The coming millennium seems already an anti-climax, particularly since it comes a year too early. The last millennium was a very different affair, though recent historians seem to have rejected some of the persistent myths about it - for instance, that entire large areas of Europe gave up working, tilling the soil and other normal activities in expectation of the imminent Second Coming.
There is little doubt, however, that a great many Christians did sincerely believe that the end of the world, and Judgment Day, were at hand. Their preachers and prophets had told them so, on the widely accepted notion that, after the previous, Old Testament dispensation, the New Testament one of Christ would last a thousand years.
The preachers may have been disappointed by the collapse of this millenarian prophecy, but the evidence suggests that the Christian world as a whole felt reprieved. Certainly, a new energy and creativity appeared in almost all facets of European life; the Viking menace was curbed or absorbed, the beginnings of Gothic architecture took shape, vernacular languages and literatures began to emerge slowly from a welter of local dialects and crabbed medieval Latin, trade and urban life grew in importance, while agriculture was virtually revolutionised by the invention of the moldwarp plough.
And finally, the westward spread of Islam was reversed by the First Crusade, by the Norman conquests in Sicily and elsewhere, and in Spain by the advance of the Reconquista. The last Muslim Caliph of Cordoba was driven out in 1025, and Muslim Spain began to fragment politically as the initiative passed more and more to the Christian kingdoms to the north - chiefly Castile and Aragon.
In the world's most continuous civilisation, China, the trend was reversed. In 1004 the great Sung (or Song, if you prefer) dynasty finally lost its hold on Northern China to the Mongol invaders. This foreshadowed the eventual domination of the Celestial Kingdom by Kublai Khan and his successors of the Yuan dynasty, until in 1368 an ex-monk, Zhu Yuan-Zhang, drove the Mongols from Peking and founded the Ming Dynasty, which lasted almost three centuries.
A sinister portent for the West, though little recognised at the time, is the emergence of the Seljuk Turks as a power in Asia Minor and the Near East. They capture Isfahan and overrun Iran, raid into Armenia, go on to capture Damascus, Jerusalem and Antioch, and finally defeat the Byzantine Emperor at Manzikert in 1071. The Eastern Empire never fully recovers from this loss, and the Great Schism between it and the Papacy in Rome helps to isolate it further.
Nevertheless the Byzantine Emperor appeals to the West for help and instead gets the First Crusade - which he did not want. It is partly provoked by the decision of the Fatimid Caliph to destroy the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, after which the Pope appeals to all Christian warriors to save the holy places. The Crusaders defeat the Seljuks and capture Jerusalem among unChristian scenes of rapine and massacre. As a result new Christian kingdoms are founded in the East, but they are unstable and lack any lasting roots.
In 1066, Duke William of Normandy lands in England, claiming to be the proper and legal heir to King Edward the Confessor, who has died. Harold Godwinsson, hurriedly crowned king by the "native" party, meets him in battle at Hastings and is defeated and killed, along with his brothers Gurth and Leofwine. Harold, a remarkable general, was weakened by the manpower losses sustained in turning back a Norse invasion on the Humber, and gave battle to William ("the Conqueror") against the advice of his family. The consequences are far-reaching: the loosely-knit Saxon kingdom, regularly invaded or dominated by Scandinavian kings, is centralised under a ruthless, able ruler and drawn into the orbit of Western Europe.
William has been careful to win over the Pope, who duly blesses his enterprise - though later he refuses to become the Pope's vassal. A century later, the Anjevin King Henry II similarly obtains Papal approval for his conquest of Ireland. Thanks largely to his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, a famous and formidable women, Henry rules over a considerable empire in England, France and Ireland, but this is partly squandered though the quarrels of his sons. The best-remembered of them, Richard Coeurde-Lion, spends much of his time at the Crusades, fighting against the great Egyptian warrior, Saladin (Salah-ed-Din), who has recaptured Jerusalem in 1187.
This is still the golden age of the Papacy, and the great medieval popes insist that, as Vicars of Christ, they stand before and above any temporal ruler. However, a new secular spirit begins to assert itself as national states, and national monarchies, grow in strength. Moreover, contact with other cultures affects the Christocentric West, which learns much from its contacts with the East - Venice, for instance, owes its glass-blowing skills to Egypt.
