The Fall of Constantinople was the capture of the capital of the Byzantine Empire which occurred after a siege laid by the Ottoman Empire, under the command of Sultan Mehmed II. The siege lasted from Thursday, 5 April 1453 until Tuesday, 29...

The Wars of the Roses were a series of dynastic civil wars for the throne of England fought between supporters of two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the houses of Lancaster and York (the "red" and the "white" rose, respec...

Ahmed Muhiddin Piri, better known as Piri Reis, was an Ottoman admiral, geographer, and cartographer. He is primarily known today for his maps and charts collected in his Kitab-ı Bahriye (Book of Navigation), a book that contains de...

Andrea Doria was a Genoese statesman, mercenary, and admiral, the foremost naval commander of his time. A member of an aristocratic family, he was orphaned at an early age and became a soldier of fortune. In 1522 he entered the service of F...

Hayreddin Barbarossa was an Ottoman admiral of the fleet who was born in the Ottoman island of Midilli (Lesbos) and died in Constantinople (Istanbul), the Ottoman capital. Barbarossa's naval victories secured Ottoman dominance over the Medi...

Jean Fleury (or Florin) (born ? - died 1527) was a French naval officer and privateer. He is best known for the capture of two out of the three Spanish galleons carrying the Aztec treasure from Mexico to Spain in 1522. This was one of the e...

Dragut was an Ottoman Greek Admiral and privateer who also served as Bey of Algiers; Beylerbey of the Mediterranean; and first Bey, later Pasha, of Tripoli. Under his naval command the Ottoman Empire's maritime power was extended across Nor...

The Ottoman–Mamluk War of 1516–1517 was a conflict between the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate and the Ottoman Empire, which led to the fall of the Mamluk Sultanate and the incorporation of Syria, Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula as provinces of t...

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...

Mathurin d’Aux de Lescout, called Mathurin Romegas, was a scion of the aristocratic Gascony family of d'Aux and a member of the Knights of Saint John. He was one of the Order's greatest naval commanders and ended his life disgraced as a Riv...

The Siege of Vienna of 1529, as distinct from the Battle of Vienna in 1683, represented the farthest Westward advance into Central Europe of the Ottoman Empire, and of all the clashes between the armies of Christianity and Islam might be si...

Yermak Timofeyevich, born between 1532 and 1542 - 1584) was a Cossack who led the Russian conquest of Siberia in the reign of Ivan the Terrible. Russia’s fur interests fueled their desire to expand east into Siberia. The tsar’s ultimate...

Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, a renowned pirate, and a politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the...

Sir Thomas Cavendish was an English explorer and a privateer known as "The Navigator" because he was the first who deliberately tried to emulate Sir Francis Drake and raid the Spanish towns and ships in the Pacific and return by circumnavig...

The Great Siege of Malta took place in 1565 when the Ottoman Empire invaded the island, then held by the Knights Hospitaller (also known as the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, Knights of Malta, Knights of...