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The ambitions of Louis XIV dissipated French resources in a series of wasting wars against the combined powers of Europe

The King had succeeded in placing his second grandson upon the throne of Spain as Philip V

Frankish aristocracy had been distorted by the rise of monarchical despotism

mother of the last Valois Kings

preserve the authority of the monarchy through the years of its degradation

Médicis Queen entered the capital as the prospective mother of the new Bourbon dynasty

Michigan, once the class of the college football landscape, suddenly embodies the struggle between athletics and academics playing out at universities throughout the country. Michigan’s new president, Mark Schlissel, has suggested that academics may have taken a back seat in the athletic department and made it clear that the university’s sports culture concerned him.

“We have to get this right,” said Mark Bernstein, a university regent. “I believe the stakes at this university are unusually high in the sense that this university aspires to be exceptional academically and with respect to athletics. If those two worlds can coexist without comprising the integrity and values of the university — that’s our goal. If they can’t coexist, then intercollegiate athletics is truly an illusion.”

“The incentives are really strong for them to be as successful on the field as possible, and some of those are in dollars and others are in performance,” said Schlissel, according to the student newspaper, The Michigan Daily. “If we had won Nobel Prizes this year, we wouldn’t have gotten as much attention as did our A.D. It’s sad, but it’s really true.”

The treaty of marriage between Henry V of England and Catherine of France, daughter of Charles VI, sworn in the Cathedral of Troyes on May 21st, 1420, marks the darkest hours of the French monarchy in the fifteenth century. In thirty-one short articles, the treaty made Henry the son of Charles VI and heir, with Henry's own heirs, to the Crown of France. It also made Henry regent until the king's death and gave him the government of the kingdom of France. The 'so-called' dauphin, Charles, was thought to be definitively isolated, having already forfeited his rights after he had had John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, assassinated at Montereau on September 10th, 1419

On the borders of the territories where he strove to impose his authority as regent and heir to France, the Dukes of Brittany (John V) and of Burgundy (Philip the Good), contrived to safeguard their de facto independence

The unexpected death of Henry V on August 31st, 1422, and the long-awaited death of Charles VI (October 21st, 1422), the brutal regency of the Duke of Bedford, and the Amiens alliance of April 1423 between the three dukes (Bedford, Brittany, Burgundy), all contributed, to different extents, to aggravate the political conflict

James Hepburn, fourth Earl of Bothwell and third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots, fades out of history after their confrontation with the Scottish rebels at Carberry Hill.

So long as she was alive, whether at liberty or in close custody, she was a political force of great danger to Elizabeth

The Catholics supported Mary; the Protestants were mostly against her.

On Louis’ death in January 1515 Francis duly became king of France at the age of twenty

In September 1515 Francis I once more asserted the French claim to Milan

In the spring of 1537, once more under Montmorency, the French attacked Artois in the Netherlands and a number of towns were captured before a truce was agreed with Charles’s regent, Mary of Hungary

Henry IV of France was an engagingly flamboyant monarch, famous for his vitality and wit, his forcefulness and determination

Accepting the heavy responsibilities of his crown, he used or planned to use his offspring to strengthen the Bourbon monarchy

As Henry’s marriage with Marguerite de Valois (the occasion of the massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day) proved childless and was annulled, his legitimate line derived from his second wife, Marie de Médicis.

original name Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte

French Revolutionary general and marshal of France (1804), who was elected crown prince of Sweden (1810), becoming regent and then king of Sweden and Norway (1818–44).

formed Swedish alliances with Russia, Great Britain, and Prussia, which defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig (1813)

Before ascending the throne he was known as the Dauphin and was regent for his father, Charles VI, from 1418.

Charles VII was the 11th child of King Charles VI and his wife, Isabella of Bavaria.

Crises caused by his father’s insanity were frequent.

the problem of the succession in Spain became acute, since by the terms of Ferdinand’s will, Charles was to govern in Aragon and Castile together with his mother (who, however, suffered from a nervous illness and never reigned).

Making the most of their candidate’s German parentage and buying up German electoral votes (mostly with money supplied by the powerful Fugger banking family), Charles’s adherents had meanwhile pushed through his election as emperor over his powerful rival, Francis I of France.

