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Battle of Narva, (30 November 1700). In 1700, Czar Peter I of Russia challenged the long-established Swedish domination of the Baltic in alliance with Denmark and Saxony-Poland-Lithuania.

After the Russians declared war on Sweden, they invaded Estonia and besieged Narva in September 1700. By November 1700, the Swedish king, Charles XII, had already forced Denmark out of the war.

Czar Peter had been leading his armies personally—but, shortly before the Swedish arrival, he had returned to Russia, leaving an experienced general, Charles Eugène de Croy, in command.

When the Thirty Years War and Peace of Westphalia stifled Austrian ambitions in Germany, the Hapsburgs expanded eastward against the Ottoman Empire.  Ever since the death of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1565, the Ottoman Empire had been in serious decline, with a corrupt government, rebellious army, obsolete military technology, and decaying economy. Such a faltering empire was a tempting target for its neighbors.  However, the Hapsburgs were never able to concentrate solely on the Turks.  This was because France under Louis XIV posed a constant threat of invasion to the various German states, which forced the Hapsburgs to divide their attention between east and west.

This triggered the Turks' last major invasion of Europe, climaxing at the siege of Vienna in 1683.  A huge Turkish army of possibly 150,000 men, but with no large siege artillery, was faced by only the stout walls of Vienna and a garrison of ll,000 men.  The siege lasted two months as the Turks gradually used the old medieval technique of undermining the walls.  Just as the hour of their victory approached, a relief army from various European states arrived and crushed the Turkish army.  From 1683 to 1700, Hapsburg forces and their allies advanced steadily against the Turks, only being interrupted by having to meet French aggression in the West.  In 1697, the allied forces demolished another Turkish army at Zenta and watched as the once proud Janissaries murdered their own officers in the rout.  The resulting treaty of Karlowitz (1699) gave Austria all of Hungary, Transylvania, and Slavonia.  Karlowitz re-established Austria, now also known as Austria-Hungary, as a major European power.  From 1700 until the end of World War I in 19l8, the Hapsburg Empire would dominate southeastern Europe, while the Ottoman Empire staggered on as the "Sick Man of Europe."

Although the Hapsburg Empire had regained its status as a military and diplomatic power, it still had serious internal problems, namely a powerful nobility ruling over enserfed peasants, a hodge-podge of peoples with nothing in common except that they all called Leopold their emperor, and a variety of states that each had their own rights, privileges and governmental institutions

Spain’s central problem in the 17th century had been to maintain what remained of its European possessions and to retain control of its American empire

In the 17th century the greatest threat had come from a land power, France, jealous of Habsburg power in Europe; in the 18th it was to come from a sea power, England, while the Austrian Habsburgs became the main continental enemy of Spain

In 1700 (by the will of the childless Charles II) the duc d’Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France, became Philip V of Spain

glories of Queen Anne’s reign (1702-14), ‘that short period of our History, which contains so many illustrious Actions

The most significant of these actions were in the course of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-13, Britain not involved until 1702), as the European powers jostled for control of the Spanish empire following the death of the last Spanish Habsburg king, Charles II, in 1700. On July 23rd, 1704, British naval forces captured Gibraltar and held out against Franco-Spanish attempts to regain it, while a few weeks later on August 13th, John Churchill, then Earl of Marlborough, heavily defeated a Franco-Bavarian army at Blenheim in Bavaria

The Blenheim campaign was crucial in preventing French hegemony in western Europe. Allied with Britain and the Dutch against France, the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I (r.1658-1705) was central to the struggle on the European mainland as his defeat would have allowed the French to dominate both Germany and northern Italy and to concentrate against the Anglo-Dutch efforts in the Low Countries and the lower Rhineland

After the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile – the ‘Catholic Monarchs’ – in 1469, Catalonia, as part of Aragon, became united in a royal union with the Kingdom of Castile in 1474

The relationship between Castile and Aragon was more like the Austro-Hungarian confederation than the English incorporation of Wales, or that of Brittany by France

did not create a culturally homogenous Spanish state

Recent years have seen an increasing interest in central European history in the early modern period, with a greater appreciation of what the Holy Roman Empire meant before and after Westphalia, and a better understanding amongst English-language historians of the role of the Austrian Habsburgs.

the 'unmaking' of the empire not to much to inherent problems, which Charles Xl had largely overcome, but to the emergence of Russia and the consequent loss of the most essential part of the Swedish empire, the Baltic provinces

king of Poland and elector of Saxony (as Frederick Augustus I). Though he regained Poland’s former provinces of Podolia and the Ukraine, his reign marked the beginning of Poland’s decline as a European power

Augustus succeeded his elder brother John George IV as elector in 1694. After the death of John III Sobieski of Poland (1696), Augustus became one of 18 candidates for the Polish throne. To further his chances, he converted to Catholicism, thereby alienating his Lutheran Saxon subjects and causing his wife, a Hohenzollern princess, to leave him

the “Turkish War,” which had begun in 1683 and in which he had participated intermittently since 1695, was concluded; by the Treaty of Carlowitz in 1699, Poland received Podolia, with Kamieniec (Kamenets) and the Ukraine west of the Dnieper River from the Ottoman Empire.

