European Wars of Religion

The European wars of religion were a series of wars waged in Europe from ca. 1524 to 1697, following the onset of the Protestant Reformation in Western and Northern Europe. Although sometimes unconnected, all of these wars were strongly influenced by the religious change of the period, and the conflict and rivalry that it produced.

Individual conflicts that can be distinguished within this topic include:

  • conflicts immediately connected with the Reformation of the 1520s to 1540s:
    • the German Peasants' War (1524–1525)
    • the battle of Kappel in Switzerland (1531)
    • the Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) in the Holy Roman Empire
  • the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) in the Low Countries
  • the French Wars of Religion (1562–1598)
  • the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), affecting the Holy Roman Empire including Habsburg Austria and Bohemia, France, Denmark and Sweden
  • the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1651), affecting England, Scotland and Ireland
    • Scottish Reformation and Civil Wars
    • English Reformation and Civil War
    • Irish Confederate Wars and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland
  • Nine Years' War (1688–97)

Read more about European Wars Of Religion:  The Holy Roman Empire, France, Great Britain and Ireland, Denmark

Famous quotes containing the words european, wars and/or religion:

    “The Indian is one of Nature’s gentlemen—he never says or does a rude or vulgar thing. The vicious, uneducated barbarians, who form the surplus of overpopulous European countries, are far behind the wild man in delicacy of feeling or natural courtesy.”
    —Susanna Moodie (1803–1885)

    “I had the idea that there were two worlds. There was a real world as I called it, a world of wars and boxing clubs and children’s homes on back streets, and this real world was a world where orphans burned orphans.... I liked the other world in which almost everyone lived. The imaginary world.”
    —Norman Mailer (b. 1923)

    “They live together without king, without government, and each is his own master.... Beyond the fact that they have no church, no religion and are not idolaters, what more can I say? They live according to nature, and may be called Epicureans rather than Stoics.”
    —Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512)