European wars of religion

The Battle of White Mountain (1620) in Bohemia was one of the decisive battles of the Thirty Years' War that ultimately led to the reconversion of Bohemia to Catholicism.

The European wars of religion were a series of wars waged in Europe during the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries.[1][2] Fought after the Protestant Reformation began in 1517, the wars disrupted the religious and political order in the Catholic countries of Europe, or Christendom. Other motives during the wars involved revolt, territorial ambitions and great power conflicts. By the end of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), Catholic France had allied with the Protestant forces against the Catholic Habsburg monarchy.[3] The wars were largely ended by the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which established a new political order that is now known as Westphalian sovereignty.

The conflicts began with the minor Knights' War (1522–1523), followed by the larger German Peasants' War (1524–1525) in the Holy Roman Empire. Warfare intensified after the Catholic Church began the Counter-Reformation against the growth of Protestantism in 1545. The conflicts culminated in the Thirty Years' War, which devastated Germany and killed one third of its population.[2][4] The Peace of Westphalia broadly resolved the conflicts by recognising three separate Christian traditions in the Holy Roman Empire: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism.[5][6] Smaller religious wars continued to be waged in Western Europe until the 1710s, including the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1651) in the British Isles, the Savoyard–Waldensian wars (1655–1690), and the Toggenburg War (1712) in the Western Alps.[2][7]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Nolan was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b c Onnekink, David (2013). War and Religion after Westphalia, 1648–1713. Ashgate Publishing. pp. 1–8. ISBN 9781409480211. Retrieved 13 June 2018.
  3. ^ John Hearsey McMillan Salmon. "The Wars of Religion". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Archived from the original on 12 September 2019. Retrieved 14 June 2018.
  4. ^ Pinker, Steven (2011). The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Penguin Books. p. 142. ISBN 978-0143122012.
  5. ^ Treaty of Münster 1648
  6. ^ Barro, R. J. & McCleary, R. M. "Which Countries have State Religions?" (PDF). University of Chicago. p. 5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 August 2006. Retrieved 7 November 2006.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference MacCulloch735 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).