The new, inquiring spirit is epitomised by the Emperor Frederick II, who belongs to the Germanic Hohenstaufen dynasty but is largely Italianised in culture; his court at Palermo, in Sicily, patronises men of learning from many countries, including Jewish and Islamic doctors and philosophers. The philosopher Nietzsche has even called him "the first European".
The 13th century is one of the great periods in history; in Europe, it is the age of Dante and the great schoolmen such as Thomas Aquinas, the age in which many of the splendid Gothic cathedrals are built, of philosopher-scentists such as Roger Bacon, of the great heresies such as the Albigensian, of expanding mental horizons after the Dark Ages, of growing trade and commerce.
A shadow falls with the incursion into Eastern Europe of the Mongols, who have swept across Russia and destroyed the fine old civilisation of Kiev, but they soon withdraw following the death of their chieftain, Ogodai Khan (1242).
Meanwhile, the Teutonic Knights drive eastwards into the territories of the pagan Prussians (Pruzzians) and Slavs. One of the longest-lasting dynasties in Europe emerges when Rudolf of Habsburg defeats and kills King Ottokar II of Bohemia at the battle of the Marchfeld in 1278.
However, an enormous setback to self-confidence comes with the Black Death - probably bubonic plague - which allegedly is imported from the Near East in 1347 and ravages most of Europe, reducing the population in many areas by a third or even 50 per cent. As a result, trade and urban living suffer terribly and superstition becomes rampant.
Meanwhile, France and England become embroiled in the Hundred Years' War, which actually lasts longer than 100 years - from 1337 to 1453. Edward III of England wins the naval battle of Sluys and defeats Philip VI of France at Crecy; later, Henry V (Shakespeare's "Prince Hal", a man of great energy, ambition and ruthlessness) crushes the French knights at Agincourt (1415). The French have no answer to the long-bow, which can shoot much faster than the crossbow and pierces armour almost as easily as it does leather jerkins.
France is ravaged by invasion and internal anarchy, but morale is partly restored when 18-year-old Joan of Arc drives away an English army besieging Orleans. After other remarkable feats she is captured by the Burgundians, who turn her over to their English allies; Joan is condemned by a Church tribunal, and burnt publicly in Rouen as a witch (1431). However the French recovery continues, and the brothers Boureau, the first in a long line of French military technocrats, build up the new weapon, artillery. An English army is virtually wiped out at Formigny and finally, in the last battle of the war, another is destroyed at Castillon, near Bordeaux. England's footing in France is now reduced to a single port, Calais.
In the same year as Castillon, 1453, 21-year-old Turkish Sultan, Mehmed (Mohammed), lays siege to Constantinople with a huge army and takes it by storm. The last Byzantine Emperor, Michael Palaeologus, dies in the fighting and the thousand-year-old empire passes into though it had shrunk into little more than the hinterland of the capital, and the emperors were so impoverished that they had to be crowned with glass jewels, the fall of Constantinople sends shock waves through the West - which had done little to save it. From being the run-down capital of a shadow empire, it becomes the flourishing capital of the multi-national Ottoman Empire, which conquers the Balkans and Hungary and menaces Vienna. Terror of "The Turk" becomes a key factor in European thinking, now that the Ottomans have a firm footing in the West.
It is often claimed that the Greek scholars fleeing from Byzantium to the West brought with them the old classical learning which led directly to the Renaissance. Probably this has been exaggerated - classical learning had never really lapsed and, by the time Constantinople fell, the Renaissance in Italy is already well advanced. (In painting, indeed, the new styles are largely based on a rejection of Byzantinism).
What the Renaissance largely represents, in fact, is a triumph of the new spirit of inquiry and scholarship, as well as a kind of intelligent, energetic worldliness which believes in the here-and-now rather than in a hypothetical Next World. Yet this aspect, too, can be exaggerated, since the Church in general, and the Papacy in particular, is a leading patron both of the New Learning and the New Art.
