tudor's son, Henry Tudor, the last Lancastrian male, landed in England from his exile in France. He defeated and killed Richard of York in battle at Bosworth Field on August of that year and became king as Henry VII. King Henry married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, thereby uniting the Lancastrian and Tudor lineages.
Henry VIII (r.1509-1547), son of Henry VII, passed the Laws in Wales Acts aiming to fully incorporate Wales into the Kingdom of England. Henry VIII married the Catherine of Aragon, widow of his brother Arthur. They had several children, but none survived infancy except a daughter, Mary. The king became increasingly nervous about the possibility of his daughter Mary inheriting the throne, as England's one experience with a female sovereign, Matilda in the 12th century, had been a catastrophe.
He eventually decided that it was necessary to divorce Catherine and find a new queen. His first requested of Pope Clement VII in 1527, when the Pope had been taken prisoner by the Emperor Charles V, Catherine's nephew and the most powerful man in Europe, for siding with his archenemy Francis I of France. As there was no possibility of getting a divorce in these circumstances, Henry decided to simply secede from the Church, in what became known as the English Reformation.
House of Tudar 1485-1603
| Name | King From | King Until | Claim | Death |
| Henry VII | August 1485 | April 1509 | Great-great-great-grandson of Edward III (right of conquest) | Aged 52 |
| Henry VIII | April 1509 | January 1547 | Son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (primogeniture) | Aged 55 |
| Edward VI | January 1547 | July 1553 | Son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour (primogeniture) | Aged 15 |
| Mary I | July 1553 | November 1558 | Daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon (Third Succession Act) | Aged 42 |
| Elizabeth I | November 1558 | March 1603 | Daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (Third Succession Act) | Aged 69 |
English Reformation 1529-1559
In 1529, the King summoned Parliament to deal with the annulment and other grievances against the church. The break with Rome was effected by a series of acts of Parliament passed between 1532-1534, among them the 1534 Act of Supremacy which declared that Henry VIII was the "Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England”. Their marriage was declared invalid, making Mary an illegitimate child.
The newly established Church of England amounted to little more than the existing Catholic Church, but with the king rather than the Pope as its head. It took a number of years for the separation from Rome to be completed, however, and many were executed for resisting the king's religious policies.
Henry married Anne Boleyn in secret in January 1533. In September 1533, she gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth. The king was devastated at his failure to obtain a son after all the effort it had taken to remarry. In 1536, when Anne was pregnant again, Henry was badly injured in a jousting accident. Shaken by this, the queen gave birth prematurely to a stillborn boy.
The king was convinced that his marriage was hexed, and having already found a new queen, Jane Seymour, he put Anne in the Tower of London on charges of witchcraft. Afterwards, she was beheaded along with five men (her brother included) accused of adultery with her. The marriage was then declared invalid, so that Elizabeth, just like her half-sister, became a bastard.
Henry immediately married Jane Seymour and finally in October 1537, she gave birth to a healthy boy, Edward, which was greeted with huge celebrations. Edward was crowned in February 1547 at the age of nine as Edward VI. He was the England's first monarch to be raised as a Protestant. During his reign, the realm was governed by a regency council because he never reached maturity.
In February 1553, at age 15, Edward fell ill. When his sickness was discovered to be terminal, he and his council drew up a "Devise for the Succession" to prevent the country's return to Catholicism. Edward named his first cousin once removed, Lady Jane Grey, as his heir, excluding his half-sisters, Mary and Elizabeth. This decision was disputed following Edward's death, and Jane was deposed by Mary nine days after becoming queen.
Mary I of England, a Catholic, reversed Edward's Protestant reforms during her reign, and known as "Bloody Mary" by her Protestant opponents. Mary married the Catholic Philip of Spain in July 1554, becoming queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in January 1556.
After Mary's death in 1558, her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her younger half-sister and successor, Elizabeth I.
Elizabethan Era 1558-1603
The reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) sort of order to the realm following the turbulence of the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I when she came to the throne following Mary's death in 1558. The religious issue since Henry VIII was in a way put to rest by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement in 1559, which re-established the Church of England. Much of her success was in balancing the interests of the Puritans and Catholics. Elizabeth's government did much to consolidate the work begun under Thomas Cromwell in the reign of Henry VIII by expanding the role of the government and effecting common law and administration throughout England.
