European wars of religion European wars of religion The European wars of religion were a series of religious wars waged in 16th and 17th century Europe. The wars were fought in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation (1517), which disrupted the religious order in the Catholic countries of Europe. However, religion was not the only cause of the wars, which also included revolts, territorial ambitions, and Great Power conflicts. By the end of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), Catholic France was allied with the Protestant countries against the Catholic Habsburg monarchy. The wars were largely ended by the Peace of Westphalia (1648), establishing a
Treaty of Teschen margraviates in 1791. The Electorate of Saxony received a sum of six million guilders (florins) from Bavaria in exchange of its inheritance claims. With the accession of Elector Charles Theodore, the electorates of Bavaria and the County Palatine of the Rhine (i.e. the territories in the Rhenish Palatinate and the Upper Palatinate) were under the united rule of the House of Wittelsbach. Their electoral votes were combined into one per a provision in the earlier Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, thereby reducing the number of electorates in the Holy Roman Empire to eight. The Innviertel, except for a short time