Italian culture conquers Europe; it spreads to France, Spain and England, roughly in that order, and across the Alps to the Austro-German lands. Politically, however, Italy resembles classical Greece in that it can civilise other nations but cannot rule itself. At a time of emerging nation-states, it remains a congerie of petty kingdoms and dukedoms and so becomes a cockpit for the great powers, notably France and Spain, while Turkish corsairs raid the Mediterranean and the Adriatic.
Only the Venetian Republic has the resolution and naval strength to defend itself and to play a part in world politics. Venetian galleys also play their part in the great sea battle of Lepanto (1571) in which a combined Christian fleet, under 25-year-old Don John of Austria, overwhelmingly defeats the Turks and shakes the traditional belief in their invincibility.
In Spain, the Reconquista has largely come to a halt and only a few small kingdoms in the south remain Muslim, notably Granada and Malaga. Moorish Spain has never recovered from the successive invasions from North Africa of the Almoravides and the Almohades, fundamentalist Arab or Berber nations which came originally as allies against the Christians and turned into conquerors.
However, in 1469 Ferdinand of Aragon marries Isabella of Castile, uniting the two chief powers in the peninsula, who style themselves the Catholic Sovereigns. In order to unite all Spain and revive its old crusading spirit, Ferdinand lays siege to Malaga, conquers it, and then captures Granada. Although the Moors are at first allowed to retain their customs and religion, and even their lands, many of them - including the last King of Granada, Boabdil - prefer to emigrate across the sea to North Africa. Meanwhile, the setting up of the Spanish Inquisition sets off a new, fierce spirit of religious and racial zeal under which the large Jewish population of Spain - mostly Sephardic - suffers considerably.
Ferdinand and Isabella find time, and a little money, to underwrite the voyage of Christopher Columbus across the Atlantic. Setting sail in three small ships, he discovers the Bahamas, Cuba and Hispaniola; later he reaches Puerto Rico and Jamaica and, on a third voyage, Trinidad and the Orinoco delta in South America.
This is the Age of Discovery, with the Portuguese (who are already trading with Africa) prominent; Magellan, Vasco da Gama and others reach strange lands and seas. Sebastian Cabot reaches Newfoundland and Amerigo Vespucci, recognising the scale and importance of the American continent, names it the New World. All this opens up the world for Western colonialism, with Spain and Portugal in the lead, but they fail to maintain control of the seas. British seapower - presaged by the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 - eventually dominates more than half the globe.
Spain has created a European precedent - a monarchy allied to what is virtually a state church, since the Papacy has little real influence in Spain. A generation later, Henry VIII carries out a rather similar programme in England, and in Germany, after the Reformation, the policy of cuius regioeius religio is generally adopted - meaning, in effect, that the religion of a people should be that of its ruler. This development, inevitably, adds greatly to the power of kings, and religion becomes the ideological cement of the new nation-states.
Spain has now become a great power and the Gran Capitan, Gonsalvo de Cordoba, creates the Spanish infantry, the tercios, who dominate the battlefields of Europe for almost a century. Spanish clerics and theologians also are prominent in the long-drawn Council of Trent, which lays the ideological basis for the Counter-Reformation.
The Reformation itself, triggered by Luther in Germany and by Calvin in France and Geneva, splits Christendom from top to bottom. The Emperor Charles V defeats the (Protestant) Schmalkaldic League in battle, but is too distracted by his pan-European commitments to crush Lutheranism altogether, and is forced to come to terms with it. Calvin's doctrines travel though France and make their way to England, Scotland, Switzerland and the Low Countries; France, in particular, is thrown into civil war between Catholics and Huguenots, while the Netherlands eventually revolt against Charles's son and successor, Philip II.
