(2) Protestantism: Military History and Notable Events

1414 - Oldcastle Revolt (All Facts)

• Revolt in which the namesake leader and the Lollards rebelled against King Henry V of England and the Catholic Church of England

• Revolt which was foiled and in which 45 of its rebels were executed

• Revolt after which the namesake leader was burned at the stake for heresy

• Revolt which discredited the Lollardy Movement due to their linking it with social radicalism

1419 - 1434 - Hussite Wars (All Facts)

• Series of conflicts between the namesake followers of Jan Hus and the Czech and the Roman Catholic Church that began with the Defenestration of Prague

  • Series of conflicts in which the namesake followers of Jan Hus protested against the stringent Catholic policies of King Wenceslas IV of Bohemia

• Two years into this series of conflicts, at a meeting at Caslav, the representatives of Bohemia and Moravia renounced Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund as their king and founded their own government

• Series of conflicts in which the namesake followers of Jan Hus, led by Jan Zizka, won a series of victories in Bohemia against German armies sent to oppose them

• Series of conflicts in which the delegates at the Council of Basle attempted to negotiate with the Hussites after their victories

• Series of conflicts which ended with the Battle of Lipany

1419 - Defenestration of Prague (All Facts)

• Incident which began with a mass demonstration in the namesake capital city of Bohemia, in which thousands of Hussites marched on the New Town Hall

• After demands for the release of several of their preachers were ignored, the crowd forced its way into the building and threw the Catholic councilors and others whom the Hussites threw out of the windows into the square

• Incident in which a meeting of townspeople was held and which appointed four captains to administer the city

• Incident which began with a protest against the recent Catholic policies of King Wenceslas IV

1431 - 1449 - Council of Basel / Ferrara / Florence (All Facts)

• In its first phase, it was presided over by Pope Martin V and

  • worked to negotiate with the Hussites in order to end the Hussite Wars

  • refused to obey Pope Eugenius IV’s declaration of its dissolution

    • In response, the pope crowned Sigismund of Hungary Holy Roman Emperor in the hopes that the emperor would support him

  • oversaw the Hussites split into the Utraquists and Taborites due to the readiness of the council to reopen negotiations with the Hussites in order to end the Hussite Wars

  • the Hussites were eventually condemned as heretics

• In its second phase, it was presided over by Pope Eugene IV and

  • taking advantage of a split in the first phase of the council over the best place to meet a Greek delegation seeking the reunion of the churches, the Pope invited them to the namesake but only a minority from the first phase of the council came while a majority stayed behind and declared Pope Eugene IV suspended

• In its third phase, it was presided over by Pope Eugene IV, who had moved it once again to the namesake city in Italy

  • When the delegates of previous phases of the council once again refused to follow Eugene IV and the rest of the council that followed him to the namesake city in Italy, they had Pope Eugene IV deposed and they elected their own pope in his place, a layman famous for his wisdom and wealth named Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy, who adopted the name Felix V

• In this third and final phase, the Byzantines (Greeks)

  • agreed to all the major demands of Pope Eugenius IV

  • recognized the pope as the head of the whole Christian church

  • agreed to (re)unify with the Roman Catholic Church in order to successfully defend the Christian world from the Ottoman Turks

  • capitulated to the Roman Catholic view of the Trinity

• In this third and final phase, the Ethiopians (Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church)

  • Send a representative to the namesake church council

  • sign an act of union with the Roman Catholic Church

• Finally, the namesake council elected Pope Nicholas V as Pope and dissolved itself

  • In so doing, it oversaw Felix V’s abdication

1509 - 1559 - English Reformation (All Facts)

• Movement which began as a controversy over King Henry VIII’s matrimonial problems and evolved into a political revolution in England

• Movement in which England broke with the Roman Catholic Church

• Movement in which the King of England needed to carry public opinion with him, causing him to increasingly seek the support of parliament

• Movement in which the following developments took place:

  • Convocations of Canterbury and York

  • 1533 Submission of the Clergy Act

  • 1534 Supremacy Act

  • 1534 Succession Act

  • 1535 Suppression of Religious Houses Act

  • Dissolution of the Monasteries

  • Increasing clerical unemployment in which clerics

    • Lost their jobs as clerics of church properties and monasteries

    • Lost their jobs among those who sat in the House of Lords

  • The English Bible

    • With the Bible being printed into English, it rendered clerics obsolete for the people could at the time then read the Bible for themselves

• Movement which took place alongside the spread of Protestantism throughout northern Europe at the time

1516 - 1648 - Swiss Reformation (All Facts)

• Period and Movement led by

  • Ulrich Zwingli, who

    • had an alternative form of Holy Communion held in Zurich during the Swiss Reformation, which was of great simplicity with neither music nor singing

      • He presided over a table laid with beakers and wooden vessels

      • He served the congregation first, and then himself afterwards

  • John Calvin (from France)

  • William Farel (from France)

  • Theodore Beza (from France)

• Period and Movement from which emerged Anabaptism

• Period and Movement focused in Zurich, during which

  • local magistrates there banned the Roman Mass

• Period and Movement which spread from Zurich to

  • Berne, which decided in favor of the namesake and abolished the Mass

  • Geneva, in which, in 1536, its city council met at its cathedral and officially adopted the Protestant Reformation after William Farel had returned there a third time after being expelled twice

1520s - 1600s - French Reformation (All Facts)

• Period and Movement led by John Calvin and Theodore Beza

1524 - 1525 - German Peasants’ War / German Peasants’ Revolt (All Facts)

• Failed Popular Revolt in some German-speaking areas in Central Europe, especially in Germany (the Holy Roman Empire) amongst the peasants and common people against the German Princes and the Holy Roman Empire

  • Revolt which was the largest and most widespread popular uprising in Europe prior to the French Revolution

