The German Peasants' War or Great Peasants' Revolt (German: Deutscher Bauernkrieg) was a widespread popular revolt in the German-speaking areas of Central Europe, 1524–1525. It failed because of the intense opposition of the aristocracy, wh...

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Lord of Montaigne was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiogra...

Edward VI was King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death. He was crowned on 20 February at the age of nine. The son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Edward was the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty and England's first...

Joseph Justus Scaliger was considered to be the foremost scholar in sixteenth-century Europe, referred to as "the light of the world", "the sea of sciences" and similar epithets, and it is to him that we owe a "modern" definition of chronol...

Henry IV of France was the first of the Bourbon kings of France, reigning from 1589 until his death. As a Huguenot, Henry was involved in the Wars of Religion before acceding to the throne; to become king he converted to Catholicism and pro...

Louise de Coligny was de vierde echtgenote van prins Willem I. Zij werd geboren op als dochter van Gaspard de Coligny en Charlotte de Laval. Zij overleed op 13 november 1620 en werd op 24 mei 1621 bijgezet in het familiegraf Oranje-Nassau i...

Samuel de Champlain was a French Explorer. He made several expeditions to North America before founding Quebec in 1608 with 32 colonists, most of whom did not survive the first winter. He joined with the northern Indian tribes to defeat Iro...

The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy in French) in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations, followed by a wave of Roman Catholic mob violence, both directed against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protesta...

Gabrielle d'Estrées, Duchess of Beaufort and Verneuil, Marchioness of Monceaux was a mistress, confidante and adviser of Henry IV of France. She persuaded Henry to renounce Protestantism in favour of Catholicism in 1593. Later she urged Fre...

Marie de' Medici, was queen consort of France. She was the second wife of King Henry IV of France, of the Bourbon branch of the kings of France. Later she was the regent for her son King Louis XIII of France. Born in Florence, Italy, she...

Cardinal Richelieu was extremely intelligent and at the age of nine was sent to College de Navarre in Paris. In 1602, at age seventeen he began studying theology seriously. In 1606 he was appointed Bishop of Luçon, and in 1622 Pope Gregory...

Pierre Gassendi was a French philosopher, priest, scientist, astronomer/astrologer, and mathematician, best known for attempting to reconcile Epicurean atomism with Christianity and for publishing the first official observations of the Tran...

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the "Father of Modern Philosophy", and much of subsequent Western philosophy is a respo...

Louis XIII was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who ruled as King of France from 1610 to 1643 and King of Navarre (as Louis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged to the French crown. Louis succeeded his father Henr...

Pierre de Fermat was a French lawyer at the Parlement of Toulouse, France, and a mathematician who is given credit for early developments that led to modern calculus. In particular, he is recognised for his discovery of an original method o...