International relations, 1648–1814 and cultural achievement. Historian Frederick Nussbaum says it was: The worst came during the Thirty Years' War, 1618–1648, which had an extremely negative impact on the civilian population of Germany and surrounding areas, with massive loss of life and disruption of the economy and society. Scholars taking a "realist" perspective on wars and diplomacy have emphasized the Peace of Westphalia (1648) as a dividing line. It ended the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), where religion and ideology had been powerful motivating forces for warfare. Westphalia, in the realist view, ushered in a new international system of sovereign states of roughly equal
Battle of the Dunes (1658) The victory at the Battle of the Dunes and its consequences would lead to the end of ten years of war with the signing of Treaty of the Pyrenees. By this treaty France gained Roussillon and Perpignan, Montmédy and other parts of Luxembourg, Artois and towns in Flanders, including Arras, Béthune, Gravelines and Thionville, and a new border with Spain was fixed at the Pyrenees. The 1659 treaty also required the Spanish king to recognise and confirm all French gains in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. The defeat of the Spanish relief force and the taking of Dunkirk ended the