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Peace of Westphalia
The "Tears of the Fatherland", a poem written by Andreas Gryphius (picture) in 1636, shows the material destruction and loss of human lives provoked by the Thirty Years War in the Holy Roman Empire, while putting emphasis on the religious division between Catholics and Protestants that has started the conflict, thus making a lasting religious separation. -
Battle of Denain
The painting of the Battle of Denain (picture), made in 1839 by Jean Alaux, represents French soldiers charging with the royal flag against the Austrian and Dutch troops during the War of the Spanish Succession, representing the struggle between European royal families over territories to expand their royal domains. -
Battle of Eylau
The "Battle of Eylau" (image), painted in 1808 by Antoine-Jean Gros, shows Napoleon in East Prussia as he fights the Russian and the Prussians, showing how far the territorial expansion of his empire went, encouraging successive coalitions of European powers to oppose him. After the fall of Napoleon, the Congress of Vienna put back in 1815 the borders from before the French Revolution, motivating a coalition between Prussia, Russia and Austria in order to keep the status quo of boundaries. -
Unification of the German Empire
The "Proclamation of the German Empire" (image), painted in 1877 by Anton Von Werner, represents Bismarck and German commanders in Versailles in 1871,symbolizing the Prussian victory in consolidating the German States under one Empire after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, which caused the fall of Napoleon III and the gain of Alsace-Lorraine. Afterwhile,the tension in Europe rised as two systems of alliances will form, the Entente and the Central Powers, eventually causing the First World War. -
Armistice of the First World War
The Hachette Almanac of 1919 (image) shows the French optimisim after the First World War, which resulted in the collapse of the Austrian-Hungarian, Russian, Ottoman and German empires, allowing new nation states in Central Eastern Europe such as Poland and Czechoslovakia to exist. However, the humiliating treaty of Versailles, cutting German territory in two and limiting the size of their army, will exacerbate German nationalism and their will to revenge, prefigurating the Second World War. -
Fourth Moscow Conference
The Percentage Agreement, made in Moscow between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (image) on October 9 of 1944, was about the share of influence in the Balkans between the Allies when the Second World War would be over. However, with Nazi Germany defeated, the West and the Soviet Union stopped to cooperate, dividing Europe into two spheres of influence which defined European political dynamics during the second half of the XXth century.
