France became Europe's dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV.[8] French philosophers played a key role in the Age of Enlightenment during the 18th century. In the late 18th century, the absolute monarchy was overthrown in the French Revolution. Among its legacies was the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, one of the earliest documents on human rights, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. France became one of modern history's earliest republics until Napoleon took power and launched the First French Empire in 1804. Fighting against a complex set of coalitions during the Napoleonic Wars, he dominated European affairs for over a decade and had a long-lasting impact on Western culture. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments: the monarchy was restored, it was replaced in 1830 by a constitutional monarchy, then briefly by a Second Republic, and then by a Second Empire, until a more lasting French Third Republic was established in 1870. The French republic had tumultuous relationships with the Catholic Church from the dechristianization of France during the French Revolution to the 1905 law establishing laïcité. Laïcité is a strict but consensual form of secularism, which is nowadays an important federative principle in the modern French society.