The European wars of religion were waged in Europe during the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. Fought after the Protestant Reformation began in 1517, the wars disrupted the religious and political order in the Catholic countries of Europe. 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. 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. The Peace of Westphalia broadly resolved the conflicts by recognising three separate Christian traditions in the Holy Roman Empire: Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Calvinism. 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.
Definitions and discussions
The European wars of religion are also known as the Wars of the Reformation. In 1517, Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses took only two months to spread throughout Europe with the help of the printing press, overwhelming the abilities of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the papacy to contain it. In 1521, Luther was excommunicated, sealing the schism within Western Christendom between the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutherans and opening the door for other Protestants to resist the power of the papacy.
Although most of the wars ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, religious conflicts continued to be fought in Europe until at least the 1710s. These included the Savoyard–Waldensian wars (1655–1690), the Nine Years' War (1688–1697, including the Glorious Revolution and the Williamite War in Ireland), and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714). Whether these should be included in the European wars of religion depends on how one defines a "war of religion", and whether these wars can be considered "European" (i.e. international rather than domestic).
The religious nature of the wars has also been debated, and contrasted with other factors at play, such as national, dynastic (e.g. they could often simultaneously be characterised as wars of succession), and financial interests. Scholars have pointed out that some European wars of this period were not caused by disputes occasioned by the Reformation, such as the Italian Wars (1494–1559, only involving Catholics), as well as the Northern Seven Years' War (1563–1570, only involving Lutherans). Others emphasise the fact that cross-religious alliances existed, such as the Lutheran duke Maurice of Saxony assisting the Catholic emperor Charles V in the first Schmalkaldic War in 1547 in order to become the Saxon elector instead of John Frederick, his Lutheran cousin, while the Catholic king Henry II of France supported the Lutheran cause in the Second Schmalkaldic War in 1552 to secure French bases in modern-day Lorraine. The Encyclopædia Britannica maintains that "[the] wars of religion of this period [were] fought mainly for confessional security and political gain."
In the late 20th century, revisionist historians including William M. Lamont argued religion was a primary driver behind the 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, while John Morrill (1993) claimed it "was not the first European revolution...[but] the last of the Wars of Religion." This view was subsequently criticised by historians like Glen Burgess, whose views were based on a study of Parliamentarian political propaganda. He concluded that while many Puritans took up arms in protest against the religious reforms promoted by Charles I of England, they often justified their opposition as a revolt against a monarch who had violated crucial constitutional principles, and thus had to be overthrown. They even warned other Parliamentarians to avoid overt use of religious arguments in making their case for war against the king.
It can be argued that religious motives were often concealed by legalistic arguments, for example emphasising the need to defend the Church of England as the national church: "Seen in this light, the defenses of Parliament's war, with their apparent legal-constitutional thrust, are not at all ways of saying that the struggle was not religious. On the contrary, they are ways of saying that it was."
Overview of the wars
- British Isles
- Low Countries
- Spain & Portugal
- Central Europe (HRE)
- France & Italy
- Scandinavia, Baltics & Eastern Europe
Individual conflicts that may be distinguished within this topic include:
- Pre-Reformation wars:
- The Oldcastle Revolt (1414) in England (sometimes considered to have "foreshadowed the wars of religion")
- The Hussite Wars (1419–1434) in the Lands of the Bohemian Crown
- Conflicts immediately connected with the Reformation:
- The Knights' War (1522–1523) in the Holy Roman Empire
- The First Dalecarlian Rebellion (1524–1525) in Sweden.
- The German Peasants' War (1524–1526) in the Holy Roman Empire
- The Second Dalecarlian Rebellion (1527–1528) in Sweden.
- The Wars of Kappel (1529–1531) in the Old Swiss Confederacy
- The Tudor conquest of Ireland (1529–1603) on the Catholic population of Ireland by the Tudor kings of England and their Protestant allies
- The Kildare Rebellion (1534–1535)
- The First Desmond Rebellion (1569–1573)
- The Second Desmond Rebellion (1579–1583)
- The Nine Years' War (1593–1603)
- The Third Dalecarlian Rebellion (1531–1533) in Sweden.
- The War of Two Kings (1531–1532) in the Kalmar Union (Denmark and Norway)
- The Count's Feud (1534–1536) in the Kalmar Union (Denmark and Norway)
- The Münster rebellion (1534–1535) in the Prince-Bishopric of Münster
- The Anabaptist riot (1535) in Amsterdam
- Olav Engelbrektsson's rebellion (1536–1537) in Norway
- Bigod's rebellion (1537) in England
- The Dacke War (1542–1543) in Sweden
- Conflicts after the death of Martin Luther:
- The Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) in the Holy Roman Empire
- The Prayer Book Rebellion (1549) in England
- The Battle of Sauðafell (1550) on Iceland
- The Second Schmalkaldic War or Princes' Revolt (1552–1555)
- Wyatt's rebellion (1554) in England over Mary I of England's decision to marry the Catholic non-English prince Philip II of Spain. Mary's repression of the rebellion earned her the nickname "Bloody Mary" amongst Protestants.
