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178-563: Located in a widened part of the street so that carriages could pull up in front, the opera house is 71.5 meters long, 31 meters wide, and 26 meters tall. The building was constructed according to plans designed by the French architect Joseph Saint-Pierre  [ de ] (ca. 1709 – 1754), court builder of the Hohenzollern margrave Frederick of Brandenburg-Bayreuth and his wife Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia . The sandstone façade

356-648: A Parliament and a constitutional Charter , usually known as the " Charte octroyée " ("Granted Charter"). His reign was characterized by disagreements between the Doctrinaires , liberal thinkers who supported the Charter and the rising bourgeoisie , and the Ultra-royalists , aristocrats and clergymen who totally refused the Revolution's heritage. Peace was maintained by statesmen like Talleyrand and

534-438: A centralized state governed from the capital of Paris. He sought to eliminate the remnants of feudalism still persisting in parts of France and, by compelling the noble elite to regularly inhabit his lavish Palace of Versailles , built on the outskirts of Paris, succeeded in pacifying the aristocracy, many members of which had participated in the earlier " Fronde " rebellion during Louis' minority. By these means he consolidated

712-545: A revolt led by Eleanor and three of their four sons, Henry had Eleanor imprisoned, made the Duke of Brittany his vassal, and in effect ruled the western half of France as a greater power than the French throne. However, disputes among Henry's descendants over the division of his French territories, coupled with John of England 's lengthy quarrel with Philip II , allowed Philip to recover influence over most of this territory. After

890-421: A few families and still others lived on isolated farms spread over the countryside. There were also areas where the pattern was a mix of two or more of those systems. Unlike in the late Roman period, there was no sharp break between the legal status of the free peasant and the aristocrat, and it was possible for a free peasant's family to rise into the aristocracy over several generations through military service to

1068-601: A king to rule over them all. By the late sixth century, this arrangement had been replaced by a permanent monarchy, the Kingdom of the Lombards . The invasions brought new ethnic groups to Europe, although some regions received a larger influx of new peoples than others. In Gaul for instance, the invaders settled much more extensively in the north-east than in the south-west. Slavs settled in Central and Eastern Europe and

1246-792: A long-standing dispute over the rights to Gascony in the south of France, and the relationship between England and the Flemish cloth towns, led to the Hundred Years' War of 1337–1453. The following century was to see devastating warfare, the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War , peasant revolts (the English peasants' revolt of 1381 and the Jacquerie of 1358 in France) and the growth of nationalism in both countries. The losses of

1424-567: A powerful lord. Roman city life and culture changed greatly in the early Middle Ages. Although Italian cities remained inhabited, they contracted significantly in size. Rome, for instance, shrank from a population of hundreds of thousands to around 30,000 by the end of the 6th century. Roman temples were converted into Christian churches and city walls remained in use. In Northern Europe, cities also shrank, while civic monuments and other public buildings were raided for building materials. The establishment of new kingdoms often meant some growth for

1602-466: A practical skill rather than a sign of elite status. In the 4th century, Jerome (d. 420) dreamed that God rebuked him for spending more time reading Cicero than the Bible . By the 6th century, Gregory of Tours (d. 594) had a similar dream, but instead of being chastised for reading Cicero, he was chastised for learning shorthand . By the late 6th century, the principal means of religious instruction in

1780-474: A small foothold in southern Spain. Justinian's reconquests have been criticised by historians for overextending his realm and setting the stage for the early Muslim conquests , but many of the difficulties faced by Justinian's successors were due not just to over-taxation to pay for his wars but to the essentially civilian nature of the empire, which made raising troops difficult. In the Eastern Empire

1958-716: A superpower from 1643 until 1815; from the reign of King Louis XIV until the defeat of Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars . The Spanish Empire lost its superpower status to France after the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees (but maintained the status of Great Power until the Napoleonic Wars and the Independence of Spanish America ). France lost its superpower status after Napoleon 's defeat against

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2136-578: A system of absolute monarchy in France that endured 150 years until the French Revolution . McCabe says critics used fiction to portray the degraded Turkish court, using "the harem, the Sultan court, oriental despotism, luxury, gems and spices, carpets, and silk cushions" as an unfavorable analogy to the corruption of the French royal court. The king sought to impose total religious uniformity on

2314-590: Is highly ornamented with symbols of the House of Brandenburg and is completely preserved in its original condition, except for the curtain which was taken by Napoleon 's troops on their march to the 1812 Russian campaign . However, The Court Loge was seldom used by the art-minded margravial couple, who preferred a front-row seat. The Bayreuth Opera House was inaugurated on the occasion of the marriage of their daughter Elisabeth Fredericka Sophie with Duke Charles Eugene of Württemberg . Princess Wilhelmine, older sister of

2492-672: Is no universally agreed upon end date. Depending on the context, events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Christopher Columbus 's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, or the Protestant Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period. For Spain, dates commonly used are the death of King Ferdinand II in 1516,

2670-722: Is the historiographical name or umbrella term given to various political entities of France in the medieval and early modern period. It was one of the most powerful states in Europe from the High Middle Ages to 1848 during its dissolution. It was also an early colonial power , with colonies in Asia and Africa, and the largest being New France in North America centred around the Great Lakes. The Kingdom of France

2848-539: The fyrd , which were led by the local elites. In military technology, one of the main changes was the return of the crossbow , which had been known in Roman times and reappeared as a military weapon during the last part of the Early Middle Ages. Another change was the introduction of the stirrup, which increased the effectiveness of cavalry as shock troops. A technological advance that had implications beyond

3026-717: The Alans , Vandals , and Suevi crossed into Gaul ; over the next three years they spread across Gaul and in 409 crossed the Pyrenees Mountains into modern-day Spain. The Migration Period began, when various peoples, initially largely Germanic peoples , moved across Europe. The Franks , Alemanni , and the Burgundians all ended up in northern Gaul while the Angles , Saxons , and Jutes settled in Britain , and

3204-529: The Benedictine Rule for Western monasticism during the 6th century, detailing the administrative and spiritual responsibilities of a community of monks led by an abbot . Monks and monasteries had a deep effect on the religious and political life of the Early Middle Ages, in various cases acting as land trusts for powerful families, centres of propaganda and royal support in newly conquered regions, and bases for missions and proselytisation. They were

3382-678: The British , Prussians and Russians in 1815 . Following the French Revolution , which began in 1789, the Kingdom of France adopted a written constitution in 1791, but the Kingdom was abolished a year later and replaced with the First French Republic . The monarchy was restored by the other great powers in 1814 and, with the exception of the Hundred Days in 1815, lasted until the French Revolution of 1848 . During

3560-556: The Capetian dynasty on the throne. With its offshoots, the houses of Valois and Bourbon , it was to rule France for more than 800 years. The old order left the new dynasty in immediate control of little beyond the middle Seine and adjacent territories, while powerful territorial lords such as the 10th- and 11th-century counts of Blois accumulated large domains of their own through marriage and through private arrangements with lesser nobles for protection and support. The area around

3738-697: The Carolingian dynasty , briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th and early 9th centuries. It covered much of Western Europe but later succumbed to the pressures of internal civil wars combined with external invasions: Vikings from the north, Magyars from the east, and Saracens from the south. During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased greatly as technological and agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish and

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3916-531: The Desert Fathers of Egypt and Syria . Most European monasteries were of the type that focuses on community experience of the spiritual life, called cenobitism , which was pioneered by Pachomius (d. 348) in the 4th century. Monastic ideals spread from Egypt to Western Europe in the 5th and 6th centuries through hagiographical literature such as the Life of Anthony . Benedict of Nursia (d. 547) wrote

4094-694: The Duke of Richelieu , as well as the King's moderation and prudent intervention. In 1823, the Trienio Liberal revolt in Spain led to a French intervention on the royalists' side, which permitted King Ferdinand VII of Spain to abolish the Constitution of 1812 . However, the work of Louis XVIII was frustrated when, after his death on 16 September 1824, his brother the Count of Artois became king under

