Philip II of Spain

21 May 1527 13 September 1598

Philip II was King of Spain from 1556
and of Portugal from 1581.

The son of Charles V, Holy
Roman Emperor, and his wife, Infanta
Isabella of Portugal, Philip was born in
the Spanish capital of Valladolid on 21
May 1527 at Palacio de Pimentel owned
by Don Bernardino Pimentel.

He was tutored by Juan
Martnez Siliceo the future Archbishop of Toledo. Philip displayed
reasonable aptitude in arms and letters alike. Later he would study with more
illustrious tutors, including the humanist Juan Cristbal Calvete de Estrella.

Philip, though he had good command over Latin and Spanish,
never managed to equal his father, Charles V, as a linguist. Despite
being also a German archduke from the House of Habsburg, Philip was
seen as a foreigner in the Holy Roman Empire. The feeling was mutual.
Philip felt himself to be culturally Spanish; he had been born in Spain
and raised in the Castilian court, his native tongue was Spanish, and
he preferred to live in Spain. This would ultimately impede his
succession to the imperial throne.

In April 1528, when Philip was eleven months old, he received the
oath of allegiance as heir to the crown from the Cortes of Castile, and
from that time until the death of his mother Isabella in 1539, Philip was
raised in the royal court of Castile under the care of his mother, and
one of her Portuguese ladies, Dona Lenor de Mascarenhas, to who he
was devotedly attached.

From 1554 he was King of Naples and Sicily as well as Duke of
Milan. During his marriage to Queen Mary I (155458), he was also King
of England and Ireland. From 1555, he was lord of the Seventeen
Provinces of the Netherlands. Known in Spanish as "Philip the
Prudent" (Felipe el Prudente), his empire included territories on every
continent then known to Europeans, including his namesake Philippine
Islands. During his reign, Spain reached the height of its influence and
power. The expression "The Empire on which the sun never sets" was
coined during Philip's time to reflect the extent of his possessions.

Philip II died in El Escorial, near Madrid, on 13 September 1598 of
cancer.

Catherine I of Russia

The life of Catherine I was said by
Voltaire to be nearly as extraordinary as
that of Peter the Great himself. There are
no documents that confirm her origins.
Said to have been born on 15 April 1684
(o.s. 5 April), she was originally named
Marta Helena Skowroska.
Marta was the daughter of Samuel
Skowroski, later spelt Samuil
Skavronsky, a Lithuanian peasant of
Polish origin, a Roman Catholic, who in 1680 married Dorothea Hahn at
Jakobstadt. Her mother is named in at least one source as Elisabeth Moritz,
and there is debate as to whether her father was a Swedish officer.

Catherine I , the second wife of Peter I of Russia, reigned as
Empress of Russia from 1725 until her death.
Catherine and Peter married secretly in 1707. They had twelve
children, two of whom survived into adulthood, Yelizaveta (born 1709)
and Anna (born 1708).



Catherine continued to accompany Peter on his Pruth Campaign
in 1711. There Catherine was said to have saved Peter and his Empire, as
related by Voltaire in his book Peter the Great.
In 1724 Catherine was officially crowned and named co-ruler.
Catherine was the first woman to rule Imperial Russia, opening the
legal path for a century almost entirely dominated by women, including
her daughter Elizabeth and Catherine the Great, all of whom continued
Peter the Great's policies in modernizing Russia.
She died just two years after Peter, at age 43, in St. Petersburg,
where she was buried at St. Peter and St. Paul Fortress. Fever and
coughing blood from her nose, diagnosed as abscess of the lungs,
caused her early demise.
Peter the Great of Russia

Peter the Great was born Pyotr
Alekseyevich on June 9, 1672 in Moscow, Russia.
Peter the Great was the 14th child of Czar Alexis
by his second wife, Natalya Kirillovna
Naryshkina. Having ruled jointly with his brother
Ivan V from 1682, when Ivan died in 1696, Peter
was officially declared Sovereign of all Russia.
Peter inherited a nation that was severely
underdeveloped compared to the culturally
prosperous European countries. While the Renaissance and the Reformation
swept through Europe, Russia rejected westernization and remained isolated
from modernization.

During his reign, Peter undertook extensive reforms in an
attempt to reestablish Russia as a great nation. Peter overcame
opposition from the country's medieval aristocracy and initiated a
series of changes that affected all areas of Russian life. He created a
strong navy, reorganized his army according to Western standards,
secularized schools, administered greater control over the reactionary
Orthodox Church, and introduced new administrative and territorial
divisions of the country.

