The events of the last few centuries have given rise to many controversies. People have been fired with bitter hatred based on political or patriotic motives and embittered by an excess of religious zeal. The last century produced several historians of considerable merit, who, however, promulgated partisan sentiments and defended all the actions of those individuals or parties whom they favoured. Truth, moreover, was not the sole aim of certain authors; blinded by Chauvinist prejudices, and inspired by the part which they themselves had placed in the scenes they describe, they wrote an apologia for a faction, rather than the history of a country.