The Peasants' War 1524

• The Peasants' rebellion was ruthlessly put down by German princes.

The Diet of Speyer, 1526

Protestants princes formed Schmalkaldic League.

Emperor Charles V (1500-1558)lost the War of Schmalkaldic League, agreed to the Peace of Passau in 1552, reaffirmed at Augsburg in 1555, granting Lutheran states the free exercise of their religion.

• Charles, worn out with war and controversy, announced his intention to abdicate.
• Germany remained divided in religion and politics. The idea of a united christendom under a Holy Roman Emperor had been repudiated.

Sweden, Denmark and much of Switzerland embraced Lutherism.

John Calvin in Genova, Switzerland 1509-1564

The Affair of the Placards, 1534 led to a royal crackdown of French protestants. They fled to Geneva where they were trained under Calvin, and returned in the 1550s. In 1559, representatives of 66 reformed churches drew up a platform based on the Geneva model.

Those protestants became known as Huguenots.

Then, the Saint Bartholomew's day massacre.

Netherland, Flanders, England

King Henry VIII 1491-1547; Anne Boleyn ca. 1507-1536; Pope Clement VII 1478-1534

King Edward VI 1537-1553

Queen Mary 1516-1558, Bloody Mary

Queen Elizabeth 1533-1603

Strict protestants tried to purify the settlement of Catholic rituals. They became known as Puritans.

Scotland

Mary of Guise 1515-1560

Mary Queen of Scots 1542-1587

King James VI 1566-1625

The Catholic response to Protestants was slow.

Council of Trent 1543-1563

Jesuits founded by Ignatius of Loyola 1491-1556

The Spanish Crusade

Iconoclasm, the revolt of Netherland

William of Orange "William the Silent" 1533-1584

The Spanish Fury

The defeat of the Spanish Armada

King Henry IV 1553-1610

Edict of Nantes, 1598

Thirty Years' War 1618-1648

Defenestration of Prague

The Battle of the White Mountain

The general European War, a religious war but also a war about balance and power

• The Catholic side: Spain, the Holy Roman Empire
• The Protestant side: Saxony and other northern German states, Sweden, Netherland, France(despite being a Catholic country)

Cardinal Richelieu 1585-1642

Peace of Westphalia 1648

• The devastation of central Europe
• The exhausted Spain was chronically in debt
• England emerged a major power at the end of the 17th Century
• With immense agricultural wealth, French subsidized other people' s armies to fight on other people's soil
• It discredited religious wars.
• The coming 17th Century: the Age of Reason