The Political Evolution of the Old Regime, 1715–89 351Unto my flock I daily preached
Kings were by God appointed,
And damned was he that durst resist
Or touch the Lord’s anointed.Despite such ideas, true autocratic monarchy—most of-
ten called despotism—was rare, but parts of central and
eastern Europe still lived under despotic rulers who
were unrestrained by laws. A despot might strangle an
opponent with his bare hands, have another torn apart
by dogs, or have his own son and heir flogged to death,
as Tsar Peter the Great of Russia did.
Most monarchs could not exercise such unre-
strained powers. Their governments were limited
monarchies, limited by privileges that earlier rulers had
granted, a legal system enforced by independent courts,
the nobility, the powers of an established state religion,
rights delegated to an assembly, or financial depen-
dency on others. The Braganza kings of Portugal were
limited by the power of the Catholic Church; the Bour-
bon kings of the Two Sicilies, by having to ask an as-
sembly for the money to rule. The Bourbon kings of
France faced a resurgent aristocracy that used the law
courts (parlements) to thwart the royal will.
The most formal restrictions upon royal sover-
eignty were constitutional laws. Few states possessed a
constitution in the modern sense of a single written
document. Sweden adopted the strictest constitution of
the era in 1720. The Sweden nobility accepted the rule
of a queen on the condition that she accept a document
limiting her power. Most constitutions were less formal,
usually a set of customary privileges claimed by the
aristocracy as their national traditions. In Hungary, the
Magyar aristocracy held virtual autonomy. When the
Habsburgs incorporated Hungary into the Austrian
Empire, the Hungarians insisted upon their ancient
constitution and rebelled when they believed it to be
violated. The English constitution is the most studied
model of limiting monarchical power, but it, too, did
not exist in a single document stating these limits. It
was a body of constitutional law dating back to the
Magna Carta of 1215 in which King John had acknowl-
edged limits to his power. An unusual form of limited
monarchy existed in Poland, where succession to the
throne occurred by election. A representative body (the
Sejm) of the Polish landowning gentry (the szlachta)
chose each new king and claimed traditional rights,
called “the five eternal principles,” including the right
to renounce allegiance to the king.
Republican governments held that sovereignty be-
longed to the citizens, usually to some privileged por-
tion of them. Republicanism slowly evolved into the
modern sense of republic—in which sovereignty is held
by citizens who elect a government and delegate lim-
ited powers to it—but this form did not apply during
the Old Regime. Most of the republics of 1715 were
oligarchies—the rule of the few instead of the rule of
one—typically small city-states in Italy. The only great
power to attempt republican government during the
eighteenth century was revolutionary France during
the 1790s.The Evolution of Government: Parliaments,
Ministers, and Cabinets
Most countries of the Old Regime, except autocratic
states such as Russia, possessed a representative assem-
bly, typically called a parliament today but more often
called a diet (from the Latindiaeta,a place of assembly).
Diets had existed in Europe for centuries. The oldest
was the Icelandic Althing,founded in A.D. 930. In some
strong monarchies, such as France and Spain, assem-
blies existed in theory but not in practice. The French
Estates General had once been a powerful body, elected
by all classes of the population and able to limit taxa-
tion. However, it met only when convoked by the king,
and between 1614 and 1789 French kings never called
a meeting. In Württemberg, Duke Eberhard Ludwig
ruled for forty years, from 1693 to 1733, and permitted
only one meeting of the Diet during his entire reign.
That meeting opposed a standing army and the levying
of taxes, but the duke proceeded to raise an army, col-
lect taxes, and prevent further meetings of the Diet.
Only the British Parliament and the Swedish Rikstag
had genuine legislative power.
The most powerful political figures of the eigh-
teenth century were usually the advisers chosen by the
monarch to manage the government. Another impor-
tant trend in political history was the slow evolution of
these royal advisers into a modern government. Advis-
ers gradually became ministers of state, charged with
the direction of a bureaucracy, such as the Ministry of
Finance or the Ministry of War. In efficient govern-
ments, the advisers worked together as a cabinet of
ministers, pursuing a common policy. During the eigh-
teenth century this evolved into the cabinet system of
government in Britain, culminating in the recognition
of one minister as the head of the government, or the
prime minister. Only the most energetic and able of
monarchs, such as Frederick the Great of Prussia,
served as their own prime minister, directing the bu-
reaucracy. Instead, such strong leaders as Sir Robert
Walpole in Britain (served 1721–42) or Cardinal Fleury