section_path: Renaissance and reforms/Reformation era wars
section_name: Reformation era wars
paragraph_text: Reformation era wars
  
  The Fifth Lateran Council issued some but only minor reforms in March 1517. A few months later, on 31 October 1517, Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses in public, hoping to spark debate. His theses protested key points of Catholic doctrine as well as the sale of indulgences. Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, and others also criticized Catholic teachings. These challenges, supported by powerful political forces in the region, developed into the Protestant Reformation. During this era, many people emigrated from their homes to areas which tolerated or practiced their faith, although some lived as crypto-Protestants or Nicodemites.
  
  In Germany, the Reformation led to war between the Protestant Schmalkaldic League and the Catholic Emperor Charles V. The first nine-year war ended in 1555 but continued tensions produced a far graver conflict, the Thirty Years' War, which broke out in 1618. In the Netherlands, the wars of the Counter-Reformation were the Dutch Revolt and the Eighty Years' War, part of which was the War of the Jülich Succession also including northwestern Germany. The Cologne War (1583–89) was a conflict between Protestant and Catholic factions which devastated the Electorate of Cologne. After the archbishop ruling the area converted to Protestantism, Catholics elected another archbishop, Ernst of Bavaria, and successfully defeated him and his allies.
  
  In France, a series of conflicts termed the French Wars of Religion was fought from 1562 to 1598 between the Huguenots and the forces of the French Catholic League. A series of popes sided with and became financial supporters of the Catholic League. This ended under Pope Clement VIII, who hesitantly accepted King Henry IV's 1598 Edict of Nantes, which granted civil and religious toleration to Protestants. In 1565, several hundred Huguenot shipwreck survivors surrendered to the Spanish in Florida, believing they would be treated well. Although a Catholic minority in their party was spared, all of the rest were executed for heresy, with active clerical participation.