1.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
2.
Michel de Montaigne
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Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Lord of Montaigne was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with serious intellectual insight, in his own lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. In time, however, Montaigne would come to be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time and he is most famously known for his skeptical remark, Que sçay-je. Much of modern literary non-fiction has found inspiration in Montaigne and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his balance of intellectual knowledge. Montaigne was born in the Aquitaine region of France, on the family estate Château de Montaigne, in a town now called Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne, close to Bordeaux. The family was wealthy, his great-grandfather, Ramon Felipe Eyquem, had made a fortune as a herring merchant and had bought the estate in 1477. His father, Pierre Eyquem, Seigneur of Montaigne, was a French Catholic soldier in Italy for a time and had also been the mayor of Bordeaux. Although there were several families bearing the patronym Eyquem in Guyenne and his mother, Antoinette López de Villanueva, was a convert to Protestantism. His maternal grandfather, Pedro Lopez, from Zaragoza, was from a wealthy Marrano family who had converted to Catholicism and his maternal grandmother, Honorette Dupuy, was from a Catholic family in Gascony, France. His mother lived a part of Montaignes life near him, and even survived him. Montaignes relationship with his father, however, is reflected upon. Montaignes education began in childhood and followed a pedagogical plan that his father had developed, refined by the advice of the latters humanist friends. After these first spartan years, Montaigne was brought back to the château, the objective was for Latin to become his first language. The intellectual education of Montaigne was assigned to a German tutor and his father hired only servants who could speak Latin, and they also were given strict orders always to speak to the boy in Latin. The same rule applied to his mother, father, and servants, who were obliged to use only Latin words he himself employed, Montaignes Latin education was accompanied by constant intellectual and spiritual stimulation. He was familiarized with Greek by a method that employed games, conversation. The atmosphere of the upbringing, although designed by highly refined rules taken under advisement by his father, created in the boys life the spirit of liberty. Duty by an unforced will, and of my own voluntary motion. without any severity or constraint and he then began his study of law at the University of Toulouse in 1546 and entered a career in the local legal system
3.
University of Paris
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The University of Paris, metonymically known as the Sorbonne, was a university in Paris, France. Emerging around 1150 as an associated with the cathedral school of Notre Dame de Paris. Vast numbers of popes, royalties, scientists and intellectuals were educated at the University of Paris, following the turbulence of the French Revolution, education was suspended in 1793 whereafter its faculties were partly reorganised by Napoleon as the University of France. In 1896, it was renamed again to the University of Paris, in 1970, following the May 1968 events, the university was divided into 13 autonomous universities. Others, like Panthéon-Sorbonne University, chose to be multidisciplinary, in 1150, the future University of Paris was a student-teacher corporation operating as an annex of the Notre-Dame cathedral school. The university had four faculties, Arts, Medicine, Law, the Faculty of Arts was the lowest in rank, but also the largest, as students had to graduate there in order to be admitted to one of the higher faculties. The students were divided into four nationes according to language or regional origin, France, Normandy, Picardy, the last came to be known as the Alemannian nation. Recruitment to each nation was wider than the names might imply, the faculty and nation system of the University of Paris became the model for all later medieval universities. Under the governance of the Church, students wore robes and shaved the tops of their heads in tonsure, students followed the rules and laws of the Church and were not subject to the kings laws or courts. This presented problems for the city of Paris, as students ran wild, students were often very young, entering the school at age 13 or 14 and staying for 6 to 12 years. Three schools were especially famous in Paris, the palatine or palace school, the school of Notre-Dame, the decline of royalty brought about the decline of the first. The other two were ancient but did not have much visibility in the early centuries, the glory of the palatine school doubtless eclipsed theirs, until it completely gave way to them. These two centres were much frequented and many of their masters were esteemed for their learning, the first renowned professor at the school of Ste-Geneviève was Hubold, who lived in the tenth century. Not content with the courses at Liège, he continued his studies at Paris, entered or allied himself with the chapter of Ste-Geneviève, and attracted many pupils via his teaching. Distinguished professors from the school of Notre-Dame in the century include Lambert, disciple of Fulbert of Chartres, Drogo of Paris, Manegold of Germany. Three other men who added prestige to the schools of Notre-Dame and Ste-Geneviève were William of Champeaux, Abélard, humanistic instruction comprised grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. To the higher instruction belonged dogmatic and moral theology, whose source was the Scriptures and it was completed by the study of Canon law. The School of Saint-Victor arose to rival those of Notre-Dame and Ste-Geneviève and it was founded by William of Champeaux when he withdrew to the Abbey of Saint-Victor
