History of Europe and its lands. The European religious wars between German and Spanish rulers. The Reconquista ended Muslim rule in Iberia. By the 1490s a series of oceanic explorations marked the Age of Discovery, establishing direct links with Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Religious wars continued to be fought in Europe, until the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. The Spanish crown maintained its hegemony in Europe and was the leading power on the continent until the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees, which ended a conflict between Spain and France that had begun during the Thirty Years' War. An unprecedented series of
Treaty of Xanten in Westphalia to be governed by the House of Hohenzollern, and were the oldest constituents of the future Prussian Rhineland and the future Province of Westphalia. Treaty of Xanten The Treaty of Xanten () was signed in the Lower Rhine town of Xanten on November 12, 1614 between Wolfgang Wilhelm, Count Palatine of Neuburg and John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg, with representatives from England and France serving as mediators. The treaty ended the War of the Jülich Succession and all hostilities between Wolfgang William and John Sigismund. Based on the terms of the treaty, the territories of Jülich-Berg and Ravenstein