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The victories of the emperor endangered the independence of the German princes, while the French Bourbons were concerned about the growth of Hapsburg power. The newProtestant leader became King Gustavus Adolphus r. In the summer of , the Swedes moved into Germany. Later in the year, France and Sweden signed an alliance, and France entered the war against the Hapsburgs. The Thirty Years' War had begun primarily as a German conflict over religious issues. The conflict now became a wider European war, fought mainly over political issues, as Catholic France and Protestant Sweden joined forces against the Catholic Hapsburgs.
During the early stages of the conflict, the Swedes won several notable victories. Tilly, the imperial commander, fell in battle in Emperor Ferdinand II called on Wallenstein to form a new army. When Wallenstein entered into secret negotiations with Sweden and France, he was assassinated a few days later. The emperor's army decisively defeated the Swedes at Nordlingen in southern Germany. The deaths of both Gustavus Adolphus and Wallenstein, together with the exhaustion of both the Holy Roman emperor and the German Protestant princes, brought an end to the Swedish period of the war.
The Treaty of Prague, generally strengthened the Hapsburgs and weakened the power of the German princes. The French Period - The settlement reached in the Treaty of Prague was wrecked by the French decision to intervene directly in the war. Both in Germany and in the Franco-Spanish conflict, the fortunes of war fluctuated. For a time, the forces of the Holy Roman emperor, aided by King Maximilian of Bavaria and other Catholic princes, more than held their own against the Swedes and German Protestants.
France's success against Spain, enabled the French to send larger forces into Germany. This helped tip the balance in favor of the emperor's foes. Peace negotiations began in , but made little progress until the death of Cardinal Richelieu in and the French occupation of Bavaria in Sweden acquired western Pomerania, Eastern Pomerania was assigned to Brandenburg. France annexed part of Alsace and some nearby territory. The settlement formally recognized the independence of the Dutch Republic and Switzerland and granted the German states the right to make treaties and alliances, thereby further weakening the authority of the Holy Roman emperor.
In religious affairs, the Peace of Westphalia expanded the Peace of Augsburg to include Calvinists, as well as Catholics and Lutherans. The Peace of Westphalia ended the Holy Roman emperor's hope of restoring both his own power and the Catholic faith throughout the empire. The empire was now fragmented into a number of virtually independent states.
The French war against Spain continued until , when the Treaty of the Pyrenees awarded France part of the Spanish Netherlands and some territory in northern Spain. Together, the Peace of Westphalia and the Treaty of the Pyrenees established France as the predominant power on the European continent. Without heirs, Emperor Matthias sought to assure an orderly transition during his lifetime by having his dynastic heir the fiercely Catholic Ferdinand of Styria , later Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor elected to the separate royal thrones of Bohemia and Hungary.
Ferdinand had wanted them to administer the government in his absence. Although injured, they survived. Moravia was already embroiled in a conflict between Catholics and Protestants. The religious conflict eventually spread across the whole continent of Europe and also increased the concerns of a Habsburg hegemony, involving France, Sweden, and a number of other countries. The death of Emperor Matthias emboldened the rebellious Protestant leaders, who had been on the verge of a settlement.
The weaknesses of both Ferdinand now officially on the throne after the death of Emperor Matthias and of the Bohemians themselves [ clarification needed ] led to the spread of the war to western Germany. The Bohemians, desperate for allies against the emperor, applied to be admitted into the Protestant Union, which was led by their original candidate for the Bohemian throne, the Calvinist Frederick V, Elector Palatine.
The Bohemians hinted Frederick would become King of Bohemia if he allowed them to join the Union and come under its protection. However, similar offers were made by other members of the Bohemian Estates to the Duke of Savoy , the Elector of Saxony , and the Prince of Transylvania. The Austrians, who seemed to have intercepted every letter leaving Prague, made these duplicities public. In spite of these issues surrounding their support, the rebellion initially favoured the Bohemians.
They were joined in the revolt by much of Upper Austria , whose nobility was then chiefly Lutheran and Calvinist. Lower Austria revolted soon after, and in , Count Thurn led an army to the walls of Vienna itself. Moreover, within the British Isles, Frederick V's cause became seen as that of Elizabeth Stuart, described by her supporters as "The Jewell of Europe", [30] leading to a stream of tens of thousands of volunteers to her cause throughout the course of the Thirty Years' War.
