The Old Swiss Confederacy a "de facto" independent state throughout the early modern period, although still nominally part of the Holy Roman Empire until 1648 when the Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War. The Swiss Reformation divided the confederates into Reformed and Catholic parties, resulting in internal conflict from the 16th to the 18th centuries; as a result, the federal diet () was often paralysed by hostility between the factions. The Swiss Confederacy fell to invasion by the French Revolutionary Army in 1798, after which it became the short-lived Helvetic Republic. The adjective "old" was introduced after the Napoleonic era with ,
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