4272-655: The Franco-Dutch War , 1672–1678) brought further territorial gains ( Artois and western Flanders and the free County of Burgundy , previously left to the Empire in 1482), but at the cost of the increasingly concerted opposition of rival royal powers, and a legacy of an increasingly enormous national debt . An adherent of the theory of the "Divine Right of Kings" , which advocates the divine origin of temporal power and any lack of earthly restraint of monarchical rule, Louis XIV continued his predecessors' work of creating

4450-584: The Gregorian chant in liturgical music for the churches. An important activity for scholars during this period was the copying, correcting, and dissemination of basic works on religious and secular topics, with the aim of encouraging learning. New works on religious topics and schoolbooks were also produced. Grammarians of the period modified the Latin language, changing it from the Classical Latin of

4628-586: The High Middle Ages . The first king calling himself rex Francie ('King of France') was Philip II , in 1190, and officially from 1204. From then, France was continuously ruled by the Capetians and their cadet lines under the Valois and Bourbon until the monarchy was abolished in 1792 during the French Revolution . The Kingdom of France was also ruled in personal union with the Kingdom of Navarre over two time periods, 1284–1328 and 1572–1620, after which

4806-647: The Holy Roman Empire and not yet a part of France. West Frankish kings were initially elected by the secular and ecclesiastical magnates, but the regular coronation of the eldest son of the reigning king during his father's lifetime established the principle of male primogeniture , which became codified in the Salic law . During the Late Middle Ages , rivalry between the Capetian dynasty, rulers of

4984-533: The Hundred Days . When a Seventh European Coalition again deposed Napoleon after the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the Bourbon monarchy was once again restored. The Count of Provence - brother of Louis XVI, who was guillotined in 1793 - was crowned as Louis XVIII , nicknamed "The Desired". Louis XVIII tried to conciliate the legacies of the Revolution and the Ancien Régime, by permitting the formation of

5162-543: The Industrial Revolution that was beginning in Britain, the rising middle class of the cities felt increasingly frustrated with a system and rulers that seemed silly, frivolous, aloof, and antiquated, even if true feudalism no longer existed in France. Upon Louis XV's death, his grandson Louis XVI became king. Initially popular, he too came to be widely detested by the 1780s. He was married to an Austrian archduchess, Marie Antoinette . French intervention in

5340-612: The Jansenists , a group that denied free will and had already been condemned by the popes. In this, he garnered the friendship of the papacy, which had previously been hostile to France because of its policy of putting all church property in the country under the jurisdiction of the state rather than that of Rome. In November 1700, King Charles II of Spain died, ending the Habsburg line in that country. Louis had long planned for this moment, but these plans were thrown into disarray by

5518-624: The July Revolution . The King abdicated, as did his son the Dauphin Louis Antoine , in favour of his grandson Henri, Count of Chambord , nominating his cousin the Duke of Orléans as regent. However, it was too late, and the liberal opposition won out over the monarchy. On 9 August 1830, the Chamber of Deputies elected Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans as "King of the French": for the first time since French Revolution,

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5696-677: The Loire , the Seine , and other inland waterways increased. During the reign of Charles the Simple (898–922), Vikings under Rollo from Scandinavia settled along the Seine, downstream from Paris, in a region that came to be known as Normandy . The Carolingians were to share the fate of their predecessors: after an intermittent power struggle between the two dynasties, the accession in 987 of Hugh Capet , Duke of France and Count of Paris, established

5874-714: The Macedonian dynasty . Commerce revived and the emperors oversaw the extension of a uniform administration to all the provinces. The military was reorganised, which allowed the emperors John I (r. 969–976) and Basil II (r. 976–1025) to expand the frontiers of the empire on all fronts. The imperial court was the centre of a revival of classical learning, a process known as the Macedonian Renaissance . Writers such as John Geometres ( fl. early 10th century) composed new hymns, poems, and other works. Missionary efforts by both Eastern and Western clergy resulted in

6052-486: The Medieval Warm Period climate change allowed crop yields to increase. Manorialism , the organisation of peasants into villages that owed rent and labour services to the nobles , and feudalism , the political structure whereby knights and lower-status nobles owed military service to their overlords in return for the right to rent from lands and manors , were two of the ways society was organized in

6230-559: The Prussian king Frederick the Great , had established the margravial theatre company in 1737. In the new opera house she participated as a composer of opera works and Singspiele , as well as an actor and director. Today she features in a sound-and-light presentation for tourists. After her death in 1758, performances ceased and the building went into disuse, one reason for its good conservation status. More than one hundred years later,

6408-700: The Renaissance and the Age of Discovery . The Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity , the medieval period, and the modern period . The medieval period is itself subdivided into the Early , High , and Late Middle Ages . Population decline , counterurbanisation , the collapse of centralized authority, invasions, and mass migrations of tribes , which had begun in Late Antiquity , continued into

6586-597: The Third Republic , the French monarchy has not restored. Before the 13th century, only a small part of what is now France was under control of the Frankish king; in the north there were Viking incursions leading to the formation of the Duchy of Normandy ; in the west, the counts of Anjou established themselves as powerful rivals of the king, by the late 11th century ruling over the " Angevin Empire ", which included

6764-646: The War of the Polish Succession from 1733 to 1735. Large-scale warfare resumed with the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748). But alliance with the traditional Habsburg enemy (the " Diplomatic Revolution " of 1756) against the rising power of Britain and Prussia led to costly failure in the Seven Years' War (1756–63) and the loss of France's North American colonies. On the whole,

6942-740: The War of the Three Henrys in which Henry III assassinated Henry de Guise , leader of the Spanish-backed Catholic League , and the king was murdered in return. After the assassination of both Henry of Guise (1588) and Henry III (1589), the conflict was ended by the accession of the Protestant king of Navarre as Henry IV (first king of the Bourbon dynasty ) and his subsequent abandonment of Protestantism (Expedient of 1592) effective in 1593, his acceptance by most of

7120-590: The conquest of Algeria . The absolutist tendencies of the King were disliked by the Doctrinaire majority in the Chamber of Deputies , that on 18 March 1830 sent an address to the King, upholding the rights of the Chamber and in effect supporting a transition to a full parliamentary system. Charles X received this address as a veiled threat, and in 25 July of the same year, he issued the St. Cloud Ordinances , in an attempt to reduce Parliament's powers and re-establish absolute rule. The opposition reacted with riots in Parliament and barricades in Paris, that resulted in

7298-451: The kingdom of England . It was only with Philip II of France that the bulk of the territory of Western Francia came under the rule of the Frankish kings, and Philip was consequently the first king to call himself "king of France" (1190). The division of France between the Angevin (Plantagenet) kings of England and the Capetian kings of France would lead to the Hundred Years' War , and France would regain control over these territories only by

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7476-411: The 11th century and increased intermittently throughout the Middle Ages, with multiple expulsions and returns. Middle Ages In the history of Europe , the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the Post-classical period of global history . It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and transitioned into

7654-444: The 17th century under Louis XIV . Throughout the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, France was Europe's richest, largest, most populous, powerful and influential country. In parallel, France developed its first colonial empire in Asia, Africa, and in the Americas. In the 16th to the 17th centuries, the First French colonial empire stretched from a total area at its peak in 1680 to over 10,000,000 square kilometres (3,900,000 sq mi),

7832-408: The 17th-century German historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods: ancient, medieval, and modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is around 500, with the date of 476 first used by Bruni. Later starting dates are sometimes used in the outer parts of Europe. For Europe as a whole, 1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there

8010-448: The 18th century saw growing discontent with the monarchy and the established order. Louis XV was a highly unpopular king for his sexual excesses, overall weakness, and for losing New France to the British. The writings of the philosophes such as Voltaire were a clear sign of discontent, but the king chose to ignore them. He died of smallpox in 1774, and the French people shed few tears at his death. While France had not yet experienced