• Revolt which

  • began in Bavaria and spread rapidly to Hesse, Franconia, Thuringia, Saxony, and Tyrol

    • Revolt which consisted of a series of local uprisings against oppression by

      • German princes

      • German landlords

      • the German Catholic Church

  • was inspired by

    • Martin Luther’s teachings

    • the radical Christian communities springing up at the time like the one set up at Allstedt based on common ownership

• Revolt supported by Thomas Muntzer

• Revolt in which Thomas Muntzer was beheaded

• Revolt in which peasants speared the Count of Helfenstein in front of his wife and child at Weinsberg

  • This atrocity caused Martin Luther to condemn the namesake conflict in his work, “Against the Murdering Thieving Hordes of Peasants”

1525 - Battle of Frankenhausen (All Facts)

• Battle in which Thomas Muntzer and the German Peasants’ Army was defeated by the Holy Roman Empire and German princes during the German Peasants’ War / German Peasants’ Revolt

• Battle after which Thomas Muntzer was beheaded

1518 - (First) Diet of Augsburg (All Facts)

• Imperial Diet at which martin Luther refused to retract his then-widely-circulated 95 Theses

1521 - Diet of Worms (All Facts)

• Imperial Diet called by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V

• Imperial Diet during which Martin Luther

  • challenged the papal claim that the Papacy was to be the sole authority on the scriptures

  • questioned many of the rights of the priests

  • rejected the belief that bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ

  • affirmed Christians’ personal right to faith

• Imperial Diet in which

  • friends of Martin Luther feared for his life as he confronted the young Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and refused to retract his theological views

  • the welcome of the German crowd showed that he struck a popular chord

  • Holy Roman Emperor Charles V feared that the revolutionary spirit of Luther’s speech might affect his power

• Imperial Diet in which, as a result of Luther’s refusal to retract, denounced him and tried to have him executed

  • As a result, Luther was “kidnapped” for his own safety by Duke Frederick of Saxony a few weeks later

1526 - (First) Diet of Speyer (All Facts)

• Imperial Diet which allowed each prince to decide the religious allegiance of his state

• Imperial Diet which found that because an agreement could not be obtained in the prior Imperial Diet of Worms, each city and territory involved was still independent from the authority of the empire via their prince’s decision of religious allegiance and thus could allow Protestantism to continue unaffected if the prince deemed it so

1529 - (Second) Diet of Speyer (All Facts)

• Imperial Diet during which the “Protestation at Speyer” occurred and the term “Protestantism” / “Protestants” was coined

• Imperial Diet dominated by Catholics which condemned the First Diet of its kind and that Diet’s results and thus prohibited future reformation

• Imperial Diet in which 19 reformed states protested against the repeal of the edict that came out of the (First) Diet of Speyer

1529 - Protestation at Speyer (All Facts)

• Incident in which the letter, “A Protestation,” was signed by six of Germany’s (Protestant) Princes and the burghers of 14 cities, thus rejecting the (Second) Diet of Speyer and in which the signatories of the letter were dubbed “Protestants”

• Incident in which a petition was signed against an imperial ban of Martin Luther, as well as the proscription of his works and teachings, and called for the unhindered spread of the evangelical faith

• Incident which was seen as a challenge to the authority of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V

1529 - Marburg Colloquy (All Facts)

• Meeting organized by Philip of Hesse which sought to close the emerging gap in Protestant theology between Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli

  • Meeting in which Philip of Hesse invited the reformers of Wittenberg, Strasbourg, and Zurich to meet in the namesake castle and tried (and ultimately failed) to resolve their theological differences which emerged as divisions within the Protestant Reformation

• Meeting in which Philip of Hesse managed to persuade Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli to visit his castle in the namesake town in Germany to discuss their views, along with other Protestant reformers of the time including

  • Philip Melanchthon

  • Johannes Oecolampadius

• Meeting in which they all signed off on fifteen articles, agreeing on all items of doctrine except the Eucharist

  • Meeting in which Luther and Zwingli agreed and

    • renounced transubstantiation

    • renounced the belief that the eucharist was a sacrifice for the living and the dead

    • insisted on communion in both kinds of Christ

  • Meeting in which Luther and Zwingli disagreed on

    • whether or not Christ's body and blood are present in the Eucharist

• Meeting which ended badly, as Luther and Zwingli remained divided politically

  • Luther refused to move against Holy Roman Emperor Charles V

  • Zwingli was keen for the Swiss to revolt against the Holy Roman Empire

1530 - (Second) Diet of Augsburg (All Facts)

• Imperial Diet in which the Catholics defeated the Protestants and decided that the Protestants (Lutherans) must recognize the Pope or would be threatened with force if they failed to do so

  • As a result, the more moderate Lutherans united with the more militant and radical Zwinglians (Swiss)

• Imperial Diet in which Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the Catholics and Philip of Melanchthon and the Protestants both wanted to achieve unity

  • They were keen on compromise and unity in order to defend themselves against the Muslim Ottoman Turks who had just besieged Vienna a year prior

  • However, close observers saw this as nothing more than window-dressing as their religious differences remained much deeper in reality

• Imperial Diet in which the namesake Confession was presented in an (failed) attempt to avoid a permanent split and thus achieve reconciliation with the Catholic Church

  • Imperial Diet attended by Philip Melanchthon as Martin Luther was still in exile from the Holy Roman Empire

1531 - Second War of Kappel / Battle of Kappel (All Facts)

• Civil War / Battle in which the Catholic Cantons of Switzerland defeated the Protestants of Switzerland including Zurich, Basle, and Berne

• Civil War / Battle in which Ulrich Zwingli was killed

1532 - Peace of Nuremberg (All Facts)

• Treaty signed between Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the Schmalkaldic League in which the principalities in the League were granted freedom of worship in exchange for military aid of the Holy Roman Empire against the Ottoman Turks