Gradually, the other chief task of his reign also unfolded: the struggle for hegemony in western Europe. That goal was a legacy of his Burgundian forefathers, including his ancestor Charles the Bold, who had come to naught in his fight against the French Valois Louis XI. His great-grandfather’s quest was to become a fateful problem for Charles as well.

William V, (born March 8, 1748, The Hague, Neth.—died April 9, 1806, Braunschweig [Germany]), prince of Orange and Nassau and general hereditary stadtholder of the Dutch Republic (1751–95).

When his father, William IV, died (1751), he was but three years of age, and his mother, Anne of Hanover, acted as regent for him until her death (Jan. 12, 1759); then the provincial States (assemblies) acted as regents. Duke Louis Ernest of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1718–88) acted as William’s guardian and gained such influence that when William was declared of age in 1766, he asked the duke to remain as his adviser. On Oct. 4, 1767, William married Wilhelmina of Prussia, sister of the future Frederick William II.

Politically and militarily incompetent, William pursued an Anglophile policy, arousing the hostility of large sections of the population.

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

For at least 1500 years, the nation of Tibet has had a complex relationship with its large and powerful neighbor to the east, China. The political history of Tibet and China reveals that the relationship has not always been as one-sided as it now appears.

Indeed, as with China’s relations with the Mongols and the Japanese, the balance of power between China and Tibet has shifted back and forth over the centuries.

The first known interaction between the two states came in 640 A.D., when the Tibetan King Songtsan Gampo married the Princess Wencheng, a niece of the Tang Emperor Taizong. He also married a Nepalese princess.

It took several centuries for Buddhism to travel from India to Japan. Once Buddhism was established in Japan, however, it flourished. Buddhism had an incalculable impact on Japanese civilization. At the same time, schools of Buddhism imported from mainland Asia became distinctively Japanese.

The Koreans brought with them Buddhist sutras, an image of the Buddha, and a letter from the Korean prince praising the dharma. This was the official introduction of Buddhism to Japan.

The Japanese aristocracy promptly split into pro- and anti-Buddhist factions. Buddhism gained little real acceptance until the reign of the Empress Suiko and her regent, Prince Shotoku (592 to 628 CE).

the very survival of the first Bourbon king amid the dangers and conspiracies of his time suggests a certain element of rational calculation, if not outright hypocrisy.

Navarre were established during his own lifetime

In 1594 Jean Boucher, the most influential curé among the revolutionary leaders of the Leaguer Sixteen, launched an attack upon the hypocrisy of the king’s conversion fully as personal and venomous as his earlier indictment of the last Valois, Henri III

The name Philip was Greek and uncommon in the Western Europe of the 11th century

He was only seven when his father Henry I had him crowned at Rheims as co-king

Philip’s mother and Count Baldwin V of Flanders acted as his regents

On July 31st, 1589, a young Jacobin friar, Jacques Clément, left Paris for the suburb of Saint-Cloud where Henry III of France had set up his military encampment.

As he did so, the friar produced a knife that he had hidden in the capacious sleeve of his habit and plunged it into Henry’s abdomen

Henry died early the next morning bringing to an end the Valois dynasty that had occupied the French throne since 1328. Henry III was the first king of France to be assassinated by one of his own subjects

History may not repeat itself, but there is no gainsaying its fondness for close affinities

When in 1807 Ferdinand, heir to the throne, stood accused by his father, Charles IV of Spain, of sedition and seeking to usurp the royal title, the young prince fearfully recalled the analogous events two hundred and forty years previously

In 1568 Philip II had similarly confronted his recalcitrant son Carlos, resulting in the latter’s imprisonment and mysterious death seven months later

Queen of Spain from the age of three, Isabella II abdicated after thirty-six years of more or less ceaseless turmoil, and spent almost half her life in exile in France

Her accession as a baby in 1833 in succession to her father, the autocratic Ferdinand VII, precipitated seven years of civil war with the Carlists

Isabella’s first regent was her mother, who weakened her position

On June 7th, 1654, Louis XIV was crowned in the traditional manner at the cathedral of Reims

It was indeed one of the least significant events in the whole reign of Loins XIV

The minority had ended at rather an early age, but kings of France were not as ordinary men, in that, among other things, they had the capacity of coming of age prematurely