This "golden age" represented the apogee of the English Renaissance and saw the flowering of poetry, music and literature. The era is most famous for theatre, as William Shakespeare and many others composed plays that broke free of England's past style of theatre. It was an age of exploration and expansion abroad, the Protestant Reformation became more acceptable to the people, most certainly after the Spanish Armada was repulsed during the Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604). It was also the period when England's royal union with Scotland.
The Spanish Armada was a Habsburg Spanish fleet of 130 ships that sailed from Lisbon in late May 1588 under the command of King Philip II. The aim was to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I and her establishment of Protestantism in England, to stop English interference in the Spanish Netherlands.
Eighty Years' War (Dutch War for Independence) 1568-1648
This is frequently called the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648). The first fifty years (1568-1618) were uniquely a war between Spain and the Netherlands. During the last thirty years (1618-1648) the conflict was submerged in the general European War that became known as the Thirty Years War. The Spanish, who derived a great deal of wealth from the Netherlands and particularly from the vital port of Antwerp, were committed to restoring order and maintaining their hold on the provinces.
The States General of the Northern provinces, united in the 1579 Union of Utrecht, passed an Act of Abjuration declaring that they no longer recognized Philip as their king. The Southern Netherlands (what is now Belgium and Luxembourg) remained under Spanish rule. In 1584, William the Silent was assassinated and the Dutch forces continued to fight on under Orange's son Maurice of Nassau, who received modest help from Queen Elizabeth I in 1585. The Dutch gained an advantage over the Spanish because of their growing economic strength, in contrast to Philip's burgeoning economic troubles. The war only came to an end in 1648, when the Dutch Republic was recognized by Spain as independent.
During the Eighty Years' War the Dutch provinces became the most important trading center of Northern Europe, replacing Flanders in this respect. There was a great flowering of trade, industry, the arts and the sciences in the Netherlands. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch Republic were arguably the most economically wealthy and scientifically advanced of all European nations.
French Wars of Religion 1562-1598
The French Wars of Religion were a prolonged period of war and popular unrest between Catholics and Huguenots (Reformed/Calvinist Protestants) in the Kingdom of France between 1562 and 1598.
Much of the conflict took place whilst Queen mother Catherine de' Medici, widow of Henry II of France, held significant political influence. It also involved a dynastic power struggle between noble families in the line for succession to the French throne: the wealthy, ambitious, and fervently Catholic ducal House of Guise (a cadet branch of the House of Lorraine, who claimed descent from Charlemagne) versus the less wealthy House of Condé (a branch of the House of Bourbon), princes of the blood in the line of succession to the throne who were sympathetic to Calvinism.
House of Orleans 1559-1589
| Name | Reign start | Reign end | Relationship with Predecessor(s) |
| Henry II | March 1547 | July 1559 | Son of Francis I of France |
| Francis II | July 1559 | Dec 1560 | Son of Henry II |
| Charles IX | Dec 1560 | May 1574 | Son of Henry II |
| Henry III | May 1574 | August 1589 | Son of Henry II |
Foreign allies provided financing and other assistance to both sides, with Habsburg Spain and the Duchy of Savoy supporting the Guises, and England supporting the Protestant side led by the Condés and by the Protestant Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre and wife of Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Vendôme and King of Navarre, and their son, Henry of Navarre.
In contrast to the previous hardline policies of Henry II and his father Francis I, they began introducing gradual concessions to Huguenots. A most notable moderate, at least initially, was the queen mother, Catherine de' Medici. Catherine, however, later hardened her stance and, at the time of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, sided with the Guises. This pivotal historical event involved a complete breakdown of state control resulting in series of riots and massacres in which Catholic mobs killed between 5,000 and 30,000 Protestants over a period of weeks.
King Charles IX announced that he had ordered the massacre to prevent a Huguenot coup and proclaimed a day of jubilee in celebration even as the killings continued. Over the next few weeks, the disorder spread to more than a dozen cities across France.
Henry III was the fourth son of King Henry II of France, he was elected with the dual titles King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. Of his three older brothers, two would live long enough to ascend the French throne, but both died young and without a legitimate male heir. He abandoned Poland when he had inherited the throne of France at the age of 22.