1534 - Affair of the Placards (All Facts)

• Incident in which anti-Catholic posters appeared in public places in Paris and in four major provincial cities, Blois, Rouen, Tours and Orléans during the reign of King Francis of France

  • These posts violently criticized the Catholic mass

  • Some of them even appeared on the royal chateau at Blois

• Incident which caused a wave of sectarian hatred to engulf Paris

• Incident which represented the beginnings of Protestantism in France and the influence Martin Luther had on France

  • Incident in which there were rumors hat Protestants plan to murder faithful Catholics at Mass

  • Incident after which King Francis of France was expected to take harsh action against the Protestant reformers

1534 - 1535 - Anabaptist Munster Rebellion (All Facts)

• Incident in which the town of Munster was taken by an alliance of Catholic and Protestant troops after it had been controlled by the Anabaptist revolutionaries for two years

• Incident in which Anabaptists

  • killed anyone unbaptized

  • seized property

  • proclaimed world rebellion

• Incident in which the town of Munster’s Anabaptist inhabitants were massacred or forced into hiding as a tidal wave of disgust swept Germany as well as the Netherlands (where the Anabaptist movement spread) and Switzerland (where the Anabaptist movement started)

• Incident in which the Anabaptist Movement’s ringleaders were seized, including John of Leyden

1536 - 1541 - Dissolution of the Monasteries (All Facts)

• Movement in England under the reign of King Henry VIII in which he set up a commission under Thomas Cromwell, which

  • disbanded all Catholic Church properties in England, Wales, and Ireland

  • seized their wealth

  • redistributed their wealth to the Crown of England and to fund King Henry VIII’s military campaigns

  • disposed of their assets

  • destroyed buildings and relics

  • dispersed or destroyed libraries

  • provided for their former personnel and functions

    • former abbots, monks, and nuns were given pensions; however clerical unemployment rose significantly during this movement

  • turned many of the nearly 800 church properties sold into private homes for the Gentry class

  • ceased the Church’s system of distributing alms, thus causing hardship amongst England’s poor

  • made it so that monks and abbots no longer sat in the House of Lords, having lost political power in addition to religious authority

• Movement in England under the reign of King Henry VIII in which he set up a commission under Thomas Cromwell, in which

  • Cromwell sent the commissioners appointed under him by King Henry VIII storming throughout England in which they

    • interrogated monks, nuns, and friars

    • claimed to have uncovered profound bawdiness, drunkenness, and “whores in feather beds”

    • put up for sale nearly 800 church properties, which the proceeds having gone to the Crown

  • King Henry VIII and Thomas Cromwell had

    • sought excuses for suppressing the English monasteries and confiscating their assets for

      • The English Crown

      • Henry VIII’s military campaigns

    • redistributed some of the assets

      • to their supporters as gifts of property

      • to put up for auction

  • Over 550 church properties being brought to a close, with their treasure of plate and jewels being passed into King Henry VIII’s possession

    • 370 of these were smaller and were the first to fall

    • 186 of these were bigger and were the last to fall

  • New family fortunes, for the time, were established on the namesake basis

    • as a result of

      • being guarantors of the gifts of property given to supports of King Henry VIII’s English Reformation

      • buying off of auctions of former properties initiated by King Henry VIII’s administration

    • by

      • William Cavendish

      • Richard Rich

1539 - Treaty of Frankfurt / Truce of Frankfurt (All Facts)

• Peace Treaty between Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the Catholics and Philip Melanchthon and the Protestants at the namesake German city

1545 - Merindol Massacre (All Facts)

• Massacre carried out against the Waldensians (proto-Protestant group of France) in the namesake area in Provence in France

• Massacre in which villages were pillaged, women were burnt alive in a church, and men were rounded up to be enslaved in the galleys

• Massacre which began with rumors that the Waldensians were plotting sedition; however, these rumors were started deliberately by Jean Meynier, a local baron who coveted the land of a neighbor of his who happened to be Waldensian and he was given the task by King Francis to stamp out such “sedition,” which was done with great cruelty and he ended up seizing the land which he coveted

1546 - 1547 - Siege of St. Andrew’s Castle (All Facts)

• Battle in which the French captured Scottish Protestants and imprisoned them as galley slaves afterwards, including John Knox; whom were not released until the French paid the English 400K crowns via the Treaty of Boulogne

1546 - 1547 - (First) Schmalkaldic War (All Facts)

• Civil War which began when Holy Roman Emperor Charles V formed an alliance with Maurice of Saxony against the namesake League of German Protestant princes and outlawed Philip of Hesse and John Frederick, two heads of the namesake league

• Civil War which caused the namesake league to dissolve

• Civil War in which the namesake league’s Protestants

  • at the outset, dominated the Danube River, capturing castle after castle as they advanced onto the County of Tyrol

  • had a plan to block the passes, ensuring that Italian troops could not get through to join Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s forces

    • However, this plan failed due to lack of organization as most of Charles V’s opponents (Henry VIII of England, Francis of France, Martin Luther, and Barbarossa of the Ottoman Empire) by that time had died

• Civil War after which Holy Roman Emperor Charles V

  • assumed peak stature over Europe

  • systematically began to take German cities until his armies came to the banks of the Elbe River

1547 - Battle of Muhlberg (All Facts)

• Battle in which Charles V and his Holy Roman forces defeated John Frederick of Saxony and his forces during the Schmalkaldic War

• Battle in which Charles V’s outnumbered army defeated and captured John Frederick of Saxony

• Battle after which John Frederick of Saxony was court martialed and sentenced to death

1548 - (Third) Diet of Augsburg (All Facts)

• Imperial Diet in which the namesake “Interim” decree was issued by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V

