1. Middle Ages 500-1500
2. Early Modern 1500-`1789
2.1. Enlightenment 1650-1800 (or thereabouts)
2.1.1. 1637 - Descartes publishes Discourse on Method
2.1.2. 1667 - Milton publishes the first edition of Paradise Lost
2.1.3. 1670 - Pascal's Pensees
2.1.4. 1784 - Kant publishes "What is Enlightenment"
2.1.4.1. 1790 - Burke writes Reflections on the Revolution in France
3. Modernity 1789-1945
3.1. 1789-99 - The French Revolution
3.1.1. 1789 - Estates General becomes the National Assembly, Fall of Bastille, Tennis Court Oath, Declaration of the Rights of Man
3.1.2. 1793 - Execution of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
3.1.3. 1793-94 Reign of Terror
3.1.4. 1795-99 Directory of Five governs the Republic; 1796 Babeuf and the Conspiracy of Equals try to overthrow the Directory and establish socialism
3.2. Napoleonic Era
3.2.1. 1799 - Napoleon seizes power
3.2.2. 1804 - Napoleon crowns himself as emperor
3.2.3. 1815 - Napoleon is defeated for the second and final time at the Battle of Waterloo
3.3. Romanticism 1790s-1850 (or thereabouts)
3.3.1. 1798 - Wordsworth and Coleridge publish Lyrical Ballads (subsequent editions with the Preface come out in 1800 and 1802)
3.3.2. 1819 - Keats writes his major Odes
3.3.3. 1816 - Shelley writes "Mont Blanc"
3.3.4. 1816-1817 - Byron writes Manfred