8188-427: The 5th and the 7th centuries, going first to England and Scotland and then on to the continent. Under such monks as Columba (d. 597) and Columbanus (d. 615), they founded monasteries, taught in Latin and Greek, and authored secular and religious works. The Early Middle Ages witnessed the rise of monasticism in the West. The shape of European monasticism was determined by traditions and ideas that originated with

8366-475: The 5th century. The Eastern Empire was marked by closer relations between the political state and Christian Church, with doctrinal matters assuming an importance in Eastern politics that they did not have in Western Europe. Legal developments included the codification of Roman law ; the first effort—the Codex Theodosianus —was completed in 438. Under Emperor Justinian (r. 527–565), another compilation took place—the Corpus Juris Civilis . Justinian also oversaw

8544-462: The 6th and 7th centuries, all of them ruled by the Merovingian dynasty, who were descended from Clovis. The 7th century was a tumultuous period of wars between Austrasia and Neustria. Such warfare was exploited by Pippin (d. 640), the Mayor of the Palace for Austrasia who became the power behind the Austrasian throne. Later members of his family inherited the office, acting as advisers and regents. One of his descendants, Charles Martel (d. 741), won

8722-471: The American War of Independence was also very expensive. With the country deeply in debt, Louis XVI permitted the radical reforms of Turgot and Malesherbes , but noble disaffection led to Turgot's dismissal and Malesherbes' resignation in 1776. They were replaced by Jacques Necker . Necker had resigned in 1781 to be replaced by Calonne and Brienne , before being restored in 1788. A harsh winter that year led to widespread food shortages, and by then France

8900-418: The Ancien Régime were the result of years of state-building, legislative acts (like the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts ), internal conflicts and civil wars, but they remained a confusing patchwork of local privilege and historic differences until the French Revolution brought about a radical suppression of administrative incoherence. For most of the reign of Louis XIV (1643–1715), ("The Sun King"), France

9078-484: The Arabs. The migrations and invasions of the 4th and 5th centuries disrupted trade networks around the Mediterranean. African goods stopped being imported into Europe, first disappearing from the interior and by the 7th century found only in a few cities such as Rome or Naples . By the end of the 7th century, under the impact of the Muslim conquests , African products were no longer found in Western Europe. The replacement of goods from long-range trade with local products

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9256-425: The Bald received the western Frankish lands, comprising most of modern-day France. Charlemagne's grandsons and great-grandsons divided their kingdoms between their descendants, eventually causing all internal cohesion to be lost. In 987 the Carolingian dynasty was replaced in the western lands, with the crowning of Hugh Capet (r. 987–996) as king. In the eastern lands the dynasty had died out earlier, in 911, with

9434-417: The Balkan Peninsula. The settlement of peoples was accompanied by changes in languages. Latin , the literary language of the Western Roman Empire, was gradually replaced by vernacular languages which evolved from Latin, but were distinct from it, collectively known as Romance languages . These changes from Latin to the new languages took many centuries. Greek remained the language of the Byzantine Empire, but

9612-474: The Battle of Poitiers in 732, halting the advance of Muslim armies across the Pyrenees. Great Britain was divided into small states dominated by the kingdoms of Northumbria , Mercia , Wessex , and East Anglia which descended from the Anglo-Saxon invaders. Smaller kingdoms in present-day Wales and Scotland were still under the control of the native Britons and Picts . Ireland was divided into even smaller political units, usually known as tribal kingdoms, under

9790-459: The Byzantine Empire, as the assumption of the imperial title by the Carolingians asserted their equivalence to the Byzantine state. There were several differences between the newly established Carolingian Empire and both the older Western Roman Empire and the concurrent Byzantine Empire. The Frankish lands were rural in character, with only a few small cities. Most of the people were peasants settled on small farms. Little trade existed and much of that

9968-467: The Byzantine Empire, which he sealed with the marriage of his son Otto II (r. 967–983) to Theophanu (d. 991), daughter of an earlier Byzantine Emperor Romanos II (r. 959–963). By the late 10th century Italy had been drawn into the Ottonian sphere after a period of instability; Otto III (r. 996–1002) spent much of his later reign in the kingdom. The western Frankish kingdom was more fragmented, and although kings remained nominally in charge, much of

10146-477: The Catholic establishment (1594) and by the Pope (1595), and his issue of the toleration decree known as the Edict of Nantes (1598), which guaranteed freedom of private worship and civil equality. France's pacification under Henry IV laid much of the ground for the beginnings of France's rise to European hegemony. France was expansive during all but the end of the seventeenth century: the French began trading in India and Madagascar , founded Quebec and penetrated

10324-400: The Catholic majority and a Protestant minority, the Huguenots , which led to a series of civil wars, the Wars of Religion (1562–1598). The Wars of Religion crippled France, but triumph over Spain and the Habsburg monarchy in the Thirty Years' War made France the most powerful nation on the continent once more. The kingdom became Europe's dominant cultural, political and military power in

10502-462: The Christian period as nova (or "new"). Petrarch regarded the post-Roman centuries as " dark " compared to the "light" of classical antiquity . Leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People (1442), with a middle period "between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of city life sometime in late eleventh and twelfth centuries". Tripartite periodisation became standard after

10680-422: The Church had widened to the extent that the cultural and religious differences were greater than the similarities. The formal break, known as the East–West Schism , came in 1054, when the papacy and the patriarchy of Constantinople clashed over papal supremacy and excommunicated each other, which led to the division of Christianity into two Churches—the Western branch became the Roman Catholic Church and

10858-499: The Church had become music and art rather than the book. Most intellectual efforts went towards imitating classical scholarship, but some original works were created, along with now-lost oral compositions. The writings of Sidonius Apollinaris (d. 489), Cassiodorus (d. c.  585 ), and Boethius (d. c. 525) were typical of the age. Changes also took place among laymen, as aristocratic culture focused on great feasts held in halls rather than on literary pursuits. Clothing for

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11036-448: The Dnieper River in modern Ukraine to the Adriatic Sea. By 1018, the last Bulgarian nobles had surrendered to the Byzantine Empire. Few large stone buildings were constructed between the Constantinian basilicas of the 4th century and the 8th century, although many smaller ones were built during the 6th and 7th centuries. By the beginning of the 8th century, the Carolingian Empire revived the basilica form of architecture. One feature of

11214-534: The Early Middle Ages are mostly illuminated manuscripts and carved ivories , originally made for metalwork that has since been melted down. Objects in precious metals were the most prestigious form of art, but almost all are lost except for a few crosses such as the Cross of Lothair , several reliquaries , and finds such as the Anglo-Saxon burial at Sutton Hoo and the hoards of Gourdon from Merovingian France, Guarrazar from Visigothic Spain and Nagyszentmiklós near Byzantine territory. There are survivals from

11392-457: The Early Middle Ages. The large-scale movements of the Migration Period , including various Germanic peoples , formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the 7th century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire —came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate , an Islamic empire, after conquest by Muhammad's successors . Although there were substantial changes in society and political structures,

11570-455: The Eastern branch the Eastern Orthodox Church . The ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Empire survived the movements and invasions in the west mostly intact, but the papacy was little regarded, and few of the Western bishops looked to the bishop of Rome for religious or political leadership. Many of the popes prior to 750 were more concerned with Byzantine affairs and Eastern theological controversies. The register, or archived copies of

11748-427: The Eastern emperors to pay tribute. They remained a strong power until 796. An additional problem to face the empire came as a result of the involvement of Emperor Maurice (r. 582–602) in Persian politics when he intervened in a succession dispute . This led to a period of peace, but when Maurice was overthrown, the Persians invaded and during the reign of Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641) controlled large chunks of

11926-436: The European population remained rural peasants. Many were no longer settled in isolated farms but had gathered into small communities, usually known as manors or villages. These peasants were often subject to noble overlords and owed them rents and other services, in a system known as manorialism . There remained a few free peasants throughout this period and beyond, with more of them in the regions of Southern Europe than in