The French was at the time plagued by the Wars of Religion, and Henry's authority was undermined by violent political parties funded by foreign powers. In 1589, Jacques Clément, a Catholic fanatic, murdered Henry III. On his deathbed, Henry III called for Henry of Navarre, and begged him, in the name of Statecraft, to become a Catholic, citing the brutal warfare that would ensue if he refused. In keeping with Salic Law, he named Henry as his heir. King Henry of Navarre became the first French king of the House of Bourbon as Henry IV.
Thirty Years War 1618-1648
In Holy Roman Empire, although the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 created a temporary end to hostilities, it did not resolve the underlying religious conflict. Beginning in Bohemia as a Protestant struggle against the Catholic Habsburg King, the Thirty Years War gradually involved France, Sweden and German states within the empire to against the Habsburg powers in Europe.
The war began when the newly elected Emperor, Ferdinand II, tried to impose religious uniformity on his domains, forcing Roman Catholicism on its peoples. The northern Protestant states, angered by the violation of their rights to choose that had been granted in the Peace of Augsburg, banded together to form the Protestant Union. Ferdinand II was a devout Roman Catholic and his policies were considered heavily pro-Catholic.
House of Habsburg 1562-1657
| Name | House | King | Emperor | Ended | Notes |
| Maximilian II | Habsburg | 22 Nov 1562 | 25 July 1564 Emperor-elect | 12 Oct 1576 | Son of Ferdinand I; King of Germany under his father 1562-1564 |
| Rudolf II | Habsburg | 27 Oct 1575 | 2 Nov 1576 Emperor-elect | 20 Jan 1612 | Son of Maximilian II; King of Germany under his father 1575–1576 |
| Matthias | Habsburg | 13 June 1612 | 13 June 1612 Emperor-elect | 20 Mar 1619 | Son of Maximilian II |
| Ferdinand II | Habsburg | 28 Aug 1619 | 28 Aug 1619 Emperor-elect | 15 Feb 1637 | Great-grandson of Ferdinand I |
| Ferdinand III | Habsburg | 22 Dec 1636 | 15 Feb 1637 Emperor-elect | 2 April 1657 | Son of Ferdinand II; King of Germany under his father 636–1637 |
These events caused widespread fears throughout northern and central Europe, and triggered the Protestant Bohemians to revolt against their nominal ruler Ferdinand II. After the Prague Defenestration deposed the Emperor's representatives in Prague, the Protestant estates and Catholic Habsburgs started gathering allies for war.
The conflict was widened into a European War by the intervention of Sweden, Spain and France:
1. Sweden, at the time a rising military power, soon intervened in 1630 under its king Gustavus Adolphus, transforming what had been simply the Emperor's attempt to curb the Protestant states into a full-scale war in Europe;
2. Spain, wishing to finally crush the Dutch rebels in the Netherlands and the Dutch Republic, intervened under the pretext of helping its dynastic Habsburg ally, Austria;
3. No longer able to tolerate the encirclement of two major Habsburg powers on its borders, Catholic France entered the coalition on the side of the Protestants in order to counter the Habsburgs.
Germany became the main theater of war and the scene of the final conflict between France and the Habsburgs for predominance in Europe. The Thirty Years' War devastated entire regions, resulting in high mortality, especially among the populations of the German and Italian states, the Crown of Bohemia, and the Southern Netherlands.
Peace of Westphalia 1648
The Peace of Westphalia was signed between May and October 1648 effectively ending the European wars of religion. These treaties ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) in the Holy Roman Empire, and the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) between Spain and the Dutch Republic, with Spain formally recognizing the independence of the Dutch Republic, while the Spain was in control of the Southern Netherlands (modern Belgium).
The power taken by Emperor Ferdinand III in contravention of the Empire's constitution was stripped and returned to the rulers of the Imperial States. This rectification allowed rulers of the states to decide their religious worship. Protestants and Catholics were redefined as equal before the law, and Calvinism was given legal recognition.
The independence of Switzerland from the Empire was formally recognized; these territories had enjoyed de facto independence for decades. The rise of Bourbon France, the curtailing of Habsburg ambition, and the ascendancy of Sweden created a new balance of power on the continent, with France emerging from the war strengthened and increasingly dominant in the 17th century.
The majority of the Peace's terms can be attributed to the work of Cardinal Mazarin, the de facto leader of France at the time (the king, Louis XIV, being a child). France retained the control of the Bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun.
