All these variables played a role in shaping West European history.
Perhaps the most influential—at times working in favor of DPM, and
at times against it—was the international climate. This was especially
so during two distinct political “moments.” The first was the era of the
French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars (1789–1815). This quarter-century
saw the king of France first deposed and then beheaded (in
1793), and later witnessed the rise of territorially based nationalist republics
as new claimants to state legitimacy. The era closed with most of
Western Europe’s traditional royal families regaining their thrones, but
at a price: They had to agree to constitutions that constrained some of
their powers and changed the source of legitimacy from “divine right”
to “the nation.”