<Li> Christians living in principalities where their denomination was not the established church were guaranteed the right to practice their faith in public during allotted hours and in private at their will . </Li> <P> The treaty also effectively ended the Papacy's pan-European political power . Pope Innocent X declared the treaty "null, void, invalid, iniquitous, unjust, damnable, reprobate, inane, empty of meaning and effect for all times" in his bull Zelo Domus Dei . European sovereigns, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, ignored his verdict . </P> <P> Scholars taking a "realist" perspective on wars and diplomacy have emphasized the Peace of Westphalia (1648) as a dividing line . It ended the Thirty Years War (1618 - 1648), where religion and ideology had been powerful motivating forces for warfare . Westphalia, in the realist view, ushered in a new international system of sovereign states of roughly equal strength, dedicated not to ideology or religion but to enhance status, and territorial gains . The Catholic Church, for example, no longer devoted its energies to the very difficult task of reclaiming dioceses lost to Protestantism, but to build large - scale missions in overseas colonial possessions that could convert the natives by the thousands Using devoted members of society such as the Jesuits . According to Scott Hamish, the realist model assumes that "foreign policies were guided entirely by "Realpolitik," by the resulting struggle for resources and, eventually, by the search for what became known as a' balance of power .' </P> <P> Diplomacy before 1700 was not well developed, and chances to avoid wars were too often squandered . In England, for example, King Charles II paid little attention to diplomacy, which proved disastrous . During the Dutch war of 1665 - 67, England had no diplomats stationed in Denmark or Sweden . When King Charles realized he needed them as allies, he sent special missions that were uninformed about local political, military, and diplomatic situations, and were ignorant of personalities and political factionalism . Ignorance produced a series of blunders that ruined their efforts to find allies . King Louis XIV of France, by contrast, developed the most sophisticated diplomatic service, with permanent ambassadors and lesser ministers in major and minor capitals, all preparing steady streams of information and advice to Paris . Diplomacy became a career that proved highly attack attractive to rich senior aristocrats who enjoyed very high society at royal courts, especially because they carried the status of the most powerful nation in Europe . Increasingly, other nations copied the French model; French became the language of diplomacy, replacing Latin . By 1700, the British and the Dutch, with small land armies, large navies, and large treasuries, used astute diplomacy to build alliances, subsidizing as needed land powers to fight on their side, or as in the case of the Hessians, hiring regiments of soldiers from mercenary princes in small countries . The balance of power was very delicately calculated, so that winning a battle here was worth the slice of territory there, with no regard to the wishes of the inhabitants . Important peacemaking conferences at Utrecht (1713), Vienna (1738), Aix - la - Chapelle (1748) and Paris (1763) had a cheerful, cynical, game - like atmosphere in which professional diplomats cashed in victories like casino chips in exchange for territory . </P>

What characterized absolute monarchies in early modern europe