Fearful of the Catholic policies of Ferdinand II, Gabriel Bethlen requested a protectorate by Osman II, so "the Ottoman Empire became the one and only ally of great-power status which the rebellious Bohemian states could muster after they had shaken off Habsburg rule and had elected Frederick V as a Protestant king". The Ottomans offered a force of 60, cavalry to Frederick and plans were made for an invasion of Poland with , troops, in exchange for the payment of an annual tribute to the sultan.
The emperor, who had been preoccupied with the Uskok War , hurried to muster an army to stop the Bohemians and their allies from overwhelming his country. This cut off Count Thurn's communications with Prague, and he was forced to abandon his siege of Vienna. Savoy had already sent considerable sums of money to the Protestants and even troops to garrison fortresses in the Rhineland. The capture of Mansfeld's field chancery revealed the Savoyards' involvement, and they were forced to bow out of the war.
The Saxons invaded, and the Spanish army in the west prevented the Protestant Union's forces from assisting. The two armies united and moved north into Bohemia. In addition to becoming Catholic, Bohemia remained in Habsburg hands for nearly years. This defeat led to the dissolution of the Protestant Union and the loss of Frederick V's holdings despite the tenacious defence of Trebon, Bohemia under Colonel Seton until and Frankenthal under Colonel Vere the following year. His title of elector of the Palatinate was given to his distant cousin, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria.
Frederick, now landless, made himself a prominent exile abroad and tried to curry support for his cause in Sweden, the Netherlands, and Denmark-Norway. This was a serious blow to Protestant ambitions in the region. As the rebellion collapsed, the widespread confiscation of property and suppression of the Bohemian nobility ensured the country would return to the Catholic side after more than two centuries of Hussite and other religious dissent.
The Spanish, seeking to outflank the Dutch in preparation for renewal of the Eighty Years' War, took Frederick's lands, the Electorate of the Palatinate. The first phase of the war in eastern Germany ended 31 December , when the prince of Transylvania and the emperor signed the Peace of Nikolsburg , which gave Transylvania a number of territories in Royal Hungary. Some historians regard the period from to as a distinct portion of the Thirty Years' War, calling it the "Palatinate phase".
With the catastrophic defeat of the Protestant army at White Mountain and the departure of the prince of Transylvania, greater Bohemia was pacified. However, the war in the Palatinate continued: Famous mercenary leaders — such as, particularly, Count Ernst von Mansfeld [38] — helped Frederick V to defend his countries, the Upper and the Rhine Palatinate.
This phase of the war consisted of much smaller battles, mostly sieges conducted by the Imperial and the Spanish armies. Mannheim and Heidelberg fell in , and Frankenthal was finally transferred two years later, thus leaving the Palatinate in the hands of the Spaniards. Although their arrival in the Netherlands did help to lift the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom October , the Dutch could not provide permanent shelter for them.
They were paid off and sent to occupy neighboring East Frisia. Mansfeld remained in the Dutch Republic, but Christian wandered off to "assist" his kin in the Lower Saxon Circle , attracting the attentions of Count Tilly. With the news that Mansfeld would not be supporting him, Christian's army began a steady retreat toward the safety of the Dutch border.
On 6 August , ten miles short of the border, Tilly's more disciplined army caught up with them. In the ensuing Battle of Stadtlohn , Christian was decisively defeated, losing over four-fifths of his army, which had been some 15, strong. After this catastrophe, Frederick V, already in exile in The Hague and under growing pressure from his father-in-law, James I, to end his involvement in the war, was forced to abandon any hope of launching further campaigns.
The Protestant rebellion had been crushed. Following the Wars of Religion of —, the Protestant Huguenots of France mainly located in the southwestern provinces had enjoyed two decades of internal peace under Henry IV , who was originally a Huguenot before converting to Catholicism, and had protected Protestants through the Edict of Nantes.
The Huguenots responded to increasing persecution by arming themselves, forming independent political and military structures, establishing diplomatic contacts with foreign powers, and finally, openly revolting against the central power. The revolt became an international conflict with the involvement of England in the Anglo-French War — The House of Stuart in England had been involved in attempts to secure peace in Europe through the Spanish Match , and had intervened in the war against both Spain and France.
However, defeat by the French which indirectly led to the assassination of the English leader the Duke of Buckingham , lack of funds for war, and internal conflict between Charles I and his Parliament led to a redirection of English involvement in European affairs — much to the dismay of Protestant forces on the continent.