In general, Protestantism makes its greatest appeal in Northern Europe, including Scandinavia, while the Latin countries remain preponderantly Catholic, and so does Poland. Luther's powerful personality and strong German patriotism bring a new epoch to Germany, which has many historical reasons for distrusting the Papacy. Certain German states, notably Saxony, declare in his favour, though the Habsburgs remain Catholic. In Geneva, Calvin sets up a virtual theocracy with its main basis in the merchant and professional classes; he has the hard, lucid, scholastic logic of the great French schoolmen of the past, such as Abelard. A century later, this will provide a model for Cromwell and his "rule of the Saints" i.e. Puritans in England. In France, the Huguenots win official toleration, but this is later withdrawn, and in 1572 the Queen Regent, Catherine de Medici, engineers the massacre of St Bartholomew. Her motives are primarily political and opportunist, not religious, but the country is again divided by civil war until Henri of Navarre, the Protestant champion, fights his way to the throne.
In 1598, the Edict of Nantes grants equal rights to Protestants, though Henri himself turns Catholic and estranges many of his followers. The edict stands until Henri's grandson, Louis XIV, revokes it in 1685.
Germany remains the powder-keg of Europe, although the various rulers there desperately try to stave off confrontation, knowing that the county would be torn apart. In 1618 the powder is set alight when the throne of Bohemia becomes vacant and the official heir is Ferdinand of Styria (Steiermark), a Habsburg duke and militant Counter-Reformation Catholic who is expected to become the next German Emperor (the post is elective). A group of Protestant nobles rejects him and instead elect as their king the Elector Palatine, Frederick Wittelsbach, married to Elizabeth Stuart, the lively and ambitious daughter of James II of England. Frederick is a naive, conscientious young man who is little more than a tool of the Calvinist faction in Germany.
A Catholic army drives Frederick from Prague after he has ruled for only a few months - hence his derisive nickname "the Winter King". So begins the Thirty Years' War, which soon spreads over all of Germany, with the Habsburgs heading the Catholic faction and various German princes standing for Protestantism.
The Emperor finds an exceptional general, organiser and financier in the Czechborn Count Wallenstein, while the Protestants find their champion in the young King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, a military and organisational genius who is also an able statesmen. Both these formidable men defeat all opposition until they confront each other in 1632; at first Wallenstein's defensive policy is more effective, but finally Gustavus brings him to battle at Lutzen, near Leipzig. After desperate fighting Wallenstein retreats, but Gustavus is killed in confused cavalry fighting (the battle takes place in dense fog) and the Protestant cause is left leaderless. However his chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, is also a remarkable statesman and Sweden finds outstanding new generals in Baner and Thorstenssen. Meanwhile Wallenstein turns traitor to the Emperor, who first outlaws him and then has him assassinated.
By 1635 both sides are exhausted and sign the Peace of Prague, but Cardinal Richelieu of France (who had financed Gustavus in his campaigns) manages to prolong the war by skilful and ruthless diplomacy. His object is to weaken and divide Germany, and so free France from the "Habsburg Ring" of Austro-Germany and Spain which pins it down. France and Spain now fight to the death, and the original religious motives are largely forgotten in a savage dynastic struggle in which Bohemia and most of Germany are laid waste, whole regions are depopulated, entire villages and towns vanish, and trade and civil life are ruined for generations. Eventually, in 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia is signed, which legally recognises Calvinism in Germany as well as Lutheranism and, in effect, divides the country into the Protestant North and Catholic South.
The United Provinces (Holland) and the Swiss republic are also recognised as independent nations. Spain - grossly overstretched by the imperial ambitions of its Habsburg rulers who are not Spanish by blood - is greatly weakened and virtually ceases to be a major power. The real gainer is France, which emerges as the leading power in Europe, while Germany has lost all unity and political cohesion. Her longdrawn agony, and the final peace treaty, are commemorated by the Oberammergau Passion Play.
Yet the Habsburg (or Austrian) Empire has retained its territories and much of its selfrespect, and over the next generation it shows remarkable vitality. The long war has left it an efficient standing army, with which Montecuccoli, the imperial general, defeats the Turks at St Gothard in 1664. Given political and religious unity, and with the Turkish menace now well held, the Habsburg lands enter into what is probably their golden age; the nobility build splendid palaces, new Baroque churches spring up everywhere, music and the theatre flourish, and Vienna, which had been for centuries little more than a frontier town, becomes one of the great cities of Europe.
