Page "History of Europe" Paragraph 23

After the Peace of Westphalia which ended the war in favour of nations deciding their own religious allegiance, Absolutism became the norm of the continent, while parts of Europe experimented with constitutions foreshadowed by the English Civil War and particularly the Glorious Revolution.

European military conflict did not cease, but had less disruptive effects on the lives of Europeans.

In the advanced northwest, the Enlightenment gave a philosophical underpinning to the new outlook, and the continued spread of literacy, made possible by the printing press, created new secular forces in thought.

Again, the Polish – Lithuanian Commonwealth would be an exception to this rule, with its unique quasi-democratic Golden Freedom.

But in 1648 beginning of the Khmelnytsky Uprising in Ukraine, at this time in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which continues until 1654, and results is concluded in the city of Pereyaslav during the meeting between the Cossacks of the Zaporozhian Host and Tsar Alexey I of Russia the Treaty of Pereyaslav.