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
Hessian War Peace Congress mediated by Duke Ernest of Saxe-Gotha and which resulted in a unification and peace treaty that was sealed in April 1648, ahead of the Treaty of Westphalia itself. Before the Westphalian Peace Treaty, Cassel fought one last time against the imperial side, winning the Battle of Wevelinghoven in the Rhineland, together with other Protestant troops. Darmstadt, however, was not involved in this battle. Under the Unification Treaty between Cassel and Darmstadt, Upper Hesse was permanently divided. Darmstadt had to give up a significant part of Upper Hesse to Cassel, not least Marburg and other occupied territories, including the