12104-441: The Frankish King Charles the Simple (r. 898–922) to settle in what became Normandy . The eastern parts of the Frankish kingdoms, especially Germany and Italy, were under continual Magyar assault until the invader's defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955. The breakup of the Abbasid dynasty meant that the Islamic world fragmented into smaller political states, some of which began expanding into Italy and Sicily, as well as over

12282-466: The Franks and Celtic Britons set up small polities. Francia was centred in northern Gaul, and the first king of whom much is known is Childeric I (d. 481). His grave was discovered in 1653 and is remarkable for its grave goods , which included weapons and a large quantity of gold. Under Childeric's son Clovis I (r. 509–511), the founder of the Merovingian dynasty , the Frankish kingdom expanded and converted to Christianity. The Britons, related to

12460-419: The French monarchy maintained a significant degree of autonomy, namely through its policy of " Gallicanism ", whereby the king selected bishops rather than the papacy. During the Protestant Reformation of the mid 16th century, France developed a large and influential Protestant population, primarily of Reformed confession; after French theologian and pastor John Calvin introduced the Reformation in France,

12638-450: The French monarchy was effectively abolished by the proclamation of the French First Republic . The role of the King in France was finally ended with the execution of Louis XVI by guillotine on Monday, January 21, 1793, followed by the " Reign of Terror ", mass executions and the provisional " Directory " form of republican government, and the eventual beginnings of twenty-five years of reform, upheaval, dictatorship, wars and renewal, with

12816-510: The French victory at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214, the English monarchs maintained power only in southwestern Duchy of Aquitaine . The death of Charles IV of France in 1328 without male heirs ended the main Capetian line. Under Salic law the crown could not pass through a woman (Philip IV's daughter was Isabella , whose son was Edward III of England ), so the throne passed to Philip VI , son of Charles of Valois . This, in addition to

12994-633: The German tried to annex all of East Francia. Louis the Pious died in 840, with the empire still in chaos. A three-year civil war followed his death. By the Treaty of Verdun (843), a kingdom between the Rhine and Rhone rivers was created for Lothair to go with his lands in Italy, and his imperial title was recognised. Louis the German was in control of Bavaria and the eastern lands in modern-day Germany. Charles

13172-648: The Great (d. 526) and set up a kingdom marked by its co-operation between the Italians and the Ostrogoths, at least until the last years of Theodoric's reign. The Burgundians settled in Gaul, and after an earlier realm was destroyed by the Huns in 436, formed a new kingdom in the 440s. Between today's Geneva and Lyon , it grew to become the realm of Burgundy in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. Elsewhere in Gaul,

13350-560: The High Middle Ages. This period also saw the collapse of the unified Christian church, with the East-West Schism of 1054 . The Crusades , first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims . Kings became the heads of centralised nation-states , reducing crime and violence but making the ideal of a unified Christendom more distant. Intellectual life

13528-583: The Italian peninsula was conquered by the Ostrogoths . The Eastern Roman Empire, often referred to as the Byzantine Empire after the fall of its western counterpart, had little ability to assert control over the lost western territories. The Byzantine emperors maintained a claim over the territory, but while none of the new kings in the west dared to elevate himself to the position of emperor of

13706-511: The King was designated as the ruler of the French people and not the country. The Bourbon white flag was substituted with the French tricolour , and a new Charter was introduced in August 1830. The conquest of Algeria continued, and new settlements were established in the Gulf of Guinea , Gabon , Madagascar , and Mayotte , while Tahiti was placed under protectorate . However, despite

13884-496: The Kingdom of France and their vassals the House of Plantagenet , who also ruled the Kingdom of England as part of their so-called competing Angevin Empire , resulted in many armed struggles. The most notorious of them all are the series of conflicts known as the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) in which the kings of England laid claim to the French throne. Emerging victorious from said conflicts, France subsequently sought to extend its influence into Italy , but after initial gains

14062-808: The Late Middle Ages and beginning the early modern period . The Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history : classical civilisation or Antiquity , the Middle Ages and the Modern Period . The "Middle Ages" first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or "middle season". In early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum , or "middle age", first recorded in 1604, and media saecula , or "middle centuries", first recorded in 1625. The adjective "medieval" (or sometimes "mediaeval" or "mediæval"), meaning pertaining to

14240-476: The League of Augsburg") had just concluded. The reign (1715–1774) of Louis XV saw an initial return to peace and prosperity under the regency (1715–1723) of Philippe II, Duke of Orléans , whose policies were largely continued (1726–1743) by Cardinal Fleury , prime minister in all but name. The exhaustion of Europe after two major wars resulted in a long period of peace, only interrupted by minor conflicts like

14418-686: The Lombards, which freed the papacy from the fear of Lombard conquest and marked the beginnings of the Papal States . The coronation of Charlemagne as emperor on Christmas Day 800 is regarded as a turning point in medieval history, marking a return of the Western Roman Empire, since the new emperor ruled over much of the area previously controlled by the Western emperors. It also marks a change in Charlemagne's relationship with

14596-528: The Mediterranean, pottery remained prevalent and appears to have been traded over medium-range networks, not just produced locally. The various Germanic states in the west all had coinages that imitated existing Roman and Byzantine forms. Gold continued to be minted until the end of the 7th century in 693-94 when it was replaced by silver in the Merovingian kingdom. The basic Frankish silver coin

14774-411: The Middle Ages, derives from medium aevum . Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the " Six Ages " or the " Four Empires ", and considered their time to be the last before the end of the world. When referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being "modern". In the 1330s, the Italian humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua (or "ancient") and to

14952-893: The Middle East than Europe, losing control of sections of the Muslim lands. Umayyad descendants took over the Iberian Peninsula, the Aghlabids controlled North Africa, and the Tulunids became rulers of Egypt. By the middle of the 8th century, new trading patterns were emerging in the Mediterranean; trade between the Franks and the Arabs replaced the old Roman economy . Franks traded timber, furs, swords and slaves in return for silks and other fabrics, spices, and precious metals from

15130-790: The North American Great Lakes and Mississippi , established plantation economies in the West Indies and extended their trade contacts in the Levant and enlarged their merchant marine . Henry IV's son Louis XIII and his minister (1624–1642) Cardinal Richelieu , elaborated a policy against Spain and the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) which had broken out in Germany. After

15308-837: The Opera House. The theatre was the site of the annual Bayreuther Osterfestival until 2009. Each September from the year 2000 to 2009, the theatre also hosted the Bayreuth Baroque festival, with performances of early operatic rarities. The 2009 festival included performances of Andrea Bernasconi 's festa teatrale , L'Huomo , to a libretto by the Margravine Wilhelmine . Bayreuth Baroque was revived in 2020. The theatre closed in October 2012 for extensive refurbishment and redevelopment and reopened on 12 April 2018. Kingdom of France The Kingdom of France

15486-666: The Pyrenees into the southern parts of the Frankish kingdoms. Efforts by local kings to fight the invaders led to the formation of new political entities. In Anglo-Saxon England , King Alfred the Great (r. 871–899) came to an agreement with the Viking invaders in the late 9th century, resulting in Danish settlements in Northumbria, Mercia, and parts of East Anglia. By the middle of the 10th century, Alfred's successors had conquered Northumbria, and restored English control over most of

15664-623: The Rhine and eastwards, leaving Charles West Francia with the empire to the west of the Rhineland and the Alps. Louis the German (d. 876), the middle child, who had been rebellious to the last, was allowed to keep Bavaria under the suzerainty of his elder brother. The division was disputed. Pepin II of Aquitaine (d. after 864), the emperor's grandson, rebelled in a contest for Aquitaine , while Louis

15842-629: The Roman Empire into a more flexible form to fit the needs of the Church and government. By the reign of Charlemagne, the language had so diverged from the classical Latin that it was later called Medieval Latin . Charlemagne planned to continue the Frankish tradition of dividing his kingdom between all his heirs, but was unable to do so as only one son, Louis the Pious (r. 814–840), was still alive by 813. Just before Charlemagne died in 814, he crowned Louis as his successor. Louis's reign of 26 years