This had the continued reliance on the Anglo-Dutch brigade as the main agency of English military participation against the Habsburgs, though regiments also fought for Sweden thereafter. The French Crown's response to the Huguenot rebellion was not so much a representation of the typical religious polarization of the Thirty Years' War, but rather an attempt at achieving national hegemony by an absolutist monarchy.
Peace following the Imperial victory at Stadtlohn proved short-lived, with conflict resuming at the initiation of Denmark-Norway. Danish involvement, referred to as the Low Saxon War or Kejserkrigen "the Emperor's War" , [40] began when Christian IV of Denmark , a Lutheran who also ruled as Duke of Holstein , a duchy within the Holy Roman Empire, helped the Lutheran rulers of the neighbouring principalities in what is now Lower Saxony by leading an army against the Imperial forces in Christian IV had also profited greatly from his policies in northern Germany.
For instance, in , Hamburg had been forced to accept Danish sovereignty. Denmark-Norway's King Christian IV had obtained for his kingdom a level of stability and wealth that was virtually unmatched elsewhere in Europe. Thus, Christian, as war-leader of the Lower Saxon Circle, entered the war with an army of only 20, mercenaries, some of his allies from England and Scotland and a national army 15, strong, leading them as Duke of Holstein rather than as King of Denmark-Norway.
The Era of the Thirty Years' War, by Samuel Rawson Gardiner a.k.a. S.R. Gardiner, Late Student of Christ Church, author of 'History of England from. This book, The era of the thirty years' war, , by Samuel Rawson Gardiner, is a replication of a book originally published before It has been.
To fight Christian, Ferdinand II employed the military help of Albrecht von Wallenstein , a Bohemian nobleman who had made himself rich from the confiscated estates of his Protestant countrymen. Christian, who knew nothing of Wallenstein's forces when he invaded, was forced to retire before the combined forces of Wallenstein and Tilly.
Christian's mishaps continued when all of the allies he thought he had were forced aside: France was in the midst of a civil war, Sweden was at war with the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth, and neither Brandenburg nor Saxony was interested in changes to the tenuous peace in eastern Germany. Moreover, neither of the substantial British contingents arrived in time to prevent Wallenstein defeating Mansfeld's army at the Battle of Dessau Bridge or Tilly's victory at the Battle of Lutter Wallenstein's army marched north, occupying Mecklenburg , Pomerania , and Jutland itself, but proved unable to take the Dano-Norwegian capital Copenhagen on the island of Zealand.
Wallenstein lacked a fleet, and neither the Hanseatic ports nor the Poles would allow the building of an imperial fleet on the Baltic coast. He then laid siege to Stralsund , the only belligerent Baltic port with sufficient facilities to build a large fleet; it soon became clear, however, that the cost of continuing the war would far outweigh any gains from conquering the rest of Denmark.
Thus, in the following two years, the Catholic powers subjugated more land.
At this point, the Catholic League persuaded Ferdinand II to take back the Lutheran holdings that were, according to the Peace of Augsburg, rightfully the possession of the Catholic Church. Enumerated in the Edict of Restitution , these possessions included two archbishoprics, 16 bishoprics, and hundreds of monasteries.
In the same year, Gabriel Bethlen , the Calvinist prince of Transylvania, died. Only the port of Stralsund continued to hold out against Wallenstein and the emperor, having been bolstered by Scottish 'volunteers' who arrived from the Swedish army to support their countrymen already there in the service of Denmark-Norway. These men were led by Colonel Alexander Leslie , who became governor of the city. Sir Alexander Leslie being made Governour, he resolved for the credit of his Country-men, to make an out-fall upon the Enemy, and desirous to conferre the credit on his own Nation alone, being his first Essay in that Citie.
Leslie held Stralsund until , using the port as a base to capture the surrounding towns and ports to provide a secure beach-head for a full-scale Swedish landing under Gustavus Adolphus. Some in the court of Ferdinand II did not trust Wallenstein, believing he sought to join forces with the German princes and thus gain influence over the Emperor.
Ferdinand II dismissed Wallenstein in He later recalled him, after the Swedes, led by King Gustavus Adolphus, had successfully invaded the Holy Roman Empire and turned the tables on the Catholics. Like Christian IV before him, Gustavus Adolphus came to aid the German Lutherans, to forestall Catholic suzerainty in his back yard, and to obtain economic influence in the German states around the Baltic Sea. During his campaign, he managed to conquer half of the imperial kingdoms, making Sweden the leader of Protestantism in continental Europe until the Swedish Empire ended in France and Bavaria signed the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau , but this was rendered irrelevant by Swedish attacks against Bavaria.
