MEMOIRS OF THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV. Among the multitudinous memoirs of the period, the most significant, from the standpoint of the general historian, are: Marquise de Sévigné, _Lettres_, delightful epistles relating mainly to the years 1670-1696, edited in fullest form for "Les grands écrivains de la France" by Monmerqué, 14 vols. (1862- 1868), selections of which have been translated into English by C. Syms (1898); Duc de Saint-Simon, _Mémoires_, the most celebrated of memoirs, dealing with many events of the years 1692-1723, gossipy and racily written but occasionally inaccurate and frequently partisan, edited many times--most recently and best for "Les grands écrivains de la France" by Arthur de Boislisle, 30 vols. (1879-1916), of which a much-abridged translation has been published in English, 4 vols.; Marquis de Dangeau, _Journal_, 19 vols. (1854-1882), written day by day, throughout the years 1684-1720, by a conscientious and well- informed member of the royal entourage; _Life and Letters of Charlotte Elizabeth_ (1889), select letters, trans. into English, of a German princess who married Louis XIV's brother, of which the most complete French edition is that of Jaeglé, 3 vols. (1890). See also Comtesse de Puliga, _Madame de Sévigné, her Correspondents and Contemporaries_, 2 vols. (1873), and, for important collections of miscellaneous memoirs of the period, J. F. Michaud and J. J. F. Poujoulat, _Nouvelle collection des mémoires relatifs à l'histoire de France depuis le 13e siècle jusqu'à la fin du 18e siècle_, 34 vols. (1854), and Louis Lafaist and L. F. Danjou, _Archives curieuses de l'histoire de France_, 27 vols. (1834-1840). CHAPTER VIII THE TRIUMPH OF PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT IN ENGLAND CONFLICTING POLITICAL TENDENCIES IN ENGLAND: ABSOLUTISM _VERSUS_ PARLIAMENTARIANISM Through all the wars of dynastic rivalry which have been traced in the two preceding chapters, we have noticed the increasing prestige of the powerful French monarchy, culminating in the reign of Louis XIV. We now turn to a nation which played but a minor rôle in the international rivalries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Later, from 1689 to 1763, England was to engage in a tremendous colonial struggle with France. But from 1560 to 1689 England for the most part held herself aloof from the continental rivalries of Bourbons and Habsburgs, and never fought in earnest except against Philip II of Spain, who threatened England's economic and political independence, and against the Dutch, who were England's commercial rivals. While the continental states were engaged in dynastic quarrels, England was absorbed in a conflict between rival principles of domestic government--between constitutional parliamentary government and unlimited royal power. To the triumph of the parliamentary principle in England we owe many of our modern ideas and practices of constitutional government. [Sidenote: Absolutism of the Tudors, 1485-1603]