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
League of the Rhine of the 1648 treaty of Westphalia, the treaty which had made the League possible by authorising the German princes, immediate vassals of the Emperor, to conclude alliances between themselves or with foreign states. On August 14, 1658, the League of the Rhine was formed by: The League fielded a force of 6000 to fight on the side of France and the Empire against the Ottomans, seeing action in the 1664 Battle of Saint Gotthard. The League was promulgated to last for three years, and this was later twice extended. It officially ended in August 1667, its end should in fact