16020-496: The Romans and the invaders are often similar, and tribal items were often modelled on Roman objects. Much of the scholarly and written culture of the new kingdoms was also based on Roman intellectual traditions. An important difference was the gradual loss of tax revenue by the new polities. Many of the new political entities no longer supported their armies through taxes, instead relying on granting them land or rents. This meant there

16198-463: The Spanish territory of Roussillon after the crushing of the ephemeral Catalan Republic and ushered a short period of peace. The Ancien Régime , a French term rendered in English as "Old Rule", or simply "Former Regime", refers primarily to the aristocratic, social and political system of early modern France under the late Valois and Bourbon dynasties. The administrative and social structures of

16376-585: The Vandals went on to cross the strait of Gibraltar after which they conquered the province of Africa . In the 430s the Huns began invading the empire; their king Attila (r. 434–453) led invasions into the Balkans in 442 and 447, Gaul in 451, and Italy in 452. The Hunnic threat remained until Attila's death in 453, when the Hunnic confederation he led fell apart. These invasions by the tribes completely changed

16554-506: The West were not uniform; some areas had greatly fragmented landholding patterns, but in other areas large contiguous blocks of land were the norm. These differences allowed for a wide variety of peasant societies, some dominated by aristocratic landholders and others having a great deal of autonomy. Land settlement also varied greatly. Some peasants lived in large settlements that numbered as many as 700 inhabitants. Others lived in small groups of

16732-567: The acceptance of figurative monumental sculpture in Christian art , and by the end of the period near life-sized figures such as the Gero Cross were common in important churches. During the later Roman Empire, the principal military developments were attempts to create an effective cavalry force as well as the continued development of highly specialised types of troops. The creation of heavily armoured cataphract -type soldiers as cavalry

16910-417: The basilica is the use of a transept , or the "arms" of a cross-shaped building that are perpendicular to the long nave . Other new features of religious architecture include the crossing tower and a monumental entrance to the church , usually at the west end of the building. Carolingian art was produced for a small group of figures around the court, and the monasteries and churches they supported. It

17088-702: The break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire, Rome's direct continuation, survived in the Eastern Mediterranean and remained a major power. The empire's law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or "Code of Justinian", was rediscovered in Northern Italy in the 11th century. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions. Monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks , under

17266-567: The century of war were enormous, particularly owing to the plague (the Black Death , usually considered an outbreak of bubonic plague ), which arrived from Italy in 1348, spreading rapidly up the Rhône valley and thence across most of the country: it is estimated that a population of some 18–20 million in modern-day France at the time of the 1328 hearth tax returns had been reduced 150 years later by 50 percent or more. The Renaissance era

17444-407: The city of Byzantium as the newly renamed eastern capital, Constantinople . Diocletian's reforms strengthened the governmental bureaucracy, reformed taxation, and strengthened the army, which bought the empire time but did not resolve the problems it was facing: excessive taxation, a declining birthrate, and pressures on its frontiers, among others. Civil war between rival emperors became common in

17622-599: The conquest of North Africa sundered maritime connections between those areas. Increasingly, the Byzantine Church differed in language, practices, and liturgy from the Western Church. The Eastern Church used Greek instead of the Western Latin. Theological and political differences emerged, and by the early and middle 8th century issues such as iconoclasm , clerical marriage , and state control of

17800-684: The construction of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and the reconquest of North Africa from the Vandals and Italy from the Ostrogoths, under Belisarius (d. 565). The conquest of Italy was not complete, as a deadly outbreak of plague in 542 led to the rest of Justinian's reign concentrating on defensive measures rather than further conquests. At the Emperor's death, the Byzantines had control of most of Italy , North Africa, and

17978-551: The control of kings. There were perhaps as many as 150 local kings in Ireland, of varying importance. The Carolingian dynasty , as the successors to Charles Martel are known, officially took control of the kingdoms of Austrasia and Neustria in a coup of 753 led by Pippin III (r. 752–768). A contemporary chronicle claims that Pippin sought, and gained, authority for this coup from Pope Stephen II (pope 752–757). Pippin's takeover

18156-638: The conversion of the Moravians , Bulgars , Bohemians , Poles , Magyars, and Slavic inhabitants of the Kievan Rus' . These conversions contributed to the founding of political states in the lands of those peoples—the states of Moravia , Bulgaria , Bohemia , Poland , Hungary, and the Kievan Rus'. Bulgaria, which was founded around 680, at its height reached from Budapest to the Black Sea and from

18334-489: The country, repealing the Edict of Nantes in 1685. It is estimated that anywhere between 150,000 and 300,000 Protestants fled France during the wave of persecution that followed the repeal, (following " Huguenots " beginning a hundred and fifty years earlier until the end of the 18th century) costing the country a great many intellectuals, artisans, and other valuable people. Persecution extended to unorthodox Roman Catholics like

18512-514: The crown unrivalled power in senior ecclesiastical appointments, France was deeply affected by the Protestant Reformation 's attempt to break the hegemony of Catholic Europe. A growing urban-based Protestant minority (later dubbed Huguenots ) faced ever harsher repression under the rule of Francis I's son King Henry II . After Henry II's death in a joust, the country was ruled by his widow Catherine de' Medici and her sons Francis II , Charles IX and Henry III . Renewed Catholic reaction headed by

18690-769: The death of Louis the Child , and the selection of the unrelated Conrad I (r. 911–918) as king. The breakup of the Carolingian Empire was accompanied by invasions, migrations, and raids by external foes. The Atlantic and northern shores were harassed by the Vikings , who also raided the British Isles and settled there as well as in Iceland. In 911, the Viking chieftain Rollo (d. c. 931) received permission from

18868-401: The death of Queen Isabella I of Castile in 1504, or the conquest of Granada in 1492. Historians from Romance-speaking countries tend to divide the Middle Ages into two parts: an earlier "High" and later "Low" period. English-speaking historians, following their German counterparts, generally subdivide the Middle Ages into three intervals: "Early", "High", and "Late". In the 19th century,

19046-574: The death of both king and cardinal, the Peace of Westphalia (1648) secured universal acceptance of Germany's political and religious fragmentation, but the Regency of Anne of Austria and her minister Cardinal Mazarin experienced a civil uprising known as the Fronde (1648–1653) which expanded into a Franco-Spanish War (1635–1659) . The Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) formalised France's seizure (1642) of

19224-578: The disorder, was killed fighting the Goths at the Battle of Adrianople on 9 August 378. In addition to the threat from such tribal confederacies in the north, internal divisions within the empire, especially within the Christian Church, caused problems. In 400, the Visigoths invaded the Western Roman Empire and, although briefly forced back from Italy, in 410 sacked the city of Rome . In 406

19402-502: The early Carolingian period, with a growing dominance of elite heavy cavalry. The use of militia-type levies of the free population declined over the Carolingian period. Although much of the Carolingian armies were mounted, a large proportion during the early period appear to have been mounted infantry , rather than true cavalry. One exception was Anglo-Saxon England, where the armies were still composed of regional levies, known as

19580-531: The elites was richly embellished with jewels and gold. Lords and kings supported entourages of fighters who formed the backbone of the military forces. Family ties within the elites were important, as were the virtues of loyalty, courage, and honour. These ties led to the prevalence of the feud in aristocratic society, examples of which included those related by Gregory of Tours that took place in Merovingian Gaul. Most feuds seem to have ended quickly with

19758-591: The emergence of Islam in Arabia during the lifetime of Muhammad (d. 632). After his death, Islamic forces conquered much of the Eastern Roman Empire and Persia, starting with Syria in 634–635, continuing with Persia between 637 and 642, reaching Egypt in 640–641, North Africa in the later seventh century, and the Iberian Peninsula in 711. By 714, Islamic forces controlled much of

