Prisoner-of-war camp relatively small size of armies, meant there was little need for any form of camp to hold prisoners of war. The Peace of Westphalia, a series of treaties signed between May and October 1648 that ended the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War, contained a provision that all prisoners should be released without ransom. This is generally considered to mark the point where captured enemy combatants would be reasonably treated before being released at the end of the conflict or under a parole not to take up arms. The practice of paroling enemy combatants had begun thousands of
European wars of religion wars continued to be waged in the post-Westphalian period until the 1710s, and collective memory of the wars lasted even longer. The European wars of religion are also known as the Wars of the Reformation (and Counter-Reformation). The wars were closely connected to the theological disputes within Western Christendom, which erupted after the publication of Martin Luther's "Ninety-five Theses" in 1517. The Protestant Reformation led to a schism within the Catholic Church, as Protestant churches and rulers no longer recognised the authority of the papacy. Although most of the wars ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, religious conflicts