However, the Turks soon recover and in 1683 send an enormous army across Hungary, ravaging all before it: it surrounds the walls of Vienna, from which the Emperor Leopold and his family have sensibly fled. An able soldier, Count Starhemberg, conducts the defence but Vienna is on the point of collapse when a relieving army under the nominal command of John Sobieski, King of Poland and a noted Turk-fighter, appears on the Kahlenberg just outside the city. Though outnumbered more than two to one, it pours down the hillside next morning to give battle and after a day's desperate fighting, the Turks are routed and retreat back across Hungary.
Among the Christians is an 18-year-old officer, Eugene of Savoy, who has quit France in disgust when King Louis XIV tells him that he was more fitted to be a priest than a soldier. Inside the next few decades he will destroy a Turkish army at Zenta, capture Belgrade, and force the Turks out of Hungary. Later, in the new century, he will prove himself one of the greatest captains of all times and form a unique military partnership with the Duke of Marlborough. Louis XIV will be made to regret his words.
In the meantime, however, Louis has proved himself an outstanding king and France is the premier nation of Europe. He picks his servants well and Colbert builds up trade, industry and the navy; Louvois is a splendid war minister; Vauban fortifies the frontiers of France. Louis is also a discriminating patron of the arts and and the works of Racine, Moliere, Boileau, La Bruyere adorn his reign, as well as many noted architects and painters. But his ambition is even greater than his ability and he sees himself as another Charlemagne, establishing French hegemony in Europe as well as extending his colonies abroad.
On his deathbed in 1700, Charles II of Spain, weak-minded, sexually impotent and sickly since birth, names as his successor Philip Duke of Anjou, Louis's grandson. Since this would mean a French dynasty in Spain, there is diplomatic panic in Europe. In 1688 James II of England had been driven from his throne and replaced by William of Orange, his son-in-law and Stadholder in Holland, who is more acceptable to the Whig oligarchy which is the real power in England. Apart from his almost stunted body, William is a cold, self-centred, charmless individual who trusts nobody, but he is also a far-sighted statesman and a man of great energy and will-power. He does not attempt to curb the power of the Whig oligarchs because he needs them for his great design, which is to use England as the fulcrum for a grand coalition against France - a country which he hates, fears and secretly admires.
THE Austrian Emperor, most of the German states and his native Holland together form an alliance and the Emperor Leopold nominates his brother Charles as a rival claimant for the Spanish throne. William dies before the War of the Spanish Succession breaks out, but not before he has nominated as commander-in-chief John Churchill, better known as Marlborough, who is then 50 years old. Marlborough and Eugene form an irresistible combination and together they defeat the French at Blenheim (Blindheim, Plentheim) on the Danube - the first time they have been beaten in three generations. Other victories follow at Ramillies and Oudenarde, and though the French score successes in Spain, they are close to collapse. A series of bad harvests is climaxed by one of the coldest winters in history, which destroys even the seed wheat in the ground, so that France faces famine. In despair, Louis recalls Marshal Villars, a gifted but loud-mouthed and brutal soldier, and Villars manages to equip and hearten the half-starved French army for one more major battle.
At Malplaquet (1709) he faces the Allies at odds of 3 to 2 against him; Villars is wounded and the French are driven from their lines, but for 10,000 casualties they inflict 20,000 on their enemies and make a fighting retreat. The Dutch, in particular, lose so heavily that they almost drop out of the alliance. War weariness sets in at home in England, the Whigs are forced from office, and Jonathan Swift carries out a press campaign against Marlborough, who is dismissed and goes into temporary exile. The genius of Torcey, Louis's leading diplomat, also helps to split the Allies. With England virtually out of the war, Villars beats the Austrians and Dutch at Denain and goes on to capture a series of key fortresses and towns.
In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht is signed by which France cedes Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Hudson Bay to Britain, who also gain Gibraltar. The Austrians eventually acquire the Spanish Netherlands (modern Belgium) and Louis recognises the Protestant succession in Britain. England's greatest gain financially is the so-called Asiento, the right to supply Latin America with slaves; the slave trade becomes a vital source of British wealth, and the country enters into one of its greatest periods of power, prosperity and culture.
