4. Northern Italy, illustrating the campaigns of Prince Eugene 1701–1706, 343 5. The Netherlands, illustrating the campaigns of Condé, Turenne and Marlborough, 348 GENEALOGICAL TABLES 1. The Sovereigns of Europe during the century, 376 2. The House of Bourbon, 378 3. The Cleves-Jülich succession, 380 4. The Spanish Succession, 381 INDEX 383 CHAPTER I EUROPE AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Importance of the century--France at the beginning of the century--The States-General, the Parlement de Paris, Religious Toleration--Germany--The Emperor, the Imperial Courts, the Diet--Disunion of Germany--England--Spain--Italy. [Sidenote: =Importance of the Seventeenth Century.=] The seventeenth century is the period when Europe, shattered in its political and religious ideas by the Reformation, reconstructed its political system upon the principle of territorialism under the rule of absolute monarchs. It opens with Henry IV., it closes with Peter the Great. It reaches its climax in Louis XIV. and the Great Elector. It is therefore the century in which the principal European States took the form, and acquired the position in Europe, which they have held more or less up to the present time. A century, in which France takes the lead in European affairs, and enters on a course of embittered rivalry with Germany, in which England assumes a position of first importance in the affairs of Europe, in which the Emperor, ousted from all effective control over German politics, finds the true centre of his power on the Danube, in which Prussia becomes the dominant state in north Germany, in which Russia begins to drive in the Turkish outposts on the Pruth and the Euxine--a century, in short, which saw the birth of the Franco-German Question and of the Eastern Question--cannot be said to be deficient in modern interest. The map of Europe at the close of the seventeenth shows the same great divisions as it does at the close of the nineteenth century, with the notable exception of Italy. Prussia and Russia have grown bigger, France and Turkey have grown smaller, the Empire has become definitely Austrian, but in all its main divisions the political map of Europe is practically unchanged. The states which were formed in the general reconstruction of Europe after the religious wars of the sixteenth century are the states of which modern Europe is now composed. Great nations are apt to change their forms of internal government much more often than they do their political boundaries and influence; but it is a remarkable thing that, with the great exception of France,