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son of the future James II of England

the War of the Spanish Succession, which began with a dispute between Louis XIV and the Austrian Habsburgs over the vacant Spanish throne

The decisive battle occurred on Easter Monday in 1707 when the allied army arrived at the walled town of Almanza, south-west of Valencia, and found Berwick waiting for them

In the seventeenth century, under a succession of outstandingly able soldier kings, Sweden had been a great power but after the death in 1718 of Karl XII, the last and most monomaniacal of the line, the country had become a by-word for weak government, corruption and impotence. Gustav III set himself the task of making Sweden great again. He was assassinated in March 1792 – the third Swedish monarch in 160 years to die of gunshot wounds

Under Karl XII’s successors, his central-German brother-in-law Fredrik I and his north-German second-cousin-once-removed Adolf Fredrik (Prince Bishop of Lubeck before the Swedish Riksdag chose him to be Fredrik’s heir) the country passed through the so-called Age of Liberty

When, shortly after his father’s death in February 1771, Gustav III met his uncle Frederick II of Prussia (Frederick the Great), the latter sneered, ‘If there were Swedes in Sweden they would soon agree to bury their differences; but foreign corruption has so perverted the national spirit that harmony was impossible’. Gustav’s new kingdom was then the second largest in Europe after Russia. It comprised present-day Finland as well as Sweden, and a toe-hold in Germany in northern Pomerania.

They call them corona taxis: Medics outfitted in protective gear, driving around the empty streets of Heidelberg to check on patients who are at home, five or six days into being sick with the coronavirus.They take a blood test, looking for signs that a patient is about to go into a steep decline. They might suggest hospitalization, even to a patient who has only mild symptoms; the chances of surviving that decline are vastly improved by being in a hospital when it begins.

Heidelberg’s corona taxis are only one initiative in one city. But they illustrate a level of engagement and a commitment of public resources in fighting the epidemic that help explain one of the most intriguing puzzles of the pandemic: Why is Germany’s death rate so low?

According to Johns Hopkins University, the country had more than 92,000 laboratory-confirmed infections as of midday Saturday, more than any other country except the United States, Italy and Spain.

The commanding victory of populist parties in Austria's national election on Sunday is certain to reverberate beyond the borders of the nation of 8.5 million.

the outcome portends conservative-led government for the first time in a decade.

Should the People's Party take the far-right Freedom Party as coalition partner, it would constitute a seismic shift in Austrian politics with severe implications for the rest of Europe.

Venice was once one of the greatest trading powers in European history.

Venice was the European end of the Silk Road trade route which moved goods all the way from China, and consequently was a cosmopolitan city, a true melting pot.

Venice developed as a trading center, happy to do business with both the Islamic world as well as the Byzantine Empire, with whom they remained close.

An Islamic State-supporting gunman who killed four people and injured 23 others in an attack in central Vienna on Monday night deliberately “deceived” his mentors in a deradicalisation programme to feign a renunciation of jihadism

Twenty-three people were injured with gunshot and knife wounds, of whom seven were in a critical condition

The attacker, born in Mödling, south of Vienna, developed a strong interest in political Islam as a teenager and eventually hatched plans to join Isis in Syria.

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.

Days after Hitler’s suicide a group of American soldiers, French prisoners, and, yes, German soldiers defended an Austrian castle against an SS division—the only time Germans and Allies fought together in World War II

hasn’t been told before in English

three Sherman tanks from the 23rd Tank Battalion

President François Hollande on Wednesday announced the creation of a position of special prosecutor to pursue cases of corruption and tax fraud, and vowed to eradicate tax havens “in Europe and the world.”

one of those tax havens, Luxembourg, announced that it would bow to pressure from its European allies and begin forwarding the details of its foreign clients’ accounts to their home governments. Luxembourg, with only half a million people and a banking sector more than 20 times the size of its gross domestic product, is one of Europe’s largest financial centers and has been compared to Cyprus

Luxembourg’s announcement came a day after five of the biggest European countries — Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain — agreed to exchange banking data and create their own automatic tax data exchange. That mechanism would be modeled on the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, passed by Congress in 2010 to track the overseas assets of Americans who might be dodging taxes.

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

Europe's populist movements are on the cusp of sweeping far-right, nationalist and euroskeptic parties into power across the continent in a series of upcoming elections

he revolving door swung against current Prime Minister Matteo Renzi Sunday, when voters rejected his proposed changes to the country's constitution

Experts say that if Grillo comes to power, he'll likely follow through on promises to call a referendum to scrap the euro, reintroduce the Italian lira, and perhaps even follow Britain out of the European Union

As I write this, every newspaper informs me of frantic efforts by merchants to unload onto the consumer, at almost any price, the vast surplus of unsold commodities that have accumulated since the credit crisis began to take hold. The phrase crisis of over-production, which I learned so many long winters ago in “agitational” meetings, recurs to my mind.