The upper hand had now switched from the Catholic side to the Protestant side, led by Sweden. In , Sweden had paid at least 2,, daler for its army of 42, men. In , it contributed only one-fifth of that , daler towards the cost of an army more than three times as large , men. This was possible due to subsidies from France, and the recruitment of prisoners most of them taken at the Battle of Breitenfeld into the Swedish army.
Before that time, Sweden waged war with the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth and could not support the Protestant states properly. While a separate conflict, the Smolensk War became an integral part of Thirty Years' confrontation. The majority of mercenaries recruited by Gustavus Adolphus were German, [57] but Scottish soldiers were also very numerous.
These were joined by a further 8, men under the command of James Marquis Hamilton.
The total number of Scots in Swedish service by the end of the war is estimated at some 30, men, [58] no less than 15 of whom served with the rank of major-general or above. Wallenstein marched up to the south, threatening Gustavus Adolphus's supply chain.
Gustavus Adolphus knew that Wallenstein was waiting for the attack and was prepared but found no other option. Ferdinand II's suspicion of Wallenstein resumed in , when Wallenstein attempted to arbitrate the differences between the Catholic and Protestant sides. Ferdinand II may have feared that Wallenstein would switch sides, and arranged for his arrest after removing him from command. One of Wallenstein's soldiers, Captain Devereux, killed him when he attempted to contact the Swedes in the town hall of Eger Cheb on 25 February By the spring of , all Swedish resistance in the south of Germany had ended.
After that, the Imperial and Protestant German sides met for negotiations, producing the Peace of Prague , which entailed a delay in the enforcement of the Edict of Restitution for 40 years and allowed Protestant rulers to retain secularized bishoprics held by them in This protected the Lutheran rulers of northeastern Germany, but not those of the south and west whose lands had been occupied by the imperial or league armies prior to The treaty also provided for the union of the army of the emperor and the armies of the German states into a single army of the Holy Roman Empire although John George I of Saxony and Maximillian I of Bavaria kept, as a practical matter, independent command of their own forces, now nominally components of the "imperial" army.
Finally, German princes were forbidden from establishing alliances amongst themselves or with foreign powers, and amnesty was granted to any ruler who had taken up arms against the emperor after the arrival of the Swedes in This treaty failed to satisfy France, however, because of the renewed strength it granted the Habsburgs. France then entered the conflict, beginning the final period of the Thirty Years' War.
Sweden did not take part in the Peace of Prague and it continued the war together with France. Initially after the Peace of Prague, the Swedish armies were pushed back by the reinforced Imperial army north into Germany. The treaty also stipulated that Sweden would not conclude a peace with the Holy Roman Emperor without first receiving France's approval. The two army groups moved south from spring , re-establishing alliances on the way including a revitalised one with Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel.
The two Swedish armies combined and confronted the Imperials at the Battle of Wittstock. Despite the odds being stacked against them, the Swedish army won. Emperor Ferdinand II died in and was succeeded by his son Ferdinand III , who was strongly inclined toward ending the war through negotiations. His army did, however, win an important success at the Battle of Vlotho in against a combined Swedish-English-Palatine force.
This victory effectively ended the involvement of the Palatinate in the war. French military efforts met with disaster, and the Spanish counter-attacked, invading French territory. Then, the tide began to turn for the French. The Spanish army was repulsed by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. Bernhard's victory in the Battle of Breisach pushed the Habsburg armies back from the borders of France. In the war reached a climax and the tide turned clearly in favor of the French and against Spain, starting with the siege and capture of the fort at Arras.
When Arras fell, the way was opened to the French to take all of Flanders. Meanwhile, an important act in the war was played out by the Swedes. After the battle of Wittstock, the Swedish army regained the initiative in the German campaign. The imperial army suffered 20, casualties. In addition, the Swedish army took 5, prisoners and seized 46 guns, at a cost to themselves of 4, killed or wounded.
The same year, however, the French were defeated by the Imperial and Catholic League forces at the battle of Tuttlingen. In , Denmark-Norway made preparations to again intervene in the war, but on the imperial side against Sweden. The Swedish marshal Lennart Torstenson expelled Danish prince Frederick from Bremen-Verden , gaining a stronghold south of Denmark-Norway and hindering Danish participation as mediators in the peace talks in Westphalia.
