Napoleon III was defeated and captured by the Prussians in the battle of Sedan in 1870, and was formally removed from office several days later. Both Waterloo and Leipzig were battles fought by Napoleon I over five decades earlier. Sebastopol was a battle fought in the Crimean War in the 1850s. Verdun was a battle fought in World War I, long after the downfall of Napoleon III.

In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, the German states led by Prussia defeated France, and in the peace negotiations that followed, the German states all agreed to unite under the Prussian monarchy. The Seven Years' War occurred over a century before, and simply saw Prussia secure its position as a major European power. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 concluded the Napoleonic Wars, and saw Prussia merely re-establish a powerful position in European affairs. The Revolutions of 1848, including German nationalistic uprisings, all ended in failure, and did not lead to unification. World War I was fought in the 1910s, long after Germany had united under Prussia.

While Louis XIV was an absolutist monarch who sought to curtail the power of the nobility, he was only successful in this to a degree, and did not abolish their special privileges (that, namely, kept them largely exempt from royal taxes). Louis and his ministers did, however, enact a number of military and administrative reforms designed to strengthen both the French military and the French royal government. Louis also had the impressive Palace of Versailles built, where he not only kept most of his government but his lavish court, which he used to distract the nobility from interfering with his ambitions. With the conquest of Alsace and other areas to the east, Louis also extended French territory to the Rhine river, and oversaw expansion of the French colonial empire, mainly in North America, India, and the Caribbean.

While the Thirty Years' War was a major victory for Protestant European states and confirmed the principle that sovereign rulers could decide the official religion of their state without outside interference, it did not cause all of the German states to adopt Protestantism, as many of them (such as Austria and Bavaria) remained Catholic. In confirming the principle that states should be free from foreign interference in religious affairs, the war was the last major European conflict in which religion was a major factor, and from this point international affairs and conflicts were focused mainly on secular matters such as territorial expansion, the balance of power, and colonial rivalries. As the war saw the defeat of the Catholic Habsburg states by France and its Protestant allies, namely Sweden, it led to the further decline of Habsburg power, France replacing Spain as the dominant military power in Europe, and Sweden securing its position as a major European power.