Discuss the reigniting of the Wars of Religion in the seventeenth century.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The wars of the seventeenth century were renewed from those Wars of Religion a century earlier in several ways and places. The French Wars of Religion started in earnest in 1574 with the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, when French Catholics in Paris initiated the slaughter of French Huguenots, which subsequently spread into the countryside, killing as many as 40,000 French Protestants. Others of financial means immigrated to more Protestant-friendly countries. When the last royal son of the French bloodline died in 1589, Henry IV of Navarre became the king of France-although he was Protestant, he allegedly converted and then issued the Edict of Nante to ensure religious toleration within France. In 1618, however, religious wars between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Emperor were sparked with the "defenestration of Prague," as Protestant Bohemians believed the new Emperor's demand to convert to Catholicism violated the Peace of Augsburg (1555). This initiated the Thirty Years' War, and, like the Wars of Religion of the previous century, invoked both religious support for Protestants, as well as political demands by opponents, becoming an international conflict as it drew in Sweden, Spain, Denmark and France in various capacities. Fighting continued for thirty years until the Peace of Westphalia was concluded in 1648.