In , a French army under Turenne was almost destroyed by the Bavarians at the Battle of Herbsthausen. The last Catholic commander of note, Baron Franz von Mercy , died in the battle. After five months, the Swedish army, severely worn out, had to withdraw. However, an Imperial army led by Octavio Piccolomini managed to check the Franco-Swedish army in Bavaria, though their position remained fragile. There, they captured many valuable treasures, including the Codex Gigas , which is still today preserved in Stockholm.
However, they failed to conquer the right-bank part of Prague and the old city, which resisted until the end of the war. These results left only the Imperial territories of Austria safely in Habsburg hands.
News of the French victories in Flanders in provided strong encouragement to separatist movements against Habsburg Spain in the territories of Catalonia and Portugal. To fight this war by diversion, Cardinal Richelieu had been supplying aid to the Catalans and Portuguese. The Reapers' War Catalan revolt had sprung up spontaneously in May The Habsburg government sent a large army of 26, men to crush the Catalan revolt.
On its way to Barcelona , the Spanish army retook several cities, executing hundreds of prisoners, and a rebel army of the recently-proclaimed Catalan Republic was defeated in Martorell , near Barcelona , on January, Meanwhile, increasing French control of political and administrative affairs, in particular in Northern Catalonia , and a firm military focus on the neighbouring Spanish kingdoms of Valencia and Aragon , in line with Richelieu 's war against Spain, gradually undermined Catalan enthusiasm for the French.
In parallel, in December , the Portuguese rose up against Spanish rule and once again Richelieu supplied aid to the insurgents. The ensuing conflict with Spain brought Portugal into the Thirty Years' War as, at least, a peripheral player. From to , the period during which the two nations were at war, Spain sought to isolate Portugal militarily and diplomatically, and Portugal tried to find the resources to maintain its independence through political alliances and maintenance of its colonial income.
The war by diversion in the Iberian Peninsula had its intended effect. Philip IV of Spain was reluctantly forced to divert his attention from the war in northern Europe to deal with his problems at home. Philip IV could no longer physically send reinforcements to the Low Countries. However, his policy of war by diversion continued to pay dividends to France. Spain was unable to resist the continuing drumbeat of French victories— Gravelines was lost to the French in , followed by Hulst in and Dunkirk in In the French authorities renounced to Catalonia's territories south of the Pyrenees, but held control of Roussillon , thereby leading to the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees in , which finally ended the war between France and Spain, with the partition of restive Catalonia between both empires.
The war ranks with the worst famines and plagues as the greatest medical catastrophe in modern European history. Those that survived, like the small village of Drais near Mainz , would take almost a hundred years to recover. The Swedish armies alone may have destroyed up to 2, castles, 18, villages, and 1, towns in Germany, one-third of all German towns. The war caused serious dislocations to both the economies and populations of central Europe, but may have done no more than seriously exacerbate changes that had begun earlier.
Then, it recovered during the — period, in part thanks to the demographic shock of the Thirty Years' War. Pestilence of several kinds raged among combatants and civilians in Germany and surrounding lands from to Many features of the war spread disease. These included troop movements, the influx of soldiers from foreign countries, and the shifting locations of battle fronts.
In addition, the displacement of civilian populations and the overcrowding of refugees into cities led to both disease and famine. Information about numerous epidemics is generally found in local chronicles, such as parish registers and tax records, that are often incomplete and may be exaggerated. The chronicles do show that epidemic disease was not a condition exclusive to war time, but was present in many parts of Germany for several decades prior to When the Imperial and Danish armies clashed in Saxony and Thuringia during and , disease and infection in local communities increased.
Local chronicles repeatedly referred to "head disease", "Hungarian disease", and a "spotted" disease identified as typhus. After the Mantuan War , between France and the Habsburgs in Italy, the northern half of the Italian peninsula was in the throes of a bubonic plague epidemic Italian Plague of — During the unsuccessful siege of Nuremberg , in , civilians and soldiers in both the Imperial and Swedish armies succumbed to typhus and scurvy.
Two years later, as the Imperial army pursued the defeated Swedes into southwest Germany, deaths from epidemics were high along the Rhine River. Bubonic plague continued to be a factor in the war. Beginning in , Dresden , Munich, and smaller German communities such as Oberammergau recorded large numbers of plague casualties. In the last decades of the war, both typhus and dysentery had become endemic in Germany. Among the other great social traumas abetted by the war was a major outbreak of witch hunting.
