Excerpt from The English Restoration and Louis XIV: From the Peace of Westphalia, to the Peace of Nimwegen The epoch of European history with which I have here attempted to deal is an epoch of Restorations; Restorations which assume widely differing forms, in correspondence with the varying circumstances of the countries in which they take place. In France, after a period of fierce internal strife, during which all antagonistic influences exhaust themselves in a vain struggle with the tenacious purpose of Mazarin, and sink into helplessness, the triumphant monarchy emerges as a despotism of an almost oriental type. That despotism is conferred upon a Prince of great capacity and of boundless ambition, with all the instruments of ambition ready to his hand. In England, a different scene is witnessed. The revolution had overthrown three great institutions, the Monarchy, the Parliament, and the Church. All three are now restored, under the old forms; the Parliament first, and then in natural sequence the Monarchy and the Church. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.