30 Year’s War

The Holy Roman Empire was a union of many smaller nations located in Central Europe and included states that would eventually become modern day Germany, Austria, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Czechia, Belgium, Eastern France, Northern Italy, Southern Denmark, among others. It was a union with a democratically elected Emperor who was the symbolic figurehead of the HRE. While each independent state had its own rights, the collective Empire did have some struggles because for the most part, each prince would choose whether his state would be Catholic or Protestant, often at the expense of a minority. One of the most extreme was Bohemia, where there was a near precise 50-50 split between Catholics and Protestants, and a rivalry between the two started a rebellion that eventually grew to be known as the 30 Years’ War, a war that would consume the whole of present day Germany, with many nations including Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, The Papal States, The Ottoman Empire, and France, intervening in the fighting. The end result was the Treaty of Westphalia, a treaty that granted religious self determination for Catholics and Protestants and ended the war. However, this war would have cost nearly 40% of the population of the HRE, with casualties for the most part evenly distributed among all the states. This war marked the end of religious conflicts in Western Europe, and was the downfall of Austria and The Papal States (at least, until the 1860s), and saw the rise of France and Sweden as world powers.