Introduction From 1643 to 1815 France dominated much of Europe's political history and culture.  Foreigners came to France, preferring it to the charms of their own homeland.  Even today, many still consider it the place to visit in Europe and the world.  In the 1600's and 1700's there was a good reason for this dominance: population.  France had 23,000,000 people in a strongly unified state compared to 5,000,000 in Spain and England, and 2,000,000 in the Dutch Republic and the largest of the German states.  This reservoir of humanity first reached for and nearly attained the dominance of Europe under Louis XIV, the "Sun King".

Louis' early life and reign (1643-61) Louis was born in 1638 and succeeded his father, Louis XIII, as king in 1643 at the age of five.  Luckily, another able minister and Richelieu's successor, Cardinal Mazarin, continued to run the government.  In 1648, encroachment by the government on the nobles' power, poor harvests, high taxes, and unemployed mercenaries plundering the countryside after the Thirty Years War led to a serious revolt known as the Fronde, named after the slingshot used by French boys.  Louis and the court barely escaped from Paris with their lives.  Although Mazarin and his allies crushed the rebels after five hard years of fighting (1648-53), Louis never forgot the fear and humiliation of having to run from the Parisian mob and fight for his life and throne against the nobles.  This bitter experience would heavily influence Louis' policies when he ruled on his own.

Louis XIV may not have said, "I am the state", but he ruled as if he had said it.  Louis was the supreme example of the absolute monarch, and other rulers in Europe could do no better than follow his example.  Although Louis wished to be remembered as a great conqueror, his first decade of active rule was largely taken up with building France's internal strength.  There are two main areas of Louis' rule we will look at here: finances and the army. Louis' finance minister, Jean Baptiste Colbert, was an astute businessman of modest lineage, being the son of a draper.  Colbert's goal was to build France's industries and reduce foreign imports.  This seventeenth century policy where a country tried to export more goods and import more gold and silver was known as mercantilism.  While its purpose was to generate revenue for the king, it also showed the growing power of the emerging nation state.  Colbert declared his intention to reform the whole financial structure of the French state, and he did succeed in reducing the royal debt by cutting down on the number of tax farms he sold and freeing royal lands from mortgage.  Colbert especially concentrated on developing France's economy in three ways.

However, the critical difference between Eastern and Western Europe has to do with waterways.  Western Europe has an abundance of navigable rivers, coastlines, and harbors along the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean, North, and Baltic Seas.  In the High Middle Ages, these fostered the revival of trade and the rise of towns, a money economy, and a middle class opposed to the feudal structure dominated by the nobles and Church.

Kings also opposed the nobles and the Church, so the middle class townsmen provided them with valuable allies and money.  With this money, kings could buy two things.  First of all, they could raise mercenary armies armed with guns to limit the power of the nobles.  Secondly, they could form professional bureaucracies staffed largely by their middle class allies who were both more efficient since they were literate and more loyal since they were the king's natural allies and dependant on him for their positions.  As a result, kings in Western Europe were able to build strong centralized nation-states by the 1600's.

Eastern Europe, in stark contrast to Western Europe, provided practically a mirror image of its historical development before 1600. Being further inland compared to Western Europe hurt Eastern Europe's trade, since the sea and river waterways vital to trade did not exist there in such abundance as they did in Western Europe. Factors limiting trade also limited the growth of a strong middle class in Eastern Europe.  This meant that kings had little in the way of money or allies to help them against the nobles.  That in turn meant that peasants had few towns where they could escape the oppression of the nobles.  Therefore, strong nobilities plus weak, and oftentimes elective, monarchies were the rule in Eastern Europe before 1600.  At the same time, the nobles ruled over peasants whose status actually was sliding deeper into serfdom rather than emerging from it.

Is it O.K., morally and politically, to declare the man about to move into the White House illegitimate?

Yes, it is. In fact, it’s an act of patriotism.

Hillary Clinton would almost surely have won if the F.B.I. hadn’t conveyed the false impression that it had damaging new information about her, just days before the vote. This was grotesque, delegitimizing malfeasance, especially in contrast with the agency’s refusal to discuss the Russia connection.