  • The Schmalkaldic League representatives at the namesake diet reluctantly accepted the “Interim” agreement which had a strongly Catholic bias

1550 - Treaty of Boulogne (All Facts)

• Peace Treaty signed between England and France

• Peace Treaty which ended the Rough Wooing between England and Scotland

  • After the treat was signed, English troops withdrew from Scotland

• Peace Treaty in which the English surrendered the namesake French city in exchange for 400K crowns and the release of Protestant Scots including John Knox

  • These Protestant Scottish prisoners were originally captured by the French at the Siege of St. Andrews Castle

1552 - (Second) Schmalkaldic War / Princes’ Revolt (All Facts)

• Civil War in which Maurice of Saxony, with help from King Henry II of France, and their combined forces defeated Holy Roman Emperors Charles V and his forces

• Civil War which began with

  • The Treaty of Chambord

• Civil War which saw

  • Maurice of Saxony and his forces take Augsburg

  • Maurice of Saxony and his forces nearly capture Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at Innsbruck, who fled in time

• Civil War which ended with the Treaty of Passau

1552 - Peace of Passau (All Facts)

• Peace Treaty signed between Ferdinand of Habsburg, on behalf of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and Maurice of Saxony, which

  • revoked the Augsburg Interim

  • thus promised religious freedom to the Protestant German Princes

1553 - 1558 - Marian Persecutions (All Facts)

• Campaign during the reign of Queen Mary of Tudor in which approximately 280 to 300+ Protestants were executed for heresy in an attempt to restore Roman Catholicism to England

1554 - Wyatt’s Rebellion (All Facts)

• Rebellion led by the namesake and Protestants against Queen Mary of England and her proposed marriage to King Philip II of Spain which was suppressed by Queen Mary of England

• Rebellion in which the namesake led 3,000 men from Kent to march on London, unsuccessfully, to try to stop Queen Mary’s marriage to Philip II of Spain

1555 - Peace of Augsburg (All Facts)

• Peace Treaty signed between Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the German Protestant Princes (Schmalkaldic League), which

  • ended the religious struggle between Catholics and Lutherans in the Holy Roman Empire

  • ended the Schmalkaldic Wars

  • established the “cuius regio, eius regio” principle (“to each kingdom its own religion), which

    • allowed rulers to choose Catholicism or Lutheranism as the official administrative religion

    • gave German Princes power over the bodies and souls of their subjects

    • did NOT give ordinary people their religious freedom, but did allow them to move to adjoining states if their own prince does not permit their religion

    • did NOT allow rulers to choose Calvinism, as Calvinists were excluded from the agreement

    • thus advocated that the religion of a prince should determine the faith of his subjects

    • thus sanctioned the existence of Lutheran states

  • established the “reservatum ecclesiasticum” (“ecclesiastical reservation”) principle, which

    • meant that the religion of the ruler would be the religion of the country and of its people, those being his possessions by inheritance

  • represented a clear recognition by Catholics of the co-existence for the new Protestant churches throughout Europe

  • represented a clear recognition by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to grant power and rights to the German Princes

  • thus allowed Catholicism to continue in some of the German principalities (states), as the Catholic German Princes were driven by different political motives but could never have withstood the surging popularity of Lutheranism on their own

  • decided that there should be an equal number of Lutherans and Catholics in the imperial chamber

1560 - Scottish Reformation Parliament (All Facts)

• Meeting of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh in which 100 lairds heard the Scots Confession, drafted by John Knox

1560 - Amboise Conspiracy (All Facts)

• Huguenot plot to capture the French court and topple the powerful Guise family that failed because the Guise family was warned

• As a result of the attempted namesake plot, hundreds of Huguenots were arrested or executed and Louis de Bourbon, duke of Conde, was imprisoned

1561 - Colloquy of Poissy (All Facts)

• Series of talks set up by Catherine de Medici, acting on the advice of Michel de l’Hopital, between French Catholics (led by the Spainiard Diego Laynez) and Huguenots (led by Theodore Beza) at the namesake location, in an attempt to settle their religious differences which were proving dangerous to France

• In the meeting, Catherine de Medici consented to an edict giving the Huguenots qualified toleration; however it eventually turned out that the two sides’ differences were so great that there would not be any reconciliation between them

1562 - Treaty of Hampton Court (All Facts)

• Treaty signed between Queen Elizabeth and Louis de Bourbon (the prince and duke of Conde of France and Huguenot leader)

• Treaty in which

  • The English will occupy Le Havre in return for aiding Bourbon’s forces against Catholic troops in the First French War of Religion

  • The English will leave Le Havre once the French return Calais to England (which they had taken during the Anglo-French War and Ninth Italian War)

1562 - Massacre at Vassy (All Facts)

• Massacre of an (illegal) Huguenot congregation in the namesake French city, carried out on the orders of Francois, the Duke of Guise

• Massacre which directly triggered the French Wars of Religion and First French War of Religion

1562 - 1563 - First French War of Religion (All Facts)

• Civil War in which Francois de Lorraine, duke of Guise and the French Catholics defeated Gaspard de Coligny and the French Huguenots

• Civil War in which French Catholic nobles, led by Francois de Lorraine, duke of Guise, opposed to French Huguenot religious reform, organized for the Massacre of Vassy, which directly caused the namesake war

• Civil War which resulted in negotiated settlements for both sides in the Peace of Amboise, with no clear victor, but in which the Huguenots were allowed to maintain their religion

• Civil War which saw the Huguenots called to arms, retaliating against the French Catholics and their Massacre at Vassy by

  • despoiling churches

  • murdering priests

  • raping nuns

  • taking possession of

    • Lyons

    • Rouen

    • Orleans (via the Siege of Orleans, where Francois de Lorraine, duke of Guise, was assassinated)

