The conflict between absolutism and freedom was decided differently in different parts of Europe in the early centuries of modern history, with England tending toward a constitutional monarchy while more absolutist governmental systems prevailed on the continent. The European nations on the continent would begin to move in the direction of liberalism in later periods because of the influence of the Enlightenment and its critique of the absolutist era.
England underwent a revolution in the sixteenth century that differed from the Wars of Religion which ravaged the European continent during the same period. The Glorious Revolution was indeed bloodless. It also set the stage for the ascension of Parliament to a position of power so that no monarch after this time would try to govern without parliament. Another result of the Glorious Revolution would be the institution of civil liberties in the Bill of Rights. The revolution also meant a number of things that were not so beneficial to England over time, such as the consolidation that took place in the position of large property owners, local magnates whose political and economic power base found on their estates and in their rural constituencies has been threatened by the interventions of Charles II and James II. The revolution was not a major advance forward but was instead a restoration of the status quo on behalf of a wealthy social and economic order. While the revolution was bloodless, it was not without its victims, among them the Roman Catholic minority in Scotland whose lives were made more miserable. Indeed, their fate was not bloodless at all, and after the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 a repressive military force imposed the will of a self-interested Protestant minority on the Catholic majority (Lerner, Meacham, and Burns 586).
The revolution was thus essentially bloodless for the English but not for some of the other peoples affected. The absolutism in France wa...