Count Luigi Marsigli (1658-1730) was a nobleman, Habsburg general, emissary of popes, scientist, and patron of the arts and letters. His fascinating life and activities-recounted for the first time by the eminent historian John Stoye-illuminate the many worlds of European civilization during this important period. Born in Bologna, Marsigli traveled throughout Europe from Istanbul to London, but spent much of his time in the Balkan countries and the lands south of the Danube. Stoye follows the count as he moved through the Habsburg Empire, mapping the terrain, determining boundary lines, and participating in a train of events with a crucial impact on Bosnia and Croatia today. He shows how Marsigli pursued his varied interests, classifying mushrooms, finding geological specimens, describing Roman ruins, studying marine biology, and making his place in the increasingly scientific community of the early Enlightenment. Stoye tells how Marsigli, founder of an observatory and museum in Bologna, was welcomed by academics and scientific societies throughout Europe, revealing that the interest in science and antiquity transcended national boundaries during this period. Through the activities of Marsigli, Stoye sheds light on the complexities of European social, political, and military life and the contrast between conditions of war and peace in the phases of European history. Brilliantly narrated by one of the best-known authorities on the era, this account of Marsigli's life is an engrossing and highly entertaining story.

The new edition of this classic history provides readers with an introduction to a period characterized by diversity and vitality alongside war, plague, revolution and famine. The book has been updated in the light of recent scholarship and includes a fully revised bibliography.

The history of Europe between 1648 and 1688, often associated mostly with Louis XIV or the Age of the Baroque, was in fact disturbed by more cross-currents than at almost any other period. Disturbances, conflicts and uprisings along the remote frontiers, in Poland, in the Ukraine, in the Carpathians and in South-Eastern Europe, had repercussions in Vienna, Paris, Stockholm, and The Hague, affecting diplomacy across the world. Yet, at the same time, Europe was home to Newton and Huygens, Velazquez and Rembrandt, Pascal and Bossuet, Bernini and Racine. The diversity and vitality of European science and culture was all the more astonishing for the incessant ravages of war, plague and famine.

The period which opens with a lull after the Thirty Years War and closes with another period of calm before the Wars of English and Spanish Succession, witnessed the flowering of Dutch prosperity, the rise of Muscovy, and the slow decline of Turkey and Venice. Almost everywhere the institution of monarchy, shaken at the outset, was by 1688 more strongly entrenched than ever.

The definitive account of the last serious threat to Western civilization by the armies of Islam. The siege of Vienna in 1683 was one of the turning points in European history. It was the last serious threat to Western Christendom--so disastrous was its potential outcome that countries normally jealous and hostile sank their differences to throw back the Muslim armies and their savage Tartar allies. The consequences of defeat were momentous: the Ottomans lost half of their European territories and began the long decline which led to the final collapse of their empire; and the Habsburgs turned their attention from France and the Rhine frontier to the rich pickings of the Balkans. That hot day in September witnessed the last great trial of Cross and Crescent. "Masterly...Stoye follows the action meticulously." --The Wall Street Journal

What were the experiences of English travelers who toured Western Europe in the seventeenth century? What influence did Continental travel have on English society and politics? This delightful book by John Stoye allows us to accompany the seventeenth-century British traveler on his journeys into France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. It is a travel book for historians and a piece of history for travellers. Using a vast range of contemporary sources, Stoye describes the journeys of both famous figures and of more obscure travelers, relating common itineraries and the conditions of travel. He evokes the different types of travelers and their motives and interests-young men on the Grand Tour with their tutors in tow, diplomats, soldiers, religious refugees, and merchants. Stoye considers what the travellers brought home with them, from actual books and pictures to impressions of architecture and music to new ways of looking at the world. He traces through letters and diaries how travel affected the taste, education, and politics of the upper classes of society. This book, first published in 1952, is widely considered a classic. This new edition makes it available in paperback for the first time, with a new preface and illustrations, a fully revised text, and updated notes and bibliography.