  • slaughtered many other towns

• Civil War which ended with the assassination of Francois de Lorraine, duke of Guise, by a Huguenot gentleman

• Civil War which officially ended with the Peace of Amboise

1563 - Siege of Le Havre (All Facts)

• Battle in which the namesake city, the subject of the Treaty of Hampton Court and previously occupied by the English while awaiting the return of Calais from France, is taken by French Catholic troops from French Huguenot troops during the First French War of Religion

1563 - Peace of Amboise (All Facts)

• Edict of Peace signed between the French Catholics and Huguenots that ended the First French War of Religion

• Edict of Peace which granted the Huguenots limited toleration, despite their defeat in the First French War of Religion

• Edict of Peace which did not hold long, for it

  • left French Catholics angry at the concessions given to Huguenots

  • left French Huguenots fearful that progress of the new faith had been curbed

1566 - 1648 - Eighty Years War / Dutch Revolt (All Facts)

• War between Spain and the Habsburg (Spanish) Netherlands

• War which began

  • when King Philip II of Spain

    • decided to curb the Netherlands’ autonomy

    • bring the Spanish Inquisition into the Netherlands

  • when popular revolts against Spanish rule were

    • triggered by

      • bad harvests

      • increase in the price of bread

      • famine

      • mass unemployment

      • floods

      • resentment against the implementation of the Spanish Inquisition into the Netherlands

      • oppressive taxes (especially the “tenth penny” tax of Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the Duke of Alba)

    • encouraged by

      • anti-Catholic Dutch Calvinists

      • other anti-Spanish / anti-Catholic “heretics”

      • the Dutch Protestant Reformation

• War which began when

  • the three leaders King Philip II of Spain had appointed to rule the Habsburg (Spanish) Netherlands began to challenge him and Spain for these anti-Netherlandish measures, making them symbols of Dutch resistance

  • churches were ransacked

  • monasteries were sacked

  • gold and silver ornaments were looted in villages throughout the Low Countries, as magistrates looked on helplessly

  • Catholic nobles were removed from their town councils

  • Margaret of Parma used newly-arrived funds from Spain to build up an army

• War which began when Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the Duke of Alba, acting on the orders of King Philip II of Spain had

  • pledged himself to bring back the Spanish Inquisition into the Netherlands

  • pledged himself to establish a new order for King Philip II

  • turned his regime over the Netherlands into a dictatorship by which he

    • imposed the hated “tenth penny” tax on the (Spanish) Netherlands to help a bankrupted Spain and pay his army in the Low Countries

    • humiliated Margaret of Parma, the civil governor, by

      • forcing her to demobilize her army she raised

      • assuming many of her powers until she was forced to leave for Italy

    • established the “Council of Troubles,” a newer and more sinister form of the Spanish Inquisition within the Netherlands, in which he

      • organized the arrests of thousands just in one spring

      • oversaw the execution of 1,000 alleged heretics

      • oversaw the stripping of property of 8,000 alleged heretics

      • oversaw the seizing and burning of 500 alleged heretical books in the Calvinist city of Tournai

  • imposed the “tenth penny” tax to help a nearly-bankrupted Spain pay its armies in the Low Countries (Netherlands)

• War which began when Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, the Duke of Alba, acting on the orders of King Philip II of Spain had

  • ordered the arrest of Counts Egmont and Hoorne, the leaders of the nobility there

  • ensured that William of Orange was deprived of his office of stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht

  • set up a new court in the Netherlands that tried suspected rebels

  • ordered the execution in Brussels of 20 noble leaders, including Counts Egmont and Hoorne

  • imposed crippling taxation on the rebel province of Groningen

  • oversaw the Count of Egmont’s execution via order of the repressive “Court of Unrest,” the so-called “Council of Blood”

  • suppressed the initial anti-Catholic, anti-Spanish Calvinist insurrection

  • came with 10K elite Spanish troops and marched through the streets of Ghent, organizing the troops into ranks of five, following them up with prostitutes in frilly dresses riding donkeys and bringing with a host of camp followers

  • made sure the behavior of his troops underlined the ferocity with which he approached his task

  • had the Dutch population, even the good Catholics there, insulted in the streets as “traitors” and “heretics”

  • had merchants beaten up

• War in which the “Sea Beggars” fled from Fernando Alvarez de Toledo’s repression in their native Netherlands to England

  • They harried shipping between Spain and the Netherlands for three years

  • They chanted the Lord’s Prayer addressed to Fernando Alvarez de Toledo saying, “cursed father who in Brussels doth dwell, cursed be thy name in Heaven and in Hell”

  • When they tried using Dover in England as the base for their operations, Queen Elizabeth of England expelled them from the port

  • They eventually controlled Brill, Enkhuisen, Flushing, Arnemuide, Veere, Holland, and Zeeland when Luis de Requenses y Zyniga assumed the governorship

• War in which the Dutch

  • raised their own revenue from their trade in the East and West Indies

  • captured an entire (Spanish) treasure fleet in the Caribbean one year, the proceeds of which enabled them to launch a major assault against Spain within the Netherlands

  • (from the Seven United Provinces) occupied the mouth of the Scheldt, halting any seaborne trade with Antwerp

• War in which Francis, Duke of Anjou tried to regain Antwerp for the Dutch Calvinists

• War in which Piet Heyn and his forces seized 80 tons of silver from (Spanish) Cuba, whom carried the namesake war across the Atlantic to colonies and shipping in the New World of the Americas

• War which saw the Pacification of Ghent

• War in which the Hague of the Netherlands deposed Philip II of Spain as ruler of the seven provinces which formed the Union of Utrecht, thus declaring war against and independence from Spain

• War in which Alexander Farnese of the Netherlands secured the submissions of the southern Netherlands, Flanders, and Brabant to the Spanish crown