The Holy Roman Empire from this point was a powerless entity, existing in name only. The Habsburg Emperors instead focused on consolidating their own estates in Austria and elsewhere.
Monarchs of Poland, Lithuania, Hungary and Bohemia 1200-1526
Invited after earlier unsuccessful expeditions against the Prussians by Polish Duke Konrad I of Masovia, the Teutonic Knights began campaigning against the Prussians in 1230, intended to Christianize the Baltic tribes.
Teutonic Knights 1230-1525
The Knights had quickly taken steps against their Polish hosts and with the Holy Roman Emperor's support, had changed the status of Chełmno Land (also Ziemia Chelminska or Kulmerland), where they were invited by the Polish prince, into their own property. The Order created the independent Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights, adding continuously the conquered Prussians' territory, and subsequently conquered Livonia.
By the end of the century, the Knights had established control over Prussia and eventually erasing the Old Prussian language, culture and pre-Christian religion by a combination of physical and ideological force. Some Prussians took refuge in neighboring Lithuania.
The Christianization of Lithuania occurred in 1387, initiated by King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania Władysław II Jagiełło and his cousin Vytautas the Great. It signified the official adoption of Christianity by Lithuania, the last pagan country in Europe. This event ended one of the most violent processes of Christianization in European history.
During the congress in Vienna in 1515, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I made a marriage alliance with and the Jagiellon brothers, Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary and Sigismund I of Poland and Lithuania. It was supposed to end the Emperor's support for Poland's enemies: the Teutonic and Russian states.
In 1525, Grand Master Albert of Brandenburg resigned and converted to Lutheranism, becoming Duke of Prussia as a vassal of Poland. Soon after, the Order lost Livonia and its holdings in the Protestant areas of Germany.
Přemyslid dynasty in Bohemia, Poland and Hungary 1198-1306
Bohemia was the only princedom in the Holy Roman Empire which was raised to the status of kingdom. As soon as Bohemia overcame its civil strife, the Czech dukes became the principal ally for any candidate for the Imperial throne. The emperor could thus use Bohemian forces to punish any rebels who were Czech neighbours simply by raiding their lands. This is evinced by Emperor Henry IV naming Prince Vratislaus II of Bohemia the first king of Bohemia in 1085.
In 1198, Duke Ottokar I again gained the title of King of Bohemia as an ally of Philip of Swabia. This title was reconfirmed by Emperor Otto IV and later on in Frederick II, Emperor's Golden Bull of Sicily in 1212.
In 1269-1276, King Ottokar II of Bohemia was the first in history to rule the lands of today's Austria together (except for Tyrol and Salzburg). He also founded the Hofburg Palace in Vienna.
In 1300, King Wenceslaus II (r. 1300-1305) was crowned King of Poland. Prior to this, he held the title "High Duke of Poland" since 1291 and became its overlord upon the death of Przemysł II of Poland in 1296.
The royal line ended in 1306 with the death of King Wenceslaus III (r. 1305-1306). The Bohemian throne went to the Luxembourgs, and the Polish throne returned to the Piasts.
Luxembourg Kings of Bohemia 1342-1437
The 14th century, particularly the reign of Emperor Charles IV (1342-78) of Luxembourgs, is considered the Golden Age of Czech history.
Charles IV strengthened the power and prestige of the Bohemian kingdom. In 1344 he elevated the bishopric of Prague, making it an archbishopric and freeing it from the jurisdiction of Mainz, and the archbishop was given the right to crown Bohemian kings. He curbed the Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian nobility, and rationalized the provincial administration of Bohemia and Moravia.
In 1355 Charles was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. The next year he issued the Golden Bull of 1356, defining and codifying the process of election to the Imperial throne, with the Bohemian king among the seven electors. Charles also made Prague into an Imperial capital.
Jagiellonian dynasty in Poland, Lithuania, Hungary and Bohemia 1386-1526
The Jagiellonian dynasty was founded by Jogaila, the Grand Duke of Lithuania, who in 1386 was baptized as Władysław, married Queen Hedwig of Poland, and was crowned King of Poland. The dynasty reigned in several Central European countries between the 14th and 16th centuries. Members of the dynasty were Kings of Poland (1386-1572), Grand Dukes of Lithuania (1377-1392 and 1440-1572), Kings of Hungary (1440-1444 and 1490-1526), and Kings of Bohemia and Imperial Electors (1471-1526).