Tensions between Qatar and neighboring Persian Gulf monarchies broke out Wednesday when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from the country over its support of the Muslim Brotherhood and allied Islamists around the region.

The concerted effort to isolate Qatar, a tiny, petroleum-rich peninsula, was an extraordinary rebuke of its strategy of aligning with moderate Islamists in the hope of extending its influence amid the Arab Spring revolts.But in recent months Islamists’ gains have been rolled back, with the military takeover in Egypt, the governing party shaken in Turkey, chaos in Libya and military gains by the government in Syria.

The Saudi monarchs, in particular, have grumbled for years as tiny Qatar has swaggered around like a heavyweight. It used its huge wealth and Al Jazeera, which it owns, as instruments of regional power. It negotiated a peace deal in Lebanon, supported Palestinian militants in Gaza, shipped weapons to rebels in Libya and Syria, and gave refuge to exiled leaders of Egypt’s Brotherhood — all while certain its own security was assured by the presence of a major American military base.

CLIMATOLOGISTS call it the Little Ice Age; historians, the General Crisis.

The summer of 1641 was the third-coldest recorded over the past six centuries in Europe; the winter of 1641-42 was the coldest ever recorded in Scandinavia. The unusual cold that lasted from the 1620s until the 1690s included ice on both the Bosporus and the Baltic so thick that people could walk from one side to the other.

The deep cold in Europe and extreme weather events elsewhere resulted in a series of droughts, floods and harvest failures that led to forced migrations, wars and revolutions

First, the resources. Pretty much all available energy on the earth comes from energy radiated by the sun.

The exceptions to the sunlight rule are: geothermal energy, which comes from the very hot core of the earth (often in the form of volcanoes); tidal energy, which is the result of water interacting with the gravity of the earth, moon, and sun; and nuclear energy

Some of these resources are renewable, but at the moment, the dominant suppliers of energy to human civilization (the fossil fuels) are not.

Trump has done just that by emulating a classic model of American democratic leadership.

A clue as to just which leadership model can be found on a map. While Trump fans are spread across the country, they are heavily concentrated in and near the Appalachian states

Greater Appalachia has remained culturally distinct for centuries. Migrants from the northern British Isles — Scots, Scots-Irish and others — pushed into these mountains in large numbers from the 1700s onward and did much to create the nation as we know it.

It's impossible for anyone to see what ancient Rome looked like in all of its splendor, since we've failed to invent a time machine. But the above video, which shows a 3D rendering of Rome in 320 AD, is about as close as we can get

Rome Reborn, an academic research project whose central mission is to create a full model of Rome at its greatest heights, working in conjunction with the Khan Academy and Smarthistory. The goal is to take historical depictions of the city and create a true-to-life model of every period of Roman development, ranging from 1000 BC to 552 AD.

they chose to use 320 AD for this visualization because it was "the peak of Rome's urban development." Ten years later, the emperor, Constantine, moved the capital to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), and the city of Rome began to decline. (The Roman Empire itself went on to survive, in various forms, until roughly 476.)

Voting rights advocates observe somber King holiday

While most of the country will spend the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday remembering the peaceful nature and civil rights successes lodged by the late leader, voting rights advocates say this is a dark time for them.

Many might spend Monday reflecting on King's 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march to push for voting equality for black Americans,

In 1669 Nithard was overthrown by Juan José de Austria, an illegitimate son of Philip IV, but the regent still managed to keep him out of the central government. In 1677 Juan José led an army against Madrid and made himself Charles II’s principal minister.

Until the mid-1680s the Castilian economy declined

the reign of Charles II as “an uninterrupted series of calamities.” The population of Castile declined from about 6.5 million at the end of the 16th century to under 5 million about 1680

concluding the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14).

France concluded treaties of peace at Utrecht with Britain, the Dutch republic, Prussia, Portugal, and Savoy

By the treaty with Britain (April 11), France recognized Queen Anne as the British sovereign and undertook to cease supporting James Edward, the son of the deposed king James II.

The disease seems widespread, affecting venture-capital darlings and legacy brands, flattening local news while punishing international wires. Almost no one is safe, and almost everyone is for sale.

It’s tempting to think that this is the inevitable end game of Google and Facebook’s duopoly. The two companies already receive more than half of all the dollars spent on digital advertising, and they commanded 90 percent of the growth in digital ad sales last year.

what’s happening in media right now is more complex. We’re seeing the convergence of four trends.

royal German family

of Europe from the 15th to the 20th century

The name Habsburg is derived from the castle of Habsburg