• War in which Robert Dudley returned to England after failing to aid the Dutch in their revolt against Spain

• War in which a Twelve Year Truce was declared

  • However, this did not last because of a renewal of hostilities occurred because of Dutch ships having grown in numbers and trading throughout much of the world and threatening Spain’s trade monopoly with its colonial possessions

  • Apart from their success in trading, the Dutch waged war with Spanish shipping and settlements on the Pacific Ocean; which provoked their hostilities amongst one another

• War in which the Spanish court ended the Twelve Year Truce once

  • the Dutch established “Fort Orange” on Hudson’s River in North America

  • established their Dutch West India Company, which was formed to promote trade and war in Spanish South America

• War in which the Dutch were so desperate for military aid against Spain that they

  • appealed to Cardinal Richelieu and France for assistance, who gave them a subsidy of a million livres on the condition that Dutch ships join in a blockade of the Huguenot fortress in the Battle of La Rochelle

    • The Dutch leaders’ willingness to support a war against their fellow Huguenots (French Calvinists) angered the Dutch Calvinists of the Netherlands

  • struck at other American possessions of King Philip IV and Spain in order to inflict maximum damage on the king’s lucrative trade with the colonies

    • They ignored the claims of Spain (and Portugal) and dealt directly with the colonies to raise revenues

    • This trade became so large that

      • King Philip IV had to continue fighting because of what he would lose

      • The Dutch had to continue fighting because of what they had gained

    • They seized the Spanish (formerly Portuguese) capital of Brazil, the port of Bahia

• War during which the Dutch and the Spanish traded with each other despite the conflict in which

  • The Dutch levied port charges on ships sailing to Spanish territories, using the money to build warships

  • The Spanish needed the grain and naval stores brought by the Dutch from northern Europe for their own use

• War which dragged on for so long because the Spanish crown, despite being much more powerful

  • became bankrupt and could not pay its troops fighting for them in the Netherlands

    • Thus, mercenaries working for Spain frequently mutinied, walking out of forts and letting the Dutch take them over

    • Thus, Spanish military gains in the Netherlands were frequently lost

  • depended on a steady flow of precious metal from New Spain (the New World) to pay its troops; its entire empire existing solely to fund the war

  • had to pay heavily to move her troops across Europe from Italy

  • had a depleted navy which had to be deployed in protecting treasure ships in the Atlantic and escorting troop-ships to Genoa, leaving the North Sea and Baltic ports open for Dutch shipping

  • had leaders who were busy patronizing artists (whom some of their money went to)

  • had a gradual but demoralizing effect on Spain, it being an intolerable strain on Spain’s resources in manpower and money

• War which saw

  • The Capture of Brielle in which

    • monasteries were sacked there

    • Catholic nobles were removed from its town council

    • it provided the first foothold on land for the rebels at a time when the rebellion was all but crushed, which offered the sign for a new revolt throughout the Netherlands which led to the formation of the Dutch Republic

  • The Siege of Haarlem

  • The Battle of Mookerheyde

  • The Sack of Antwerp

  • The Battle of Gembloux

  • The Fall of Antwerp

  • The Battle of Nieuwpoort

  • The Siege of Ostend

  • The Siege of Bergen op Zoom

  • The Capture of Bahia

  • The Battle of San Juan

• War which ended with the Peace of Munster, in which the Netherlands gained their independence from Spain and were no more the Habsburg (Spanish) Netherlands but were known as the Dutch Republic

1567 - 1568 - Second French War of Religion (All Facts)

• Civil War between Louis de Bourbon and the French Huguenots and King Charles IX and the French Catholic Royalists (including Anne de Montmorency), that ended in a stalemate

• Civil War which began when Louis de Bourbon and the French Huguenots rallied to kidnap the young King Charles IX at Meaux, fearing that he was going to persecute Huguenots

• Civil War which officially ended with the Peace of Longjumeau

1567 - Battle of St. Denis (All Facts)

• Battle in which Anne de Montmorency and the French Catholic Royalists of King Charles IX defeated Louis de Bourbon and the French Huguenots during the Second French War of Religion

• Battle in which Anne de Montmorency was killed despite his forces being victorious

1567 - Battle of Carberry Hill (All Facts)

• Battle in which the Protestant Scottish nobility rebelled against Queen Mary of Scotland for her marriage to James Hepburn, who was known to have murdered her previous husband

• Battle after which Queen Mary of Scotland is discredited for her marriage to James Hepburn due to the murder of her previous husband Henry Stuart, was imprisoned as a result, and forced to abdicate in favor of her one-year-old son to succeed her

1568 - Peace of Longjumeau (All Facts)

• Edict of Peace signed between the French Catholics and Huguenots that ended the Second French War of Religion, overseen by Catherine de Medici

• Edict of Peace which effectively reimposed the Peace of Amboise

1568 - Battle of Langside (All Facts)

• Battle in which the Protestant “King’s men” defeated the Catholic “Queen’s men”

• Battle after which Queen Mary of Scotland escaped captivity and fled to England, where Queen Elizabeth of England imprisoned her

1568 - 1570 - Third French War of Religion (All Facts)

• Civil War between Louis de Bourbon and the French Huguenots and King Charles IX and the French Catholic Royalists (including Anne de Montmorency), that ended in a stalemate

• Civil War which officially ended with the Treaty of St. Germain

1569 - Battle of Jarnac (All Facts)

• Battle in which the French Catholic Royalists defeated Louis de Bourbon and the French Huguenots during the Second French War of Religion

• Battle in which Louis de Bourbon was murdered while crossing the Charente River by the Catholic army of King Charles IX’s brother, the Duke of Anjou

1570 - Treaty of St. Germain (All Facts)

• Treaty signed between King Charles IX and the French Catholic Royalists and French Huguenots that ended the Third French War of Religion