Meanwhile, Philip of Anjou retains his throne, and his lineal descendant, Juan Carlos (Carlos de Borbon, as the Spanish call him), rules there today. France no longer has an enemy just across the Pyrenees.
She has, however, a nascent enemy and rival in Prussia, or rather Brandenburg, a territory which had been devastated in the Thirty Years' War but had made a remarkable recovery under the "Great Elector", Frederick William. He repopulates his lands with refugees - including Huguenots -from all over Europe, builds up a competent army, and ends Swedish ambitions in Germany by his victory at Fehrbellin. His son Frederick, though a spendthrift, makes Prussia a kingdom instead of a mere electorate and his son in turn, Frederick William II, is a workaholic and economiser who restores its finances and strengthens its economy.
Though he hates war because of its expense, his one vice or hobby is amassing soldiers and he builds up a remarkable army which he bequeaths to his son, Frederick II (the Great). Though father and son are incompatible personalities who hate one another, young Frederick is given a tough grounding in administration and managerial skills by his crude, sometimes brutal but able parent.
When Frederick succeeds to the throne in 1740, almost his first act is to seize Silesia, a German-Polish province under the control of the Austrian monarch, Maria Theresa. He defeats the Austrians at Mollwitz and Chotusitz, and by adroit timing and diplomacy keeps his conquest. Frederick is an extraordinary man, a blend of contradictions - brilliantly intelligent, cultured, a fascinating conversationalist, generous to his friends, a patron of arts and science, but also duplicitous, cynical, and possessed of a vicious tongue. He seems to have combined the qualities of the Age of Enlightenment with those of a medieval despot.
Though a statesman of the first rank, his witty, caustic tongue makes him enemies and so does his tendency to switch sides as and when it suits him. Maria Theresa and the Empress Elizabeth of Russia both hate and distrust him, and when France and Austria agree to bury their old enmity and form an alliance, Prussia is an obvious target.
Frederick, knowing the huge odds against him, strikes first without a declaration of war. Throughout what is later called the Seven Years' War he duels with the greatest powers in Europe, fighting a war on several fronts and striking at his enemies with great speed and energy. His toughest opponents are the Russians - a foretaste of what Napoleon will face 50 years later; they hold him to a draw at Zorndorf and are largely responsible for his defeat at Kunersdorf. The brutal energy and foresight of Peter the Great have made Russia into a European as well as an Asiatic power. However, Frederick routs the French at Rossbach and at Leuthen, he wins an astonishing victory over an army of Austrians and Saxons who outnumber him nearly three to one.
Nevertheless the odds against him are daunting, and he is facing total defeat when the Empress Elizabeth dies and her successors take Russia out of the war.
Austria fights on alone, but is again defeated in the field, and Maria Theresa makes a peace of exhaustion which leaves Prussia once more intact. In spite of Frederick's genius as a general, he could scarcely have survived without the aid of two remarkable soldiers, his younger brother Prince Henry (Heinrich) and his cousin Ferdinand of Brunswick. He quickly demonstrates his talents as an administrator and civil ruler, restoring the economy and morale of his shattered country inside a decade and founding new industries, new towns and new state institutions. Prussia is now a European power and his dynasty, the Hohenzollerns, lasts until 1918.
IN 1775 the American War of Independence breaks out and the modern period of history may be said to begin, since this event marks the decline of the Old Regime. By the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Great Britain recognises the new United States, and in 1789 George Washington becomes the first American president.
French aid has been important in defeating the British and forcing the final surrender of Lord Cornwallis, and ironically this rebounds on monarchical France. In the first place, young officers such as Lafayette carry back the new republican doctrines to France (where the writings of the philosophes had already prepared informed opinion for them) and secondly, the naval and military help France has sent drains its treasury. There is a growing resentment against taxation and the privileges of the nobles and clergy, which provokes the famous "Oath of the Tennis Court" at Versailles in 1789 by the Third Estate (i.e. the middle classes).