19936-403: The empire than tax-payers. The Emperor Diocletian (r. 284–305) split the empire into separately administered eastern and western halves in 286; the empire was not considered divided by its inhabitants or rulers, as legal and administrative promulgations in one division were considered valid in the other. In 330, after a period of civil war, Constantine the Great (r. 306–337) refounded

20114-573: The empire to Christianity , a gradual process that lasted from the 2nd to the 5th centuries. In 376, the Goths , fleeing from the Huns , received permission from Emperor Valens (r. 364–378) to settle in the Roman province of Thracia in the Balkans . The settlement did not go smoothly, and when Roman officials mishandled the situation, the Goths began to raid and plunder. Valens, attempting to put down

20292-447: The empire, including Egypt, Syria, and Anatolia until Heraclius' successful counterattack. In 628 the empire secured a peace treaty and recovered all of its lost territories. In Western Europe, some of the older Roman elite families died out while others became more involved with ecclesiastical than secular affairs. Values attached to Latin scholarship and education mostly disappeared, and while literacy remained important, it became

20470-486: The empire. Such movements were aided by the refusal of the Western Roman elites to support the army or pay the taxes that would have allowed the military to suppress the migration. The emperors of the 5th century were often controlled by military strongmen such as Stilicho (d. 408), Aetius (d. 454), Aspar (d. 471), Ricimer (d. 472), or Gundobad (d. 516), who were partly or fully of non-Roman background. When

20648-402: The end of the Hundred Years' War: Prior to the French Revolution , the Catholic Church was the official state religion of the Kingdom of France. France was traditionally considered the Church's eldest daughter (French: Fille aînée de l'Église ), and the King of France always maintained close links to the Pope, receiving the title Most Christian Majesty from the Pope in 1464. However,

20826-454: The entire Middle Ages were often referred to as the " Dark Ages ", but with the adoption of these subdivisions, use of this term was restricted to the Early Middle Ages, at least among historians. The Roman Empire reached its greatest territorial extent during the 2nd century AD; the following two centuries witnessed the slow decline of Roman control over its outlying territories. Economic issues, including inflation, and external pressure on

21004-405: The frontiers combined to create the Crisis of the Third Century , with emperors coming to the throne only to be rapidly replaced by new usurpers. Military expenses increased steadily during the 3rd century, mainly in response to the war with the Sasanian Empire , which revived in the middle of the 3rd century. The army doubled in size, and cavalry and smaller units replaced the Roman legion as

21182-399: The imperial officials called missi dominici , who served as roving inspectors and troubleshooters. Charlemagne's court in Aachen was the centre of the cultural revival sometimes referred to as the " Carolingian Renaissance ". Literacy increased, as did development in the arts, architecture and jurisprudence, as well as liturgical and scriptural studies. The English monk Alcuin (d. 804)

21360-418: The initial reforms, Louis Philippe was little different from his predecessors. The old nobility was replaced by urban bourgeoisie, and the working class was excluded from voting. Louis Philippe appointed notable bourgeois as Prime Minister , like banker Casimir Périer , academic François Guizot , general Jean-de-Dieu Soult , and thus obtained the nickname of "Citizen King" ( Roi-Citoyen ). The July Monarchy

21538-450: The institutions of Navarre were abolished and it was fully annexed by France (though the King of France continued to use the title "King of Navarre" through the end of the monarchy). France in the Middle Ages was a decentralised, feudal monarchy. In Brittany and Catalonia (the latter now a part of Spain), as well as Aquitaine , the authority of the French king was barely felt. Lorraine , Provence and East Burgundy were states of

21716-415: The king of the united Austrasia and Neustria. Charles, more often known as Charles the Great or Charlemagne , embarked upon a programme of systematic expansion in 774 that unified a large portion of Europe, eventually controlling modern-day France, northern Italy, and Saxony . In the wars that lasted beyond 800, he rewarded allies with war booty and command over parcels of land. In 774, Charlemagne conquered

21894-405: The kingdom of France. Charles the Bald was also crowned King of Lotharingia after the death of Lothair II in 869, but in the Treaty of Meerssen (870) was forced to cede much of Lotharingia to his brothers, retaining the Rhône and Meuse basins (including Verdun , Vienne and Besançon ) but leaving the Rhineland with Aachen , Metz , and Trier in East Francia . Viking incursions up

22072-500: The large brooches in fibula or penannular form that were a key piece of personal adornment for elites, including the Irish Tara Brooch . Highly decorated books were mostly Gospel Books and these have survived in larger numbers , including the Insular Book of Kells , the Book of Lindisfarne , and the imperial Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram , which is one of the few to retain its " treasure binding " of gold encrusted with jewels. Charlemagne's court seems to have been responsible for

22250-501: The late 17th century by Louis XIV . The resulting exodus of Huguenots from the Kingdom of France created a brain drain , as many of them had occupied important places in society. Jews have a documented presence in France since at least the early Middle Ages . The Kingdom of France was a center of Jewish learning in the Middle Ages, producing influential Jewish scholars such as Rashi and even hosting theological debates between Jews and Christians. Widespread persecution began in

22428-435: The later years of Charlemagne 's rule, the Vikings made advances along the northern and western perimeters of the Kingdom of the Franks . After Charlemagne's death in 814 his heirs were incapable of maintaining political unity and the empire began to crumble. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 divided the Carolingian Empire into three parts, with Charles the Bald ruling over West Francia , the nucleus of what would develop into

22606-415: The letters, of Pope Gregory the Great (pope 590–604) survived, and of those more than 850 letters, the vast majority were concerned with affairs in Italy or Constantinople. The only part of Western Europe where the papacy had influence was Britain, where Gregory had sent the Gregorian mission in 597 to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Irish missionaries were most active in Western Europe between

22784-417: The line of Western emperors ceased, many of the kings who replaced them were from the same background. Intermarriage between the new kings and the Roman elites was common. This led to a fusion of Roman culture with the customs of the invading tribes, including the popular assemblies that allowed free male tribal members more say in political matters than was common in the Roman state. Material artefacts left by

22962-479: The lower Seine became a source of particular concern when Duke William of Normandy took possession of the Kingdom of England by the Norman Conquest of 1066, making himself and his heirs the king's equal outside France (where he was still nominally subject to the Crown). Henry II inherited the Duchy of Normandy and the County of Anjou , and married France's newly single ex-queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine , who ruled much of southwest France, in 1152. After defeating

23140-517: The main and sometimes only outposts of education and literacy in a region. Many of the surviving manuscripts of the Latin classics were copied in monasteries in the Early Middle Ages. Monks were also the authors of new works, including history, theology, and other subjects, written by authors such as Bede (d. 735), a native of northern England who wrote in the late 7th and early 8th centuries. The Frankish kingdom in northern Gaul split into kingdoms called Austrasia , Neustria , and Burgundy during

23318-410: The main tactical unit. The need for revenue led to increased taxes and a decline in numbers of the curial , or landowning, class, and decreasing numbers of them willing to shoulder the burdens of holding office in their native towns. More bureaucrats were needed in the central administration to deal with the needs of the army, which led to complaints from civilians that there were more tax-collectors in

23496-418: The mid 15th century. What is now eastern France (Lorraine, Arelat) was not part of Western Francia to begin with and was only incorporated into the kingdom during the early modern period . Territories inherited from Western Francia: Acquisitions during the 13th to 14th centuries: Acquisitions from the Plantagenet kings of England with the French victory in the Hundred Years' War 1453 Acquisitions after

23674-401: The middle of the 4th century, diverting soldiers from the empire's frontier forces and allowing invaders to encroach. For much of the 4th century, Roman society stabilised in a new form that differed from the earlier classical period , with a widening gulf between the rich and poor, and a decline in the vitality of the smaller towns. Another change was the Christianisation , or conversion of

23852-436: The migrations of the Slavs added Slavic languages to Eastern Europe. As Western Europe witnessed the formation of new kingdoms, the Eastern Roman Empire remained intact and experienced an economic revival that lasted into the early 7th century. There were fewer invasions of the eastern section of the empire; most occurred in the Balkans. Peace with the Sasanian Empire , the traditional enemy of Rome, lasted throughout most of

