<span>Spain was really the first global superpower, although it might share that limelight with Portugal. Spain (and Portugal) were the first states to be able to truly project their power around the globe,and extend economic relations (i.e., trade) globally as well. After Ferdinand and Isabella united the Castille-Leon and Aragon crowns in 1492 to form the Spanish kingdom, the Habsburgs took over the Spanish imperial throne in the early 1500s, at a time when the Habsburgs ruled the Holy Roman Empire (i.e., most of Germany, Austria, eastern France, Netherlands, Switzerland, northern Italy, Bohemia, "Royal" Hungary, as well as southern Italy (Sicily and Naples). The Habsburg-Spanish imperial empire was at its height under Charles V and his son, Philip II in the 1500s, when Spanish troops were on the Rhine River, in South America, in the Philippines (named after Philip II), in Albania, and elsewhere. Under Philip II the Habsburg empire was split in two, with a Central European (Austria-based) half, and a Western European (Spanish) half. Unfortunately the Spanish wasted much of the vast amounts of money (in the form of silver) pouring into the Spanish treasury from Peru, mostly in fruitless wars trying to suppress Protestantism in Central and northern Europe, and by 1600 Dutch, French and English ships were intruding on Spanish imperial interests and establishing their own colonies. But for most of the 1500s, Spain was easily the world's premier military power.</span>
1. It never lead to a single large conflict. Rather many smaller ones. 2. During the Cold War, the USA and USSR both funded army’s of smaller countries to fight for them. For instance the Korean and Veitnam Wars. 3. The Cold War came to a close when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.
"Brown Bess" is a nickname of uncertain origin for the British Army's muzzle-loading smoothbore flintlock Land Pattern Musket and its derivatives. This musket was used in the era of the expansion of the British Empire and acquired symbolic importance at least as significant as its physical importance.
The revolutions of 1848 ignited nationalist sentiment throughout the Italian peninsula. The Franco-Austrian War of 1859 was the agent that began the physical process of Italian unification. The Austrians were defeated by the French and Piedmont at Magenta and Solferino, and thus relinquished Lombardy.