- The French Wars of Religion (1562–1598) in France
- The Eighty Years' War (1566/68–1648) in the Low Countries
- The Cologne War (1583–1588) in the Electorate of Cologne
- The Strasbourg Bishops' War (1592–1604) in the Prince-Bishopric of Strasbourg
- The War against Sigismund (1598–1599) in the Polish–Swedish union
- The Bocskai uprising (1604–1606) in Hungary and Transylvania
- The War of the Jülich Succession (1609–10, 1614) in the United Duchies of Jülich-Cleves-Berg
- The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), affecting the Holy Roman Empire including the Habsburg monarchy and Bohemia and Moravia, France, Denmark-Norway and Sweden
- Bohemian Revolt (1618–1620) between the Protestant nobility of the Bohemian Crown and their Catholic Habsburg king. This revolt started the Thirty Years' War, causing additional conflicts elsewhere in Europe, and subsuming other already ongoing conflicts.
- Hessian War (1567–1648) between the Lutheran Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt (member of the Catholic League) and the Calvinist Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel (member of the Protestant Union)
- The Huguenot rebellions (1621–1629) in France
- The Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1653), affecting England, Scotland and Ireland
- Bishops' Wars (1639–1640)
- English Civil War (1642–1651)
- Scotland in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639–1652)
- Irish Confederate Wars (1641–1653) and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland (1649–1653)
- The post-Westphalian wars:
- The Düsseldorf Cow War (1651)
- The Savoyard–Waldensian wars (1655–1690) beginning with the Piedmontese Easter (Pasque piemontesi) of April 1655, in the Duchy of Savoy
- The First War of Villmergen (1656) in the Old Swiss Confederacy
- The Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667) between England and the Dutch Republic
- The Kuruc rebellion (1672) in Hungary
- Emeric Thököly's rebellion (1677–1685) in Hungary
- The Nine Years' War (1688–1697)
- The Glorious Revolution (1688–1689)
- The Williamite War in Ireland (1688–1691)
- The Jacobite rising of 1689 in Scotland saw Roman Catholics and Anglican Tories supporting the deposed Catholic king James Stuart take up arms against the newly enthroned Calvinist William of Orange and his Presbyterian Covenanter allies; the religious component may be regarded as secondary to the dynastic factor, however.
- The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) across Europe had a strong religious component
- The War in the Cevennes (1702–1710) in France
- Rákóczi's War of Independence (1703–1711) in Hungary
- The Toggenburg War (Second War of Villmergen) (1712) in the Old Swiss Confederacy
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire, encompassing present-day Germany and surrounding territory, was the area most devastated by the wars of religion. The Empire was a fragmented collection of practically independent states with an elected Holy Roman Emperor as their titular ruler; after the 14th century, this position was usually held by a Habsburg. The Austrian House of Habsburg, who remained Catholic, was a major European power in its own right, ruling over some eight million subjects in present-day Germany, Austria, Bohemia and Hungary. The Empire also contained regional powers, such as Bavaria, the Electorate of Saxony, the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the Electorate of the Palatinate, the Landgraviate of Hesse, the Archbishopric of Trier, and Württemberg. A vast number of minor independent duchies, free imperial cities, abbeys, bishoprics, and small lordships of sovereign families rounded out the Empire.
Lutheranism, from its inception at Wittenberg in 1517, found a ready reception in Germany, as well as German-speaking parts of Hussite Bohemia (where the Hussite Wars took place from 1419 to 1434, and Hussites remained a majority of the population until the 1620 Battle of White Mountain). The preaching of Martin Luther and his many followers raised tensions across Europe. In Northern Germany, Luther adopted the tactic of gaining the support of the local princes and city elites in his struggle to take over and re-establish the church along Lutheran lines. The Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, and other North German princes not only protected Luther from retaliation from the edict of outlawry issued by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, but also used state power to enforce the establishment of Lutheran worship in their lands, in what is called the Magisterial Reformation. Church property was seized, and Catholic worship was forbidden in most territories that adopted the Lutheran Reformation. The political conflicts thus engendered within the Empire led almost inevitably to war.
The Knights' War of 1522 was a revolt by a number of Protestant and religious humanist German knights led by Franz von Sickingen, against the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Emperor. It has also been called the "Poor Barons' Rebellion". The revolt was short-lived but would inspire the bloody German Peasants' War of 1524–1526.
Rebellions of Anabaptists and other radicals
The first large-scale wave of violence was engendered by the more radical wing of the Reformation movement, whose adherents wished to extend the wholesale reform of the Church into a similarly wholesale reform of society in general. This was a step that the princes supporting Luther were not willing to countenance. The German Peasants' War of 1524/25 was a popular revolt inspired by the teachings of the radical reformers. It consisted of a series of economic as well as religious revolts by Anabaptist peasants, townsfolk and nobles. The conflict took place mostly in southern, western and central areas of modern Germany but also affected areas in neighboring modern Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands (for example, the 1535 Anabaptist riot in Amsterdam). At its height, in the spring and summer of 1525, it involved an estimated 300,000 peasant insurgents. Contemporary estimates put the dead at 100,000. It was Europe's largest and most widespread popular uprising before the 1789 French Revolution.