Peasants: Did you mean...?

Catherine II of Russia (Catherine the Great) was empress regent of Russia from 1762-1796. She was born in Prussia to Prince Christian August of Anhalt-Zerbst (1690-1747) and Princess Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp (1712-1760), and...

Cao Cao (c. 155-220 CE) was a military dictator in ancient China during the end of the Han dynasty. Something more than a mere warlord, Cao Cao supported a puppet emperor and governed a large area of northern China. His attempts to unify...

The Drownings at Nantes were a series of mass killings that took place in Nantes, France from November 1793 to February 1794 during the Reign of Terror. Overseen by Jean-Baptiste Carrier, the representative-on-mission from Paris, thousands...

Argula von Grumbach (née von Stauff, l. 1490 to c. 1564) was a Bavarian theologian, writer, and reformer, who became a controversial figure after her 1523 letter To the University of Ingolstadt protesting the arrest of a young scholar for...

People in the Middle Ages have acquired something of a bad reputation when it comes to cleanliness, especially the peasantry. However, despite the general lack of running water and other modern amenities, there were common expectations of...

The Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BCE) was among the most culturally significant of the early Chinese dynasties and the longest lasting of any in China's history, divided into two periods: Western Zhou (1046-771 BCE) and Eastern Zhou (771-256 BCE...

The Protestant Reformation (1517-1648) refers to the widespread religious, cultural, and social upheaval of 16th-century Europe that broke the hold of the medieval Church, allowing for the development of personal interpretations of the Christian...

Charlemagne (Charles the Great, also known as Charles I, l. 742-814) was King of the Franks (r. 768-814), King of the Franks and Lombards (r. 774-814), and Holy Roman Emperor (r. 800-814). He is among the best-known and most influential figures...

The Greek Dark Age (c. 1200 to c. 800 BCE, overlapping with the Iron Age, c. 1200-550 BCE) is the modern-day term for the period in Greek history following the Bronze Age Collapse when the Mycenaean Civilization fell and the Linear B writing...

The Estates-General of 1789 was a meeting of the three estates of pre-revolutionary France: clergy, nobility, and commons. Summoned by King Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792) to deal with financial and societal crises, it ended with the Third...