Frederick the Great was the Hohenzollern King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786 and is regarded as one of the "enlightened despots" of 18th century Europe. He was highly educated and built his government as a model of efficiency, creating the fi...

The Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht, comprises a series of individual peace treaties, rather than a single document, signed by the belligerents in the War of the Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht in...

Charles Edward Stuart, commonly known in Britain during his lifetime as The Young Pretender, and often referred to in retrospective accounts as Bonnie Prince Charlie, was the second Jacobite pretender to the thrones of England, Scotland, an...

Samuel Adams was a statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. As a politician in colonial Massachusetts, Adams was a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and was one of the...

George Washington was the first, and only nonpartisan, President of the United States (1789–97), the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He...

Thomas Paine, intellectual, scholar, revolutionary, and idealist, is widely recognized as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A radical pamphleteer, Paine anticipated and helped foment the American Revolution through his power...

Britain's King George III was the 18th century monarch who lost the fight to keep control over the American colonies. The third monarch of the Hanover house and the first to be born in England, he held the throne from 1760 until 1820, a rei...

Jean-Paul Marat was a physician, political theorist and scientist best known for his career in France as a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution. His journalism became renowned for its fierce tone, uncompromising st...

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, third president of the United States 1801-1809, and founder of the University of Virginia, voiced the aspirations of a new Americ...

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau was a French revolutionary, as well as a writer, diplomat, journalist and French politician. He was a popular orator and statesman. During the French Revolution, he was a moderate, favoring a consti...

Madison, James, 4th President of the United States (1809–1817). A member of the Virginia planter class, he attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton Univ.), graduating in 1771. Like George Washington and others, he opposed the colon...

Louis XVI was King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then King of the French in 1791-1792. Suspended and arrested during the insurrection of the 10th of August, he was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of treason...

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Benevente, the Prince of Diplomats, was a French diplomat. He worked successfully from the regime of Louis XVI, through the French Revolution and then under Napoleon I, Louis XVIII and Louis...

William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism. Godwin is most famous for two books that he published...

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre, known to his contemporaries also as "the Incorruptible", is one of the best known of the leaders of the French Revolution. He earned the nickname of "the Incorruptible" through his selfless...