Further Overview

The wars of religion began with the French civil wars. The French monarchs persecuted the French Calvinists called Huguenots. The persecution led to a civil war in which thousands were killed, and the development of the French State was arrested. The French civil Wars came to an end when King Henry IV issued the Edict of Nantes, which recognized Catholicism as the official religion of France while protecting the rights of the Huguenots.

Phillip II of Spain was committed to championing the Catholic faith throughout his empire. However, his strict beliefs resulted in a revolt in the Netherlands, the richest of his dominions. The uprising resulted in the development of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, which became the core of the present Dutch State. Under the terms of the treaty of Westphalia, Dutch independence was recognized.
England under Queen Elizabeth slowly gained power and began supporting the Dutch rebels. Spain felt threatened by England's ascendancy and felt that unless it stamped out Prtotestnism in England, it would never be able to quell the rebellion in the united provinces. It thus attempted to invade England. That invasion ended when Admiral Nelson defeated the Spanish armada in 1588. The defeat proved a disaster for Spain and guaranteed England ascendancy. The British victory also provided Great Britain with control of the seas, which allowed them to begin their serious settlement of North America.

From 1618 Europe was engulfed in the Thirty Years' War. The war began as a religious war between the Calvinists and militant Catholics. It started over a conflict over religious freedoms in Germany. While it may have started as a holy war, it soon developed into a political fight over control and power in Europe. France emerged as the dominant political power in Europe from the war; while Germany was devastated, some towns were sacked ten times.

A series of absolute monarchs transformed European politics after the Thirty Years' War. In France, Louis IV became the prototypical strong monarch, holding all the states' power in his hands. In Prussia Frederick, I built a strong army that became the fourth largest in Europe. Meanwhile, out of the ashes of the Holy Roman Empire, the Hapsburg emperors created the new Austria-Hungarian Empire. The Romans ruled Russia during this whole period. They slowly but surely expanded the Russian Empire.
By the 19th century, under Peter the Great, Russia had a standing army of 210,000. Peter attempted to westernize Russia with mixed results.