A National Assembly is formed, the Bastille is stormed, and King Louis XVI and his unpopular Austrian Queen, Marie Antoinette, become more and more the prisoners of their unruly subjects. Eventually they attempt to escape, are captured and brought back to Paris, and finally are guillotined as traitors to their country.
France becomes a republic, and she exports revolution abroad to other countries including Holland and Switzerland.
Threats of German and English invasion, and the mass royalist uprising in the Vendee, are largely responsible for provoking the revolutionary Terror, in which Maximilian Robespierre is prominent until he himself is brought down and guillotined in turn. Though probably 5,000 people die in the Terror, this is insignificant compared with the numbers in the Vendee, where civilians are slaughtered indiscriminately and the death toll may have reached a quarter of a million.
Though her armies win victories abroad, internally France is in disorder, and it is against this ferment and corruption that a new strong man emerges: Napoleon Bonaparte, a Corsican careerist and artillery officer, who in his mid-twenties wins a series of striking victories against the Austrians in Italy. After leading a rather unsuccessful expedition to Egypt, he returns to Paris, overthrows the Directory which shakily rules France, and becomes First Consul (1799). A man of almost superhuman energy, he draws up a new civil code, the Code Napoleon, overhauls administration, sanctions religious worship (the Revolution had closed the churches and persecuted the clergy), and manages to strike an uneasy middle ground between the ideas of the Revolution and those of tradition.
In 1804 he is crowned Emperor of the French and sets up a court to which many of the old aristocracy return. However, Napoleon believes above all in a meritocracy and his promotions and appointments - military and civil - are generally based on ability and good service.
The armies of Prussia, Austria and Russia are repeatedly beaten in the field, although Britain retains mastery of the seas. The English are Napoleon's great enemy, since he is intent on a political and economic European union dominated by France, which would freeze out British trade; English gold finances most of the coalitions against him and is a strong factor in turning imperial Russia into an enemy. His famous 1812 expedition against Russia is a disaster, and the following year he is defeated by sheer numbers at Leipzig, the "Battle of the Nations".
In 1814, Napoleon is forced to abdicate and is exiled to the island of Elba, but he soon returns for the "Hundred Days" and is terminally defeated by Wellington and Blucher at Waterloo. The Congress of Vienna carves up Europe, but thanks mainly to the diplomacy of Talleyrand, France is left largely intact.
NAPOLEON is probably the most controversial figure in European history. Repeated attacks and counter-attacks still come today both the Left and the Right, and even from the Centre - particularly in Britain. Some historians accuse him of betraying the Revolution, while others praise him for preserving what was valid in its ideas; others revile him as a self-seeking dictator and militarist, though in practice many or even most of his energies went into politics and civil administration.
What seems indisputable is that he changed Europe forever and began the process of the creation of the modern centralised, bureaucratic state. To a great extent, Napoleon fathered the type of impersonal technocrat who largely runs Europe today. His idea of European union has become reality in our own time, while his legacy of national gloire was a potent factor behind De Gaulle's Free French movement in the second World War. In the words of J. F. C. Fuller, his mission was to conquer but his destiny was to create.
Nineteenth-century Europe is largely dominated by two factors: the Industrial Revolution, spreading mainly from Britain, and the extraordinary growth of colonialism, particularly in the second half of the century. Millions of square miles of the globe's surface are brought under European control, and, combined with industrial competition, this breeds intense rivalry between the great colonial powers.
However, colonialism has little to do with the rivalry between Prussia and Austria, which has gone on since Frederick the Great's time and is brought to a head when Otto von Bismarck becomes Chancellor of Prussia. Smarting under the arrogant Austrian humiliation of Prussia at Olmutz in 1850 (backed by Russian bayonets) he engineers war between the two leading German states in 1866.
Austria is badly beaten at Sadowa, or Konigratz, and driven out of Germany; in future, it seeks its destiny in Eastern Europe.
The primacy of Prussia brings her almost inevitably into collision with France, which has always aimed to keep Germany weak and divided and fears Bismarck will unify it under Prussian leadership. The Emperor Napoleon III, who has suffered reverses in his foreign policy and is losing support at home, is carried along by the current and in 1870 the two nations go to war.
