Charlemagne, meaning Charles the Great, was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum) from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Cent...

Verdun, Treaty of, the partition of Charlemagne's empire among three sons of Louis I, emperor of the West. Louis the German received the eastern portion (later Germany); Charles II (Charles the Bald) became king of the western portion (late...

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...

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...

The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts, as well as the deadliest European religious war, in history. It took place in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648 and resulted in eight million casualties. Ini...

The Great Turkish War refers to a series of conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and contemporary European powers, then joined into a Holy League, during the second half of the 17th century. The Great Turkish War was a disaster for the Otto...

The Battle of Vienna (as distinct from the Siege of Vienna in 1529) took place on September 11 and September 12 1683 after Vienna had been besieged by Turks for two months. It was the first large-scale battle of the Habsburg-Ottoman Wars, y...

The War of the Spanish Succession was fought among several European powers, principally the Holy Roman Empire, Great Britain, the Dutch Republic, Portugal, and the Duchy of Savoy, against the Kingdoms of France and Spain and the Electorate...

The War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) – also known as King George's War in North America, and incorporating the War of Jenkins' Ear with Spain and two of the three Silesian wars – involved nearly all the powers of Europe, except for...

The Kingdom of Great Britain was one of the leading participants in the Seven Years War which lasted between 1754 and 1763. Britain emerged from the war as the world's leading colonial power having gained a number of new territories at the...

The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was Napoleon's greatest victory, where the French Empire effectively crushed the Third Coalition. On 2 December 1805 (20 November Old Style, 11 Frimaire, XIV, in the...

The Battle of Leipzig or Battle of the Nations was fought by the coalition armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Sweden led by the Russian Czar Alexander I against the French army of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, at Leipzig, Saxony....

Gregor Johann Mendel was a Austrian priest and scientist, and is often called the father of genetics for his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants. Mendel showed that the inheritance of traits follows particular laws, which were...

Eduard Suess was a geologist who was an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for discovering two of the Earth's major now-lost geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana (proposed 1861) and the Tethys Ocean. Sue...

The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, Springtime of the Peoples or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe. It was the first (and only) Europe-wide collaps...