The Polish Golden Age during the reigns of Sigismund I (r. 1506-1548) and Sigismund II (r. 1548-1572), the last two Jagiellonian kings in the 16th century, is most often identified with the rise of the culture of Polish Renaissance.
During the 14th century Lithuania flourished under a series of able rulers, called Grand Dukes, in imitation of their neighbors to the east, the rulers of Rus. Based out of the ancient (and present) capital of Vilnius, the state began to expand east, into the Rusian lands abandoned by the retreating Tartars. By 1323 they had conquered Kiev, the ancient Rusian capital.
The Jagiellon rivalry with the House of Habsburg in central Europe was ultimately resolved to the Habsburgs' advantage. The decisive factor that damaged or weakened the last Jagiellons was the Ottoman Empire's Turkish expansion.
Bohemia and Hungary under Habsburg Monarchy 1526-1740
Hungary's vulnerability greatly increased after Suleiman the Magnificent took the Belgrade fortress in 1521. To prevent Poland from extending military aid to Hungary, Suleiman had a Tatar-Turkish force raid southeastern Poland–Lithuania in 1524. The Hungarian army was defeated in 1526 at the Battle of Mohács, where the young Louis II Jagiellon, son of Vladislas II, was killed.
As a result, the Turks conquered part of the Kingdom of Hungary, and the rest (mainly present-day Slovakia territory) came under Habsburg rule under the terms of King Louis' marriage contrac (the congress in Vienna at 1515). The Bohemian estates elected Austrian Archduke Ferdinand, younger brother of Emperor Charles V, to succeed Louis as king of Bohemia. Thus began almost four centuries of Habsburg rule for both Bohemia and Hungary.
Golden Hordes, Rus’and Ruthenians 1223-1550
The Mongol invasion, facilitated by the beginning breakup of Kievan Rus', had incalculable ramifications for the division of the East Slavic people into modern-day Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. The southwestern and western Rus', where the Ruthenians and later Ukrainian and Belarusian identities developed, was subject to Lithuanian and later Polish influence, whereas the Northern Rus' became Russians with the rise of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
Golden Horde 1223-1480
The Golden Horde or Kipchak Khanate was a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate which comprised of the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. At the start of the 15th century the Horde began to fall apart. Within its territories there emerged numerous khanates, with predominantly Turkic-speaking people (the Tartars):
By 1433, the steppe remnant was being referred to simply as the Great Horde.
Grand Duchy of Moscow 1283-1547
It was a late medieval Rus' principality centered on Moscow. The internal struggles of Golden Horde allowed the northern vassal state of Muscovy to rid itself of the "Tatar Yoke" at the Great stand on the Ugra River in 1480. Ivan III the Great (r. 1462-1505), further consolidated the state, destroying and annexing the Novgorod Republic in 1478 and the Grand Duchy of Tver in 1485, campaigning against his major remaining rival power, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. By 1503, he had tripled the territory of Muscovy and adopted the title of Tsar.
Ivan's successor Vasili III also enjoyed military success, gaining Smolensk from Lithuania in 1512, pushing Muscovy's borders to the Dniepr River. Vasili's son Ivan IV (the later Ivan the Terrible) was an infant at his father's death in 1533. He was crowned in 1547, assuming the title of tsar together with the proclamation of Tsardom of Russia.
Ruthenia
The word Ruthenia originated as a Latin rendering of the region and people known originally as Rus'. By the 15th century the Moscow principality established its sovereignty over a large portion of ancient Rus' territory, including Novgorod and Pskov. From 1547, the Moscow principality adopted the title of The Great Pricipat of Moscow and Tsardom of the Whole Rus, and claimed sovereignty over "all the Rus'" acts not recognized by its neighbor Poland. The Muscovy population was Eastern Orthodox and used the Greek transcription of Rus', being "Rossia", rather than the Latin "Ruthenia".
In the 14th century the southern territories of ancient Rus', including the principalities of Galicia–Volhynia, Kiev and others, became a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which, in 1384, united with Catholic Poland to form the later Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Due to their usage of the Latin script rather than the Cyrillic script, they were usually denoted by the Latin Ruthenia.
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