The military and organisational genius of Helmut von Moltke, then aged 70, quickly brings Prussia victory in the field, but Paris holds out under siege for several months. This leads to the so-called Commune, in which the Parisian Left takes over the city by force and virtually declares a republic; revolt is bloodily crushed by French government troops, who shoot thousands of working-class people out of hand.
Louis Napoleon, taken prisoner by the Germans, goes into exile in England and soon dies there, while France becomes a republic for the third time. Bismarck has exacted harsh peace terms, but not unduly so; France is forced to pay large reparations and to surrender Alsace-Lorraine. Alsace, in particular, is largely German by language and culture, but both provinces are unhappy under German rule and French bitterness at their loss is a factor in the outbreak of the first World War.
As expected, Bismarck unifies the German states and King William II of Prussia becomes the Emperor William I of Germany. William is already an old man and his much-respected son and successor, Frederick, rules only 60 days before dying of throat cancer. Frederick's son, William (Wilhelm) II, is remembered in the English-speaking world as "the Kaiser", though that is the title of all previous German emperors and simply means "Caesar" or "Czar". Wilhelm is a difficult, uneasy man, maladroit even when well-intentioned, and at a time when Germany needs a reserved and tactful ruler, he can usually be relied upon to keep an open mouth and to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. This makes him the headache of all the embassies in Europe, and a frequent source of embarrassment to his Chancellors and ministers.
The reasons for the outbreak of the first World War, generally called the Great War, of 1914-1918 have been endlessly debated, but obviously industrial, trading and colonial rivalry among the European powers has reached a potential explosion point. Military conscription and service - pioneered by revolutionary France - have also turned virtually every European state into a nationat-arms, while the growth of railways and modern communications means that troops can be transported and supplied with a speed unknown in the past. It is possible and even probable that Germany, faced by the Triple Entente of Great Britain, France and Russia, feels that her sands are running out and if she waits another few years she will be penned in and reduced to impotence. In any case, the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, allows Germany's ally, Austria, to dictate impossible terms to Serbia, which was involved in the murder.
Within a few weeks, all Europe is plunged into war. Though Germany has built a battle fleet, it is outnumbered and outgunned by the British at Jutland in 1916 and never again ventures out of port. Flanders and northern France are the main theatres of the war, though the Eastern Front produces much savage fighting until Russia collapses in 1917 and is torn apart by revolution.
The Anglo-French expedition to Gallipoli, intended to seize control of the Dardanelles and knock Turkey out of the war, is a huge and costly failure which discredits Lord Kitchener, the English warlord. Austria, the weakest of the Great Powers, is brought to the point of collapse by Russian pressure on one front and by Italy on the other; she vainly seeks a separate peace and her armies disintegrate after defeat at Vittorio-Veneto in 1918.
France survives the 1916 German offensive at Verdun, but her armies reach the point of mutiny in 1917 until their morale is restored by General Petain. After the great Ludendorff Offensive of March 1918 peters out, the Allies form a central command under Marshal Foch, the Americans enter the war in increasing numbers, and in November of that year Germany seeks an armistice.
The resultant Versailles Treaty (with its pendants, the Treaties of St Germain and the Petit Trianon) is a world disaster, since it is enforced by a cruel food blockade which brings civilian starvation to the defeated Central Powers. Alsace and Lorraine go back to France, Central Europe is broken up into artificial nation-states which leave a power vacuum for Stalin and Hitler to exploit two decades later, Germany loses both territory and much of her national wealth, Turkey is shrunk to its old sultanate of Rum, the Habsburgs vanish from history and so do the Hohenzollerns.
A whole society and way of life are destroyed, and in their wake Europe produces a crop of dictators; Communism and Fascism spread like bubonic plague, and the old patrician liberalism largely vanishes. In short, the stage is set for the new mass ideologies and the second World War, from whose effects we are still recovering. Napoleon's United States of Europe is a reality of our time, but the primacy of Europe appears to be past, and America and its way of life dominate most of the globe - the Pax Americana. The collapse of the Soviet Union at least guarantees that this will not be replaced by a Pax Muscovita.