• Treaty which gave the Huguenots a large measure of religious toleration as well as the security of garrison towns

1572 - 1573 - Fourth French War of Religion (All Facts)

1572 - St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (All Facts)

• Massacre of thousands of Huguenots in Paris who were celebrating the wedding of the Huguenot Henry IV of Navarre to Catholic King Charles IX’s sister Margaret of Valois

• Massacre instigated by Catherine de Medici, who feared that Huguenots in France were aiming for war with Spain, and so convinced King Charles IX that the Huguenots were about to rebel against him and that their leaders must be killed by the Guise faction

• Massacre in which the people of Paris, overcome by bloodlust; slaughtered men, women, and children in the hundreds and spread their killing to other towns

• Massacre in which Henry IV of Navarre’s life was spared but he was arrested and forced to rescind his Protestantism

1572 - Capture of Brielle (All Facts)

• Incident in which the namesake port town was captured by William II de la Marck and his “Sea Beggars” forces

• Incident which marked a turning point in the uprising of the Low Countries against Spain in the Eighty Years' War

• The namesake port provided the first foothold on land for the rebels at a time when the rebellion was all but crushed

• Incident which offered the sign for a new revolt throughout the Netherlands which led to the formation of the Dutch Republic

1572 - 1573 - Siege of Haarlem (All Facts)

• Battle in which the Spanish took the namesake city from the Dutch during the Dutch Revolt / Eighty Years’ War

1573 - Edict of Boulogne (All Facts)

• Treaty signed between King Charles IX and the French Catholic Royalists and French Huguenots that ended the Fourth French War of Religion

• Treaty which, for the first time, severely limited Huguenot rights in France

1574 - 1576 - Fifth French War of Religion (All Facts)

1574 - Battle of Mookerheyde (All Facts)

• Battle in which Luis de Requesens y Zúñiga and his Spanish forces defeated the Dutch Protestant / Calvinist rebels during the Dutch Revolt / Eighty Years’ War

1575 - Battle of Dormans (All Facts)

• Battle in which Henri, duke of Guise, and his Catholic forces defeated the Huguenots during the Fifth French War of Religion

1576 - Peace of Chastenoy (All Facts)

• Treaty that ended the Fifth French War of Religion

• It was also known as the Paix de Monsieur after Francis, duke of Alencon, who gained control of the duchy of and became duke of Anjou as per the namesake treaty

• Treaty which promised religious freedom to Huguenots once again

• Treaty accepted by the (Catholic) King Henry III

1576 - Sack of Antwerp (All Facts)

• Incident which became known as the “Spanish Fury”

• During the Eighty Years’ War, the Spanish soldiers took and destroyed the namesake city in which they

  • mutinied yet indulged in extortion and robbery

  • rampaged through the city; burning, killing, and looting

  • killed 8,000 people

  • destroyed 1,000 houses

  • “spared neither age nor sex, time nor place, person nor country, profession nor religion, young nor old, rich nor poor, strong nor feeble, but, without any mercy, did tyrannously triumph”

  • killed hundreds of children

• It was prompted by a mutiny four years ago, by Spanish soldiers, that brought the hatred to the boiling point in the namesake conflict

  • This occurred as thousands of hardened veteran troops expelled their officers and formed their own revolutionary committees, with brutal excesses following

• It led to the negotiations which led to the Pacification of Ghent

1576 - 1577 - Sixth French War of Religion (All Facts)

1578 - Battle of Gembloux (All Facts)

• Battle in which John of Austria and his Spanish forces defeated the Estates-General of Dutch Rebels during the Dutch Revolt / Eighty Years’ War

1579 - 1580 - Seventh French War of Religion (All Facts)

1579 - 1583 - Second Desmond Rebellion (All Facts)

• Rebellion of the county of Munster in Ireland against English and Protestant domination and potential Spanish incursion

1580 - Treaty of Fleix (All Facts)

• Treaty signed between the Catholic Francis, duke of Anjou and Alencon; and Huguenot King Henry IV of Navarre (during the reign of King Henry III) that ended the Seventh French War of Religion

• Treaty which maintained the previous balance between Catholics and Huguenots

1584 - 1585 - Fall of Antwerp (All Facts)

• Battle in which Alexander Farnese and his Spanish forces defeated the States General and took the namesake city to be submitted to the Spanish crown during the Dutch Revolt / Eighty Years

1585 - Treaty of Nemours (All Facts)

• Treaty signed between Catherine de Medici, acting on behalf of King Henry III, and the Guise faction, which revoked all concessions to the Huguenots and proscribed the “pretended reformed religion,” thus being the most limiting treaty yet on the Huguenots

• Treaty which made another war between the Catholics and Huguenots inevitable, and eventually caused the Eighth French War of Religion / War of the Three Henrys

1585 - 1589 - Eighth French War of Religion / War of the Three Henrys (All Facts)

• Three-way war of succession between

  • the current Catholic King Henry III of France, supported by the French Catholic Royalists and Politiques

  • the presumptive Huguenot King Henry IV of Navarre, supported by Queen Elizabeth of England and the German Protestant Princes

  • Henri, duke of Guise and leader of the Catholic League, funded and supported by King Philip II of Spain

• War which begun when Francis, duke of Anjou and Alencon, died (him being the last of King Henry III’s brothers), and King Henry III was forced to recognize Huguenot King Henry IV of Navarre as heir to the French throne; a shattering blow to the French Catholics

  • However, (Catholic) Henri of Guise also staked a claim to the French throne and he signed a treaty with King Philip II of Spain

  • War which was (also) triggered by the signing of the Treaty of Nemours

• War in which

  • Henri of Guise

    • forced the Swiss and German troops who attempted to link up with King Henry IV of Navarre’s army at Vimory and Auneau to retreat

