And once again, Wikipedia provides excellent assistance.

Once I figured out the second word was "empire", I then had to look up a complete list of all empires that ever existed and try to find any matches to the correct letters. I decided to guess one more letter just to be sure my final answer would be the correct one.
Alright, time for a new one...
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ // _ _ _ _ _ _ // _ _ _ _
correct:
incorrect:
guesses left: 6