18th Century– tax –

udwig van Beethoven.A towering master of classical music, known to the world as the “Immortal Beloved of Music.” His Symphony No. 5 “Fate” and Symphony No. 9 “Choral” continue to resound as if they were common property of all humankind. ...

Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor. Few monarchs in 18th-century Europe embodied such passion and contradiction in equal measure. As an enlightened despot, he relentlessly pursued reforms—abolishing serfdom, promoting religious tolerance, and...

Born in Austria, and forever remembered in the storm of the French Revolution—Marie Antoinette. She is often spoken of merely as a “symbol of waste and extravagance.”Yet if we trace her life carefully, behind the dazzling gowns and the g...

In the early 19th century, when London’s fog still wrapped the city in its familiar scent, a man moved between the salons and the bedrooms of high society, armed only with poetry. George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron.A leading figure of ...

Benjamin Franklin. Born in 1706 in Boston, the fifteenth of seventeen children in the household of a humble candle maker,he grew up surrounded by noise, warmth, and light. As a statesman, he helped draft the Declaration of Independence.A...

Just saying his name seems to make the air lift, light and shimmering—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He began composing at the age of five, a prodigy who dazzled all of Europe. The Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute shine wi...

A boy born on the Mediterranean island of Corsica would one day build an empire and shake the world— Napoleon Bonaparte. Racing through the storms of revolution and triumphing on countless battlefields,his life was forever shadowed by tw...