    • triumphantly entered into Paris, forcing King Henry III to flee

  • King Henry III’s men, supported by Swiss guards, took up strategic positions where irate crowds gathered, erected barricades in the streets, and stationed arquebusiers behind them

  • a shot rang out near the Pont St. Michel and 60 soldiers died in the ensuing fracas

  • milling crowds surrounded groups of isolated troops, most of these cut-off detachments having surrendered to cheering crowds

  • by nightfall it was obvious that King Henry III’s coup against Henri of Guise had failed

  • Henri of Guise and his brother, the cardinal of Guise, were assassinated on the orders of King Henry III

  • King Henry III was stabbed to death by Jacques Clement

1587 - Battle of Coutras (All Facts)

• Battle in which King Henry IV of Navarre and his Huguenot forces defeated Anne, duke of Joyeuse, and his Catholic forces; during the Eighth War of Religion / War of the Three Henrys

1587 - Battle of Vimory (All Facts)

• Battle in which Henri of Guise and his French Catholic forces defeated French Huguenots and their German and Swiss mercenaries; during the Eighth War of Religion / War of the Three Henrys

1589 - Battle of Arques (All Facts)

• Battle in which King Henry IV and his Huguenot forces defeated Charles de Lorraine and his forces during the Eighth French War of Religion / War of the Three Henrys

1590 - Battle of Ivry (All Facts)

• Battle in which King Henry IV and his Huguenot forces defeated Charles de Lorraine and the Catholic League forces

1590 - Siege of Paris (All Facts)

• Battle in which King Henry IV and his Huguenot forces were defeated by Alexander Farnese and his Catholic-Spanish forces

1600s / 1500s - German Witch-Hunts / German Witch Trials (All Facts)

• Series of trials and executions of the namesake “mental disease” throughout the Holy Roman Empire (Germany) which was as widespread and as terrifying as the plague (Black Death) whose only cure was death by trial and execution, with the accused’s confessions being extracted through torture

• Period which saw the archbishop-elector of Trier burn 368 of the namesake accused persons in just six years

  • On a single day, 133 witches were executed at the convent of Quedlinburg

• Period which saw church dignitaries having been the most ferocious persecutors of the namesake accused persons, but the secular powers were nearly just as keen

• Period whose origins and justifications were (and are still) heavily debated

  • Some of the methodology is laid out in the work “Malleus Maleficarum” by Jakob Sprenger

1600 - Battle of Nieuwpoort (All Facts)

• Battle in which Maurice of Nassau and his Dutch forces defeated Albert VII of Austria and his Spanish forces during the Eighty Years’ War / Dutch Revolt

1601 - 1604 - Siege of Ostend (All Facts)

• Three-year siege in which the Spanish took the namesake city from the Dutch during the Eighty Years’ War

1604 - Hampton Court Conference (All Facts)

• Conference between King James of England and Henry Jacob and the Puritans which oversaw discussions concerning the Millenary Petition

• Conference which resulted in minor revisions to the Book of Common Prayer, resulting in the new 1604 Book of Common Prayer, as well as the formulation and publication of the King James Version of the Holy Bible (KJV)

1619 - Synod of Dort / Synod of Dordrecht (All Facts)

• Synod by the Dutch Reformed Church to discuss the religious issue and rise of Arminianism convened by Maurice of Nassau

• Synod which concluded that Arminianism is not Calvinism and thus should not be practiced amongst the Dutch, leading to Maurice of Nassau’s banishment of Arminians from the Netherlands

  • Thus, the purest form of Calvinism, which accepted the belief of absolute predestination, and rejected the belief of conditional predestination, was reaffirmed

• Prior to the Synod, the Arminians were ordered not to preach before they were called up

• In the Synod, the president was a stern Calvinist

1627 - 1628 - Siege of La Rochelle (All Facts)

• Battle in which Cardinal Richelieu and French Catholic Royalist forces defeated the Huguenots and George Villiers and the English forces after a 15-month siege

• Battle that ended the Huguenot Rebellions and Anglo-French War; all of which ended with the Peace of Ales

1638 - Scottish General Assembly (All Facts)

• General Assembly upon which the Scottish Presbyterian Church abolished the episcopate and defied King Charles of England’s orders to disband

1639 - 1640 - Bishops’ Wars (All Facts)

• War in which the Presbyterian Covenanters of Scotland defeated the Anglican King Charles and England

• Revolt in Scotland against King Charles, William Laud, and their religious administration in England for

  • threatening the properties of the Scottish nobility by revoking all grants of crown lands made in the last century

  • ordering the Scottish Archbishop Spottiswood to wear an English surplice for his father’s funeral

  • treating Scottish visitors to his court like uncultured roughs

  • attempting to introduce the English Common Book of Prayer and Church of England practices into Scotland

• Revolt in Scotland that began when the Scottish came together for a meeting and signed their National Covenant, openly defying King Charles of England (and Scotland)

  • The Scottish suspected a plot from King Charles to restore the “popish Anti-Christ,” especially in their detestation of rituals including

    • kneeling when taking communion

    • oral confession

• Conflict in which bishops feared for their lives and fled to England

  • Conflict in which the one bishop who read the Book of Common Prayer in the kirk, the Bishop of Brechin, did so with loaded pistols pointed at his congregation

• War which contributed to the causes of the English Civil War

1639 - Treaty of Berwick (All Facts)

• Treaty which ended the First Bishops’ War between England and Scotland

1640 - Treaty of Ripon (All Facts)

• Treaty which ended the Second Bishops’ War between England and Scotland after the English suffered several humiliating defeats by the Scots

• Treaty in which Scotland kept possession of Northumberland and Durham and were to be paid every day until a new English Parliament could work out final peace terms

  • Treaty which thus forced King Charles to summon Parliament, fulfilling its aforementioned obligation