24030-464: The military was the horseshoe , which allowed horses to be used in rocky terrain. The High Middle Ages was a period of tremendous expansion of population . The estimated population of Europe grew from 35 to 80 million between 1000 and 1347, although the exact causes remain unclear: improved agricultural techniques, the decline of slaveholding, a more clement climate and the lack of invasion have all been suggested. As much as 90 per cent of

24208-405: The name of Charles X . Charles X was a strong reactionary who supported the ultra-royalists and the Catholic Church . Under his reign, the censorship of newspapers was reinforced, the Anti-Sacrilege Act passed, and compensations to Émigrés were increased. However, the reign also witnessed the French intervention in the Greek Revolution in favour of the Greek rebels, and the first phase of

24386-429: The natives of Britannia  – modern-day Great Britain – settled in what is now Brittany . Other monarchies were established by the Visigothic Kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula , the Suebi in northwestern Iberia, and the Vandal Kingdom in North Africa . In the sixth century, the Lombards settled in Northern Italy , replacing the Ostrogothic kingdom with a grouping of duchies that occasionally selected

24564-441: The number of French Protestants ( Huguenots ) steadily swelled to 10 percent of the population, or roughly 1.8 million people. The ensuring French Wars of Religion , and particularly the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre , decimated the Huguenot community; Protestants declined to seven to eight percent of the kingdom's population by the end of the 16th century. The Edict of Nantes brought decades of respite until its revocation in

24742-478: The payment of some sort of compensation . Women took part in aristocratic society mainly in their roles as wives and mothers of men, with the role of mother of a ruler being especially prominent in Merovingian Gaul. In Anglo-Saxon society the lack of many child rulers meant a lesser role for women as queen mothers, but this was compensated for by the increased role played by abbesses of monasteries. Only in Italy does it appear that women were always considered under

24920-467: The peninsula in a region they called Al-Andalus . The Islamic conquests reached their peak in the mid-eighth century. The defeat of Muslim forces at the Battle of Tours in 732 led to the reconquest of southern France by the Franks, but the main reason for the halt of Islamic growth in Europe was the overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate and its replacement by the Abbasid Caliphate . The Abbasids moved their capital to Baghdad and were more concerned with

25098-408: The political and demographic nature of what had been the Western Roman Empire. By the end of the 5th century the western section of the empire was divided into smaller political units, ruled by the tribes that had invaded in the early part of the century. The deposition of the last emperor of the west, Romulus Augustulus , in 476 has traditionally marked the end of the Western Roman Empire. By 493

25276-532: The political power devolved to the local lords. Missionary efforts to Scandinavia during the 9th and 10th centuries helped strengthen the growth of kingdoms such as Sweden , Denmark , and Norway , which gained power and territory. Some kings converted to Christianity, although not all by 1000. Scandinavians also expanded and colonised throughout Europe. Besides the settlements in Ireland, England, and Normandy, further settlement took place in what became Russia and Iceland . Swedish traders and raiders ranged down

25454-429: The powerful dukes of Guise culminated in a massacre of Huguenots (1572), starting the first of the French Wars of Religion , during which English, German, and Spanish forces intervened on the side of rival Protestant and Catholic forces. Opposed to absolute monarchy, the Huguenot Monarchomachs theorized during this time the right of rebellion and the legitimacy of tyrannicide . The Wars of Religion culminated in

25632-419: The protection and control of a male relative. Peasant society is much less documented than the nobility. Most of the surviving information available to historians comes from archaeology ; few detailed written records documenting peasant life remain from before the 9th century. Most of the descriptions of the lower classes come from either law codes or writers from the upper classes. Landholding patterns in

25810-470: The rivers of the Russian steppe, and even attempted to seize Constantinople in 860 and 907 . Christian Spain, initially driven into a small section of the peninsula in the north, expanded slowly south during the 9th and 10th centuries, establishing the kingdoms of Asturias and León . In Eastern Europe, Byzantium revived its fortunes under Emperor Basil I (r. 867–886) and his successors Leo VI (r. 886–912) and Constantine VII (r. 913–959), members of

25988-450: The second-largest empire in the world at the time behind the Spanish Empire . Colonial conflicts with Great Britain led to the loss of much of its North American holdings by 1763. French intervention in the American Revolutionary War helped the United States secure independence from King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain , but was costly and achieved little for France. France through its French colonial empire , became

26166-449: The slow infiltration of the Balkans by the Slavs added a further difficulty for Justinian's successors. It began gradually, but by the late 540s Slavic tribes were in Thrace and Illyrium , and had defeated an imperial army near Adrianople in 551. In the 560s the Avars began to expand from their base on the north bank of the Danube ; by the end of the 6th-century, they were the dominant power in Central Europe and routinely able to force

26344-430: The southern part of Great Britain. In northern Britain, Kenneth MacAlpin (d. c. 860) united the Picts and the Scots into the Kingdom of Alba . In the early 10th century, the Ottonian dynasty had established itself in Germany , and was engaged in driving back the Magyars. Its efforts culminated in the coronation in 962 of Otto I (r. 936–973) as Holy Roman Emperor . In 972, he secured recognition of his title by

26522-405: The stage's great depth of 27 metres (89 ft) attracted the composer Richard Wagner , who in 1872 chose Bayreuth as festival centre and had the Festspielhaus built north of the town. The foundation stone ceremony was held on 22 May, Wagner's birthday, and included a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 , directed by the maestro. Parts of the 1994 biopic Farinelli were filmed in

26700-430: The throne would end up recreating the grand multi-national Empire of Charles V ; of the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and the Spanish territories in Italy, which would also grossly upset the power balance. However, the rest of Europe would not stand for his ambitions in Spain, and so the long War of the Spanish Succession began (1701–1714), a mere three years after the War of the Grand Alliance (1688–1697, a.k.a. "War of

26878-447: The towns chosen as capitals. Although there had been Jewish communities in many Roman cities , the Jews suffered periods of persecution after the conversion of the empire to Christianity. Officially they were tolerated, if subject to conversion efforts, and at times were even encouraged to settle in new areas. Religious beliefs in the Eastern Roman Empire and Iran were in flux during the late sixth and early seventh centuries. Judaism

27056-401: The various Napoleonic Wars . Following the French Revolution (1789–99) and the First French Empire under Napoleon (1804–1814), the monarchy was restored when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the House of Bourbon in 1814. However the deposed Emperor Napoleon I returned triumphantly to Paris from his exile in Elba and ruled France for a short period known as

27234-418: The way for France to undertake the long Italian Wars (1494–1559), which marked the beginning of early modern France. French efforts to gain dominance resulted only in the increased power of the House of Habsburg . Barely were the Italian Wars over, when France was plunged into a domestic crisis with far-reaching consequences. Despite the conclusion of a Concordat between France and the Papacy (1516), granting

27412-514: The west, Byzantine control of most of the Western Empire could not be sustained; the reconquest of the Mediterranean periphery and the Italian Peninsula ( Gothic War ) in the reign of Justinian (r. 527–565) was the sole, and temporary, exception. The political structure of Western Europe changed with the end of the united Roman Empire. Although the movements of peoples during this period are usually described as "invasions", they were not just military expeditions but migrations of entire peoples into

27590-464: The will of King Charles, which left the entire Spanish Empire to Louis's grandson Philip, Duke of Anjou , (1683–1746). Essentially, Spain was to become a perpetual ally and even obedient satellite of France, ruled by a king who would carry out orders from Versailles. Realizing how this would upset the balance of power, the other European rulers were outraged. However, most of the alternatives were equally undesirable. For example, putting another Habsburg on

27768-478: Was a powder keg ready to explode. On the eve of the French Revolution of July 1789, France was in a profound institutional and financial crisis, but the ideas of the Enlightenment had begun to permeate the educated classes of society. On September 3, 1791, the absolute monarchy which had governed France for 948 years was forced to limit its power and become a provisional constitutional monarchy. However, this too would not last very long and on September 21, 1792,

