Franco-Dutch War of the Dutch Republic by surprise, is often referred to as "het Rampjaar" ("the Disaster Year") in Dutch. In order to weaken its Hapsburg rivals in Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, largely Catholic France supported the Dutch Republic during the 1568-1648 Eighty Years War and in 1635, it entered the Thirty Years' War as part of the anti-Imperial Protestant alliance. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia ended the wider war but the subsidiary Franco-Spanish War continued until the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees; the net effect was that Spain was no longer the dominant power in Europe, while France emerged
Treaty of Altranstädt (1707) Treaty of Altranstädt (1707) The Treaty or Convention of Altranstädt was signed between Charles XII of Sweden and Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor on 31 August 1707. It settled the rights of Protestants in Silesia. While the Protestant Reformation had strongly affected Silesia, the Habsburg emperors had subjected the province to the counter-reformation in the 18th century. Especially in Upper Silesia, these measures were successful: in the early 18th century, almost half of the Silesian population was Roman Catholic and some 1,000 churches had been rededicated from Protestant to Roman Catholic. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) protected Protestants only in