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The two most important forms of government to evolve in early modern times were the absolute monarchy and the constitutional state. This chapter examines how the political system of absolutism succeeded gloriously in France and faded dismally in England in the seventeenth century. Few kings have been as successful in establishing complete monarchical sovereignty as the great Sun King of France, Louis XIV. Louis gave Europe a masterful lesson on how to collaborate with the nobility to strengthen the monarchy and to reinforce the ancient aristocracy. He was a superb actor and propagandist, who built on the earlier achievements of Henry IV and Richelieu and used his magnificent palace of Versailles to imprison the French nobility in a beautiful golden cage. He succeeded in expanding France at the expense of the Habsburgs, and his patronage of the arts helped form the great age of French classicism. However, the economic progress he first made was later checked by his policy of revoking religious toleration.
While the France of Louis was the classic model of absolutism as the last phase of an historic feudal society, Spain was the classic case of imperial decline. By 1600 Spain was in trouble, and by 1700 it was no longer a major European power. Not only did the silver and labor of America run out, but this great American wealth ruined the Spanish economic and social structure. War with the Dutch, the English, and the French also helped turn Spain into a backwater of Europe.
England and the United Provinces of the Netherlands provide a picture of constitutionalism triumphing over absolutism. For England, the seventeenth century was a long period of political conflict, complete with a bitter civil war and a radical experiment with republicanism. The causes of this era of conflict were varied, but it is clear that by 1689 the English army and Parliament had destroyed the Stuart quest for divine-right absolutism. The period that followed witnessed some important changes in the way the state is managed. The Netherlands was important not only because it became the financial and commercial center of Europe, but also because it provided the period's third model of political development-a loosely federated, middle-class constitutional state.
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