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Romanticism
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Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was embodied most strongly in the arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of heroic individualists and artists, whose examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society. It also promoted the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art, there was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the 19th century, Realism was offered as a polar opposite to Romanticism, the decline of Romanticism during this time was associated with multiple processes, including social and political changes and the spread of nationalism. Defining the nature of Romanticism may be approached from the point of the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist. The importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich that the feeling is his law. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were laws that the imagination—at least of a good creative artist—would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone. As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creators own imagination, so that originality was essential. The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism. This idea is called romantic originality. Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief, however, this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. Romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the voice of the artist. So, in literature, much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves. In both French and German the closeness of the adjective to roman, meaning the new literary form of the novel, had some effect on the sense of the word in those languages. It is only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, the period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought. Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place roughly between 1770 and 1848, and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature, M. H. Abrams placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter a very typical view, and about 1830, however, in most fields the Romantic Period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier
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Greece
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Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, historically also known as Hellas, is a country in southeastern Europe, with a population of approximately 11 million as of 2015. Athens is the capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki. Greece is strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, situated on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. Greece consists of nine regions, Macedonia, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus, the Aegean Islands, Thrace, Crete. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, the Cretan Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin and the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km in length, featuring a vast number of islands, eighty percent of Greece is mountainous, with Mount Olympus being the highest peak at 2,918 metres. From the eighth century BC, the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as polis, which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC, becoming a part of the Roman Empire and its successor. The Greek Orthodox Church also shaped modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World, falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, the modern nation state of Greece emerged in 1830 following a war of independence. Greeces rich historical legacy is reflected by its 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, among the most in Europe, Greece is a democratic and developed country with an advanced high-income economy, a high quality of life, and a very high standard of living. A founding member of the United Nations, Greece was the member to join the European Communities and has been part of the Eurozone since 2001. Greeces unique cultural heritage, large industry, prominent shipping sector. It is the largest economy in the Balkans, where it is an important regional investor, the names for the nation of Greece and the Greek people differ from the names used in other languages, locations and cultures. The earliest evidence of the presence of human ancestors in the southern Balkans, dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, all three stages of the stone age are represented in Greece, for example in the Franchthi Cave. Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe by several centuries and these civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans writing in an undeciphered script known as Linear A, and the Mycenaeans in Linear B, an early form of Greek. The Mycenaeans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC and this ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent. The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, in 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the worlds first democratic system of government in Athens
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Oliver Cromwell