This violent wave of inquisitions first erupted in the territories of Franconia during the time of the Danish intervention and the hardship and turmoil the conflict had produced among the general population enabled the hysteria to spread quickly to other parts of Germany. Residents of areas that had been devastated not only by the conflict itself, but also by the numerous crop failures , famines , and epidemics that accompanied it, were quick to attribute these calamities to supernatural causes.
In this tumultuous and highly volatile environment , allegations of witchcraft against neighbors and fellow citizens flourished. An ardent devotee of the Counter-Reformation , Ehrenberg was eager to consolidate Catholic political authority in the territories he administered. Elsewhere, the persecutions arrived in the wake of the early Imperial military successes.
The witch hunts expanded into Baden following its reconquest by Tilly , while the Imperial victory in the Palatinate opened the way for their eventual spread to the Rhineland. In Cologne , the territory's Prince-Elector , Ferdinand of Bavaria , presided over a particularly infamous series of witchcraft trials that included the controversial prosecution of Katharina Henot , who was burned at the stake in The witch hunts reached their peak around the time of the Edict of Restitution in , and much of the remaining institutional and popular enthusiasm for them faded in the aftermath of Sweden's entry into the war the following year.
This influential work later was credited with bringing an end to the practice of witch-burning in some areas of Germany and its gradual abolition throughout Europe. The Thirty Years' War rearranged the European power structure. During the last decade of the conflict Spain showed clear signs of weakening. Spain was forced to accept the independence of the Dutch Republic in , ending the Eighty Years' War.
The war resulted in the partition of Catalonia between the Spanish and French empires in the Treaty of the Pyrenees. The war resulted in increased autonomy for the constituent states of the Holy Roman Empire, limiting the power of the emperor and decentralizing authority in German-speaking central Europe. For Austria and Bavaria, the result of the war was ambiguous. Bavaria was defeated, devastated, and occupied, but it gained some territory as a result of the treaty in Austria had utterly failed in reasserting its authority in the empire, but it had successfully suppressed Protestantism in its own dominions.
Compared to large parts of Germany, most of its territory was not significantly devastated, and its army was stronger after the war than it was before, unlike that of most other states of the empire. From —, during the last years of the war, Sweden and Denmark-Norway fought the Torstenson War. The result of that conflict and the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War helped establish postwar Sweden as a major force in Europe.
The arrangements agreed upon in the Peace of Westphalia in were instrumental in laying the legal foundations of the modern sovereign nation-state. Aside from establishing fixed territorial boundaries for many of the countries involved in the ordeal as well as for the newer ones created afterwards , the Peace of Westphalia changed the relationship of subjects to their rulers.
Previously, many people had borne overlapping, sometimes conflicting political and religious allegiances. Henceforth, the inhabitants of a given state were understood to be subject first and foremost to the laws and edicts of their respective state authority, not to the claims of any other entity, be it religious or secular. This in turn made it easier to levy national armies of significant size, loyal to their state and its leader, so as to reduce the need to employ mercenaries , whose drawbacks had been exposed a century earlier in The Prince.
Among the drawbacks were the depravations such as the Schwedentrunk and destruction caused by mercenary soldiers, which defied description and resulted in revulsion and hatred of the sponsor of the mercenaries; there would be no other figure such as Albrecht von Wallenstein , and the age of Landsknecht mercenaries would end. The war also had more subtle consequences. It was the last major religious war in mainland Europe , ending the large-scale religious bloodshed accompanying the Reformation , which had begun over a century before.
Other religious conflicts occurred until , but only on a minor scale and no great wars. The war also had consequences abroad, as the European powers extended their rivalry via naval power to overseas colonies. In , a Dutch fleet of 70 ships took the rich sugar-exporting areas of Pernambuco Brazil from the Portuguese, though the Dutch would lose them by Fighting also took place in Africa and Asia.
This was the beginning of the island's loss of sovereignty. Later the Dutch and English succeeded the Portuguese as colonial rulers of the island. War Scene by Sebastian Vrancx. Battle of Sablat , 10 June Execution of 27 Bohemian rebel leaders, Prague, 21 June Battle of Wimpfen , 6 May Battle of Fleurus , 29 August Battle of Stadtlohn , 6 August