Peter married twice and had 11 children, many of whom died in
infancy. The eldest son from his first marriage, Alexis, was convicted of
high treason by his father and secretly executed in 1718. Peter the Great
died on February 8, 1725, without nominating an heir. He is entombed in the
Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, located in in St. Petersburg.

Alfred the Great of Wessex

Alfred was born in the village of
Wanating, now Wantage, Oxfordshire. He was
the youngest son of King thelwulf of
Wessex, by his first wife, Osburh.
In 853, at the age of four, Alfred is said
to have been sent to Rome where, according
to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, he was
confirmed by Pope Leo IV who "anointed him
as king". However, his succession could not
have been foreseen at the time, as Alfred had
three living elder brothers. A letter of Leo IV shows that Alfred was made a
"consul"; a misinterpretation of this investiture, deliberate or accidental, could
explain later confusion. It may also be based on Alfred's later having
accompanied his father on a pilgrimage to Rome where he spent some time at
the court of Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, around 854855.

On their return from Rome in 856, thelwulf was deposed by his
son thelbald. With civil war looming, the magnates of the realm met in
council to hammer out a compromise. thelbald would retain the western
shires (i.e., traditional Wessex), and thelwulf would rule in the east.

When King thelwulf died in 858, Wessex was ruled by three of
Alfred's brothers in succession, thelbald, thelbert and thelred.

In 870 AD the Danes attacked the only remaining independent
Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Wessex, whose forces were commanded by
Alfred's older brother, King Aethelred, and Alfred himself.

In 871 AD, Alfred defeated the Danes at the Battle of Ashdown in
Berkshire. The following year, he succeeded his brother as king.
Despite his success at Ashdown, the Danes continued to devastate
Wessex and Alfred was forced to withdraw to the Somerset marshes,
where he continued guerrilla warfare against his enemies.

In 878 AD, he again defeated the Danes in the Battle of Edington.
They made peace and Guthrum, their king, was baptised with Alfred as his
sponsor.

As an administrator Alfred advocated justice and order and
established a code of laws and a reformed coinage. He had a strong belief
in the importance of education and learnt Latin in his late thirties. He then
arranged, and himself took part in, the translation of books from Latin to
Anglo-Saxon.

By the 890s, Alfred's charters and coinage were referring to him as
'king of the English'. He died in October 899 AD and was buried at his
capital city of Winchester.

William the Conqueror

Born circa 1028 in Falaise, Normandy,
France, William the Conqueror was an
illegitimate child of Robert I, duke of Normandy,
who died in 1035 while returning from a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem. At only 8 years of age,
William became the new duke of Normandy.
Violence and corruption plagued his early reign,
as the feudal barons fought for control of his
fragile dukedom. A few of William's guards died
and his teacher was murdered during a period of
severe anarchy. With the help of King Henry I of
France, William managed to survive the early years.

The king knighted William, still in his teens, in 1042. Taking a new
stand on political events, William finally gained firm control of his
duchy (although his enemies commonly referred to him as "The
Bastard" due to his illegitimate birth). By 1064, he had conquered and
won two neighboring provincesBrittany and Maine. In the meantime,
the childless king of EnglandEdward the Confessor, whose mother
was a sister of William's grandfatherpromised William succession to
the English throne. However, when Edward died in 1066, his brother-in-
law and most powerful of the English lords, Harold Goodwin, claimed
the throne of England for himself (despite an oath he made to William to
support his claim). The Witan, a council of English lords that commonly
took part in deciding succession, supported Harold. William, angered
by the betrayal, decided to invade England and enforce his claim.

William assembled a fleet and an army on the French coast, but
due to unrelenting north winds, their advance was delayed for several
weeks. In the meantime, the Norwegian army invaded England from the
North Sea. Harold, who had been preparing for William's invasion from
the south, rapidly moved his army north to defend England from Norway.
After defeating the Norwegians, Harold unwisely marched his troops back
down to meet William, without a rest. On October 14, 1066, the two armies
met in the famous Battle of Hastings. King Harold and his two brothers
were killed in the battle, and since no one of stature remained to raise a
new army, William's path to the throne was clear. He was crowned king of
England on Christmas Day.

William died on September 9, 1087, in Rouen, France. He had four
sons and five daughters, and every monarch of England since has been
his direct descendant. Although he never spoke English and was illiterate,
he had more influence on the evolution of the English language then
anyone before or sinceadding a slew of French and Latin words to the
English dictionary. The introduction of skilled Norman administrators
may be largely responsible for eventually making England the most
powerful government in Europe.