Monarchy: Did you mean...?

The affair of the diamond necklace (1784-86) was a scandal that centered around Queen Marie Antoinette of France (l. 1755-1793). Although the queen was innocent of any involvement in a plot to steal a luxurious diamond necklace, the scandal...

Beginning in the 16th century, Protestants in France struggled in their rapport with royal power. Protestants owed the recognition of their rights more to sovereign decrees than to genuine tolerance or religious pluralism. The realization...

On 20 April 1792, King Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792) stood before the Legislative Assembly and, with a faltering voice, read a declaration of war against Austria, to the ecstatic delight of the gathered deputies. This declaration sealed...

The Storming of the Bastille was a decisive moment in the early months of the French Revolution (1789-1799). On 14 July 1789, the Bastille, a fortress and political prison symbolizing the oppressiveness of France’s Ancien Régime was attacked...

Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (1758-1794) was a French lawyer who became one of the primary leaders of the French Revolution (1789-1799). From his initial rise to stardom in the Jacobin Club, Robespierre went on to dominate...

John Locke (1632-1704) was an English philosopher responsible for laying the foundation of the European Enlightenment. Locke believed that each branch of government should have separate powers, that liberty must be protected from state interference...

Montesquieu (1689-1757) was a French philosopher whose ideas in works like The Spirit of the Laws helped launch the Enlightenment movement in Europe. His ideas on the separation of powers, that is, between the executive, legislative, and...

The Puritans were English Protestant Christians, primarily active in the 16th-18th centuries CE, who claimed the Anglican Church had not distanced itself sufficiently from Catholicism and sought to 'purify' it of Catholic practices. The term...

The Thermidorian Reaction refers to the period of the French Revolution (1789-1799) between the fall of Maximilien Robespierre on 27-28 July 1794 and the establishment of the French Directory on 2 November 1795. The Thermidorians abandoned...

The government of Carthage was based on a system of elected officials accountable to a popular assembly. Unlike its founding city, Tyre in Phoenicia, Carthage did not have a monarchy but its politics was dominated by an aristocratic elite...