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
History of Europe and Spanish trade routes into the Pacific Ocean, reaching Australia in 1606 and New Zealand in 1642. With the development of the printing press, new ideas spread throughout Europe and challenged traditional doctrines in science and theology. Simultaneously, the Protestant Reformation under German Martin Luther questioned Papal authority. The most common dating of the Reformation begins in 1517, when Luther published "The Ninety-Five Theses", and concludes in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia that ended years of European religious wars. During this period corruption in the Catholic Church led to a sharp backlash in the Protestant Reformation. It gained many