Consequences of War and the Holy Roman Empire. In particular, the war represented a continuation and extension of Habsburg and Bourbon rivalry as well as French and Habsburg animosity. As depicted in Consequences of War, the fighting led to the destruction of large areas of Europe as well as outbreaks of both pestilence and famine. Much of the fighting took place in the German states which suffered significant depopulation as a result. The Thirty Years' War ended in 1648 with the treaties of Osnabruck and Munster as well as the Peace of Westphalia. Peter Paul Rubens was not only a virtuosic painter but
Piracy in the Caribbean problems at home to turn much attention to their New World colonies. The non-Spanish colonies were growing and expanding across the Caribbean, fueled by a great increase in immigration as people fled from the chaos and lack of economic opportunity in Europe. While most of these new immigrants settled into the West Indies' expanding plantation economy, others took to the life of the buccaneer. Meanwhile, the Dutch, at last independent of Spain when the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia ended their own Eighty Years War (1568–1648) with the Habsburgs, made a fortune carrying the European trade goods needed by these new