On other pages, I learn that the pride of American capitalism has seized up and begun to rust, and that automobiles may cease even to be made in Detroit as a consequence of insane speculation in worthless paper “derivatives.” Did I not once read somewhere about the bitter struggle between finance capital and industrial capital?

The lines of jobless and hungry begin to lengthen, and what more potent image of those lines do we possess than that of the “reserve army” of the unemployed—capital’s finest weapon in beating down the minimum wage and increasing the hours of the working week?

The election for president of Austria turned into a cliffhanger on Sunday, with a former Green Party leader battling a populist who is seeking to become the first far-right politician to be elected head of state in Europe since 1945.

With all votes cast on Sunday counted, the race between Norbert Hofer, 45, of the far-right Freedom Party, and Alexander Van der Bellen, a 72-year-old economist, was too close to call. The outcome will be determined by mail-in votes.

“This signifies the split of the country, no doubt about it,” said Hans Rauscher, a centrist columnist for the newspaper Der Standard. “You can work at changing that, but it is, of course, the result of an anti-establishment mood.”

It’s a scary situation,” said Anton Zeilinger, an Austrian diplomat who lives and works nearby and who was at his office when the station was bombed on Tuesday. He said of the attackers, “A few bombs won’t destroy the way we live, even if they want to.”

In terrorism-plagued countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq and some others in the Middle East, bags are put through scanners when travelers enter the airport.

At least one of the bombs used in Brussels — the one at the airport — did far more damage and appears to have been far more powerful than those used in Paris, blowing out many of the windows in the large departure hall and shaking nearby buildings.

Geographical size not only influences how countries view themselves; it also determines how they interact. The wrong mix of sizes can be disastrous for international equilibrium. One could argue, for example, that this was a factor in both world wars. Or as Henry Kissinger succinctly put it: “Poor old Germany. Too big for Europe, too small for the world.”

Leopold Kohr, a 20th-century Austrian academic whose work inspired both modern political anarchism and the Green movement.

“The Breakdown of Nations.” Published first in Britain, in 1957, the book develops his theory of the optimal size of polities: “There seems to be only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness.” Size was the root of all evil: “Whenever something is wrong, it is too big.”

rather than a respectful salutation of Europe’s triumph over parochial nationalism, the conference set off an ethnic firestorm in the Balkans that reached the highest political circles. The controversy speaks to how the scholarly interpretation of a crucial turning point like the Great War remains disputed and entangled in present-day politics.

Princip’s nationalist politics and the Serbs’ role in the war remain highly contentious issues, particularly in the Balkans. The Serbs tend to consider Princip a hero who struck a blow against the repressive Habsburg monarchy, which ruled Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time. In recognition of the centennial, monuments to Princip are being constructed in downtown Belgrade, the Serbian capital, and in Serb-dominated eastern Sarajevo.

In contrast with that view, most historians from the region and elsewhere in Europe have tended to see Princip as a terrorist, rather than a hero.

While often killing only their own brethren on the battlefields of World War I, Mr. Pavlyshyn said, Ukrainians who served on opposite sides discovered for the first time “that they were the same people and started to think like Ukrainians.” A nationalist cause that had been mostly limited to intellectuals and politicians expanded to “create a real national consciousness.”

When the war erupted nearly a century ago, Russian forces mobilized and swiftly captured the western city of Lviv and the surrounding region of eastern Galicia. Aleksei Brusilov, a Russian commanding officer, proclaimed the territory — under Hapsburg control for more than two centuries and ruled before that by Poland — as “Russian land from time immemorial, populated after all by Russian people.”

Instead of rallying behind Russia and its ruler, Czar Nicholas II, however, many Ukrainians in the west sided with the Hapsburg dynasty, which had granted them a political voice and freedoms unimaginable to Ukrainian speakers living under the Russian Empire to the east.

years of predictive failure haven’t stopped the orthodoxy from tightening its grip on the party. What’s going on?

the Friedman compromise — trash-talking government activism in general, but asserting that monetary policy is different — has proved politically unsustainable. You can’t, in the long run, keep telling your base that government bureaucrats are invariably incompetent, evil or both, then say that the Fed, which is, when all is said and done, basically a government agency run by bureaucrats, should be left free to print money as it sees fit.

Politicians who lump it all together, who warn darkly that the Fed is inflating away your hard-earned wealth and enabling giveaways to Those People, are always going to have the advantage in intraparty struggles.