Another consequence of the creation of the United States (with the liberal ideas promoted in the "Century of Lights" coming back to France) and of the costly wars between France and all its neighbours in Europe, was also that it initiated lot of severe political and social troubles throughout the kingdom, and it paved the way to the French Revolution and finally the end of the absolute monarchy, via a short step of constitutional monarchy (restoring some parliamentary powers to the Estates General) between 1789 and 1791, and then to the First French Republic (during which the dictatorial and deadly eviction of the traditional French clergy and nobility from the new Constitution further strengthened the military alliance of all European neighbours against France). That lost influence of France was never restored in the following centuries, even after the emergence of the First French Empire (which terminated the dictature, reunited a strongly divided France, restored the freedom of religion, and allowed the reemergence of a stable commercial sector, but also initiated new wars against other monarchies in continental Europe), or after the formation of a new French colonial empire (mostly in Africa and Asia) by the Third Republic.