27946-438: Was a trend throughout the old Roman lands that happened in the Early Middle Ages. This was especially marked in the lands that did not lie on the Mediterranean, such as northern Gaul or Britain. Non-local goods appearing in the archaeological record are usually luxury goods. In the northern parts of Europe, not only were the trade networks local, but the goods carried were simple, with little pottery or other complex products. Around

28124-402: Was an active proselytising faith, and at least one Arab political leader converted to it. In addition Jewish theologians wrote polemics defending their religion against Christian and Islamic influences. Christianity had active missions competing with the Persians' Zoroastrianism in seeking converts, especially among residents of the Arabian Peninsula . All these strands came together with

28302-438: Was an important feature of the 5th-century Roman military. The various invading tribes had differing emphases on types of soldiers—ranging from the primarily infantry Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain to the Vandals and Visigoths who had a high proportion of cavalry in their armies. During the early invasion period, the stirrup had not been introduced into warfare, which limited the usefulness of cavalry as shock troops because it

28480-414: Was beset by corruption scandals and financial crisis. The opposition of the King was composed of Legitimists , supporting the Count of Chambord , Bourbon claimant to the throne, and of Bonapartists and Republicans , who fought against royalty and supported the principles of democracy. The King tried to suppress the opposition with censorship, but when the Campagne des banquets ("Banquets' Campaign")

28658-422: Was built in a bell shape and can seat roughly 500 people. Intricately covered in gold accents, with a trompe-l'œil ceiling, the interior may have attempted to imitate precious stones like lapis lazuli. Some areas of the interior are covered with painted canvas in order to avoid cracks and improve acoustics. The Court Loge built for the Margrave is located opposite the stage, taking up all three box stories. It

28836-514: Was defeated by Spain and the Holy Roman Empire in the ensuing Italian Wars (1494–1559). France in the early modern era was increasingly centralised; the French language began to displace other languages from official use, and the monarch expanded his absolute power in an administrative system, known as the Ancien Régime , complicated by historic and regional irregularities in taxation, legal, judicial, and ecclesiastic divisions, and local prerogatives. Religiously, France became divided between

29014-405: Was descended directly from the western Frankish realm of the Carolingian Empire , which was ceded to Charles the Bald with the Treaty of Verdun (843). A branch of the Carolingian dynasty continued to rule until 987, when Hugh Capet was elected king and founded the Capetian dynasty . The territory remained known as Francia and its ruler as rex Francorum ('king of the Franks') well into

29192-407: Was designed to blend with the surrounding buildings and to reference the Place Vendôme in Paris, with large Corinthian columns. A balustrade stretched across the entire façade, with sculptures of Minerva , Apollo , and 6 Muses placed atop. The wooden interior was designed by Giuseppe Galli Bibiena (1696–1757) and his son Carlo from Bologna in an Italian Late Baroque style. The auditorium

29370-420: Was dominated by efforts to regain the dignity and classicism of imperial Roman and Byzantine art , but was also influenced by the Insular art of the British Isles. Insular art integrated the energy of Irish Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Germanic styles of ornament with Mediterranean forms such as the book, and established many characteristics of art for the rest of the medieval period. Surviving religious works from

29548-408: Was invited to Aachen and brought the education available in the monasteries of Northumbria. Charlemagne's chancery —or writing office—made use of a new script today known as Carolingian minuscule , allowing a common writing style that advanced communication across much of Europe. Charlemagne sponsored changes in church liturgy , imposing the Roman form of church service on his domains, as well as

29726-434: Was less need for large tax revenues and so the taxation systems decayed. Warfare was common between and within the kingdoms. Slavery declined as the supply weakened, and society became more rural. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, new peoples and individuals filled the political void left by Roman centralised government. The Ostrogoths , a Gothic tribe, settled in Roman Italy in the late fifth century under Theoderic

29904-436: Was marked by scholasticism , a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities . The theology of Thomas Aquinas , the paintings of Giotto , the poetry of Dante and Chaucer , the travels of Marco Polo , and the Gothic architecture of cathedrals such as Chartres are among the outstanding achievements toward the end of this period and into the Late Middle Ages. The Late Middle Ages

30082-470: Was marked by difficulties and calamities including famine, plague, and war, which significantly diminished the population of Europe; between 1347 and 1350, the Black Death killed about a third of Europeans. Controversy, heresy , and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the interstate conflict, civil strife, and peasant revolts that occurred in the kingdoms. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding

30260-439: Was marked by numerous divisions of the empire among his sons and, after 829, civil wars between various alliances of father and sons over the control of various parts of the empire. Eventually, Louis recognised his eldest son Lothair I (d. 855) as emperor and gave him Italy. Louis divided the rest of the empire between Lothair and Charles the Bald (d. 877), his youngest son. Lothair took East Francia , comprising both banks of

30438-496: Was not possible to put the full force of the horse and rider behind blows struck by the rider. The greatest change in military affairs during the invasion period was the adoption of the Hunnic composite bow in place of the earlier, and weaker, Scythian composite bow. Another development was the increasing use of longswords and the progressive replacement of scale armour by mail armour and lamellar armour . The importance of infantry and light cavalry began to decline during

30616-425: Was noted for the emergence of powerful centralized institutions, as well as a flourishing culture (much of it imported from Italy ). The kings built a strong fiscal system, which heightened the power of the king to raise armies that overawed the local nobility. In Paris especially there emerged strong traditions in literature, art and music. The prevailing style was classical . The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts

30794-442: Was reinforced with propaganda that portrayed the Merovingians as inept or cruel rulers, exalted the accomplishments of Charles Martel, and circulated stories of the family's great piety. At the time of his death in 768, Pippin left his kingdom in the hands of his two sons, Charles (r. 768–814) and Carloman (r. 768–771). When Carloman died of natural causes, Charles blocked the succession of Carloman's young son and installed himself as

30972-412: Was repressed in February 1848, riots and seditions erupted in Paris and later all France, resulting in the February Revolution . The National Guard refused to repress the rebellion, resulting in Louis Philippe abdicating and fleeing to England. On 24 February 1848, the monarchy was abolished and the Second Republic was proclaimed. Despite later attempts to re-establish the Kingdom in the 1870s, during

31150-591: Was signed into law by Francis I in 1539. Largely the work of Chancellor Guillaume Poyet , it dealt with a number of government, judicial and ecclesiastical matters. Articles 110 and 111, the most famous, called for the use of the French language in all legal acts, notarised contracts and official legislation. After the Hundred Years' War, Charles VIII of France signed three additional treaties with Henry VII of England , Emperor Maximilian I , and Ferdinand II of Aragon respectively at Étaples (1492), Senlis (1493) and Barcelona (1493). These three treaties cleared

31328-417: Was the denarius or denier , while the Anglo-Saxon version was called a penny . From these areas, the denier or penny spread throughout Europe from 700 to 1000 AD. Copper or bronze coins were not struck, nor were gold except in Southern Europe. No silver coins denominated in multiple units were minted. Christianity was a major unifying factor between Eastern and Western Europe before the Arab conquests, but

31506-423: Was the dominant power in Europe, aided by the diplomacy of Cardinal Richelieu's successor as the King's chief minister, (1642–61) Cardinal Jules Mazarin , (1602–1661). Cardinal Mazarin oversaw the creation of a French Royal Navy that rivalled England's , expanding it from 25 ships to almost 200. The size of the French Royal Army was also considerably increased. Renewed wars (the War of Devolution , 1667–1668 and

31684-409: Was with the British Isles and Scandinavia, in contrast to the older Roman Empire with its trading networks centred on the Mediterranean. The empire was administered by an itinerant court that travelled with the emperor, as well as approximately 300 imperial officials called counts , who administered the counties the empire had been divided into. Clergy and local bishops served as officials, as well as

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