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Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader and later Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Cromwell was born into the gentry, albeit to a family descended from the sister of King Henry VIIIs minister Thomas Cromwell. Little is known of the first 40 years of his life as only four of his letters survive alongside a summary of a speech he delivered in 1628. He became an Independent Puritan after undergoing a conversion in the 1630s. He was a religious man, a self-styled Puritan Moses. He was elected Member of Parliament for Huntingdon in 1628 and for Cambridge in the Short and he entered the English Civil War on the side of the Roundheads or Parliamentarians. Cromwell was one of the signatories of King Charles Is death warrant in 1649 and he was selected to take command of the English campaign in Ireland in 1649–1650. Cromwells forces defeated the Confederate and Royalist coalition in Ireland and occupied the country, during this period, a series of Penal Laws were passed against Roman Catholics, and a substantial amount of their land was confiscated. Cromwell also led a campaign against the Scottish army between 1650 and 1651, as a ruler, he executed an aggressive and effective foreign policy. He died from natural causes in 1658 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, the Royalists returned to power in 1660, and they had his corpse dug up, hung in chains, and beheaded. In a 2002 BBC poll in Britain, Cromwell, sponsored by military historian Richard Holmes was selected as one of the ten greatest Britons of all time. However, his measures against Catholics in Scotland and Ireland have been characterised as genocidal or near-genocidal, Cromwell was born in Huntingdon on 25 April 1599 to Robert Cromwell and Elizabeth Steward. Katherine married Morgan ap William, son of William ap Yevan of Wales, Henry suggested to Sir Richard Williams, who was the first to use a surname in his family, that he use Cromwell, in honour of his uncle Thomas Cromwell. They had ten children, but Oliver, the child, was the only boy to survive infancy. Jasper was the uncle of Henry VII and great uncle of Henry VIII, Cromwells paternal grandfather Sir Henry Williams was one of the two wealthiest landowners in Huntingdonshire. Cromwells father Robert was of modest means but still a part of the gentry class, as a younger son with many siblings, Robert inherited only a house at Huntingdon and a small amount of land. This land would have generated an income of up to £300 a year, near the bottom of the range of gentry incomes, Cromwell himself in 1654 said, I was by birth a gentleman, living neither in considerable height, nor yet in obscurity. He was baptised on 29 April 1599 at St Johns Church and he went on to study at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, then a recently founded college with a strong Puritan ethos
7.
July Revolution
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Supporters of the Bourbon would be called Legitimists, and supporters of Louis Philippe Orléanists. On 16 September 1824, Charles X ascended to the throne of France and he was the younger brother of Louis XVIII, who, upon the defeat of Napoleon I, and by agreement of the Allied powers, had been installed as King of France. Both Louis and Charles ruled by right rather than Revolution. Upon the abdication of Napoleon in 1814, continental Europe, the Congress of Vienna met to redraw the continents political map. Another very influential person at the Congress was Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, although France was considered an enemy state, Talleyrand was allowed to attend the Congress because he claimed that he had only cooperated with Napoleon under duress. Talleyrand proposed that Europe be restored to its borders and governments. France returned to its 1789 borders and the House of Bourbon, the Congress however forced Louis to grant the Charte constitutionnelle française, the French Constitution otherwise known as La Charte. This document was the trigger of the July Revolution. On 16 September 1824, after an illness of several months. Therefore, his brother, Charles, aged 66, inherited the throne of France. On 27 September Charles X as he was now known, made his entry into Paris to popular acclaim. But eight months later, the mood of the capital had sharply worsened in its opinion of the new king, the causes of this dramatic shift in public opinion were many, but the main two were, The imposition of the death penalty for anyone profaning the Eucharist. The provisions for financial indemnities for properties confiscated by the 1789 Revolution and these indemnities to be paid to any one, whether noble or non-noble, who had been declared enemies of the Revolution. Critics of the first accused the king and his new ministry of pandering to the Catholic Church, the second matter, that of financial indemnities, was far more opportunistic than the first. But opponents, many of whom were frustrated Bonapartists, began a campaign that Charles X was only proposing this in order to shame those who had not emigrated. Both measures, they claimed, were nothing more than clever subterfuge meant to bring about the destruction of La Charte and this, too, was about to change. On 12 April, propelled by both genuine conviction and the spirit of independence, the Chamber of Deputies roundly rejected the proposal to change the inheritance laws. The popular newspaper Le Constitutionnel pronounced this refusal a victory over the forces of counter-revolutionaries, the popularity of both the Chamber of Peers and the Chamber of Deputies skyrocketed, and the popularity of the king and his ministry dropped
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