Every European society faced war in some form during the century following the Reformation.   To gain an understanding of these wars, we will start with a focus on events in France.  The French Wars of Religion illustrate how the Reformation helped ignite war.  They also illustrates that that while the antagonisms took on religious terms, the wars were not about religion only.  They were about those things wars are always about;  power (political, material and cultural authority). More specifically, these wars concerned the struggles to shape the newly emerging nation-states of Europe. What was at stake was the creation of confessional states, that is to say the religious and moral authority of national governments and national culture.

St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (France, 1572)

After the Reformation in Europe, many French people, including a large number of important aristocrats, converted to Protestantism.  The most powerful French Protestant was Prince Henry of Navarre, the leading member of the Bourbon family, and a relative of the French king, Charles IX.  Henry's power was increased still more by his marriage to the king's sister, Margaret, in August, 1572.  Many of Henry's Protestant followers were in Paris for the wedding.  When someone attempted to assassinate a Protestant leader, strong words between the Protestant and Catholic factions were exchanged.  It was fear of Prince Henry's rising fortunes and the threat of Protestantism to the authority of the Catholic Church that inspired the sterner religious and political conservatives at court to take action.

A few days after the royal wedding--around midnight on August 24, 1572--soldiers under the orders of the King of France smashed their way into the quarters of Protestant noblemen.  The subsequent murders of hundreds of aristocrats and their attendants let loose a mad fury of looting and killing during the following morning that left 3000 Protestants dead in Paris and 10,000 more killed in the provinces of France in the following days.  This orgy of killing became known as the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.  Henry of Navarre was spared from death only by promising to convert to Catholicism.  The Queen, Catherine d'Medici, laughed as she watched Henry attend his first Mass.

The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre is the central event of the so-called French Wars of Religion, which lasted from 1562 to 1598.  It represented the fanaticism, fear, rebelliousness and ferocity of the times.  The horror of the Religious Wars goes a long way in explaining why the French so earnestly sought peace and order in their country in the years that followed these dark times, and it goes a long way in explaining why the French adopted the system of royal absolutism that will be discussed later.  But how can one explain the Wars themselves?

One obvious cause of the French Wars of Religion was the Reformation.  The Reformation divided a Europe that had long been unified by a single Catholic Christianity.  But why should this mean war? And why such brutal war?  One reason was that neither side was prepared to accept the idea of tolerance.  To all Europeans, Protestant and Catholic alike, true religion was a matter of eternal salvation, and there could only be one true religion.

To the French Protestants, followers of John Calvin, (a Frenchman who was a little younger than Luther, but who lived most of his life in exile in Geneva), the essential truth of Christianity was the sovereignty (rule) of God, and that God calls the "elect" to serve Him and be saved.  Calvinists sought to find their personal mission in life, as it were.  To Calvinists,  the Catholic Church was founded in untruth, because it denied the sovereignty of God with its insistence that the Church was the medium between God and people.

To the Catholics, the Protestants were dangerous heretics, who denied the historic authority and order of the church as it was ordained and established by Christ and the Apostles.  Thus Protestants cut themselves off from Christ's saving grace.  Catholics thought Protestants were presumptuous for believing that individual Christians could acquire grace without the discipline, learning and tradition of the Church and its priests.
 

Conflict over Political Authority

This argument over the church and salvation was one reason for war.  Another reason was a conflict over intellectual and political authority.   Divisions over religious truth was inevitably tied to disputes about moral and political authority. The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre indicated the fact that Wars of Religion were about the state as well as about religion.  One set of aristocratic leaders attempted to destroy another faction of aristocrats in their competition for power.  Religion is power, and religion inevitably becomes involved in wider conflicts over power.  Throughout the later Middle Ages, the kings of France had gradually made themselves stronger, and had been creating a centralized and effective monarchical state.  Since the 1400s, French kings had gained effective control over the church.   They appointed bishops and other officials, and this made the church a powerful arm of royal power.  Many aristocrats and middle-class townspeople resented and feared the increasing power of the monarchy.  They stood to lose from this trend.   [The conflict of central government and local authorities is a familiar theme to us Americans--indeed it is still at the very heart of politics in the modern era].  It was these groups, especially in the southern regions of France, far from Paris, where Calvinism was particularly strong.  Nearly half of the aristocrats and perhaps a third of the population in southern France (many of them merchants and skilled craftsmen as well as large and small landowners) were Protestant by the late 1500s.  Did they convert for political reasons?

It is perhaps true that many became Protestants for political reasons.  But this issue is never so simple.  Let's put it this way.  There was certainly a confluence of religious and political ideas after the Reformation.  Religion had political implications, and politics had religious implications.  From the standpoint of the believer, why shouldn't these two aspects of life parallel and coincide with one another?  If they do coincide, both the believer's politics and religion seem all the more true.

We can summarize that in general, the Calvinists in France sought to weaken (some wanted the overthrow) the Catholic monarchy, while Catholics sought to strengthen it.  The story gets even more complicated with the presence of the so-called "ultra-Catholics": those who believed that the monarchy was all too willing to compromise with the Protestant faction.  It was the brutal leader of the ultra-Catholics, Henry, the Duke of Guise, who led the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.  In 1588, with support of the king of Spain, Henry of Guise attempted to take the throne for himself by taking Paris by force.  The king (now Henry III) fled Paris and (ironically) solicited the help of Henry of Navarre, even though Navarre was Protestant again after renouncing his forced conversion to Catholicism as soon as he was out of the clutches of the French court.  So we had what was called the War of the Three Henries.  Henry of Guise--the Ultra-Catholic-- was assassinated in the palace by agents of the king.  The king himself was soon after assassinated by an enraged monk.  That left only one Henry remaining--and he was the Protestant.  Would France accept him as their king?

Many Catholics were ready to do so because they were exhausted and sickened by 40 years of civil war.  They believed that peace was more important than anything.  But only after Henry made the politically necessary compromise of renouncing Protestantism--and converting to Catholicism for a second time--was he finally able to solidify his authority and be crowned king Henry IV in 1594.  But the Protestants gained much by his success.  In 1598, he issued the Edict of Nantes, which protected the religious and personal liberties of Protestants in France.  The Wars of Religion were over.  Most of France was pleased to have a strong king on the throne again.
 

Religious Wars Elsewhere in Europe

France was not the only nation shaken by civil conflicts.  Spain was the greatest power in the late 1500s, partly because of the wealth pouring from its New World conquests, and partly by its resolute resistance to Protestantism through the machinery of the Inquisition.  King Philip II (ruled 1556-98) set about to make himself, Spain, and Catholicism even stronger by defeating their Protestant enemies abroad.  First on his hitless were the Dutch, and then their more powerful defenders, the English.  The Calvinists in the Netherlands, part of Philip's domain as an heir to the Habsburg dynasty, rebelled for the sake of both freedom and their Protestant faith, soon receiving assistance from Queen Elizabeth I of England (ruled 1558-1603).   Elizabeth was a brilliant, effective, and popular Queen.  She had saved her country from religious war by enforcing a religious compromise that made the official Church of England a sort of moderate Protestantism that retained Lutheran, Calvinists and Catholic doctrines all at the same time.  Elizabeth's England was the most important Protestant country in Europe, and Philip was determined to bring her down and restore Catholicism there--and cut off England's support for the Dutch rebels.

In 1586 Philip began assembling a great Armada (fleet) to invade England.  In 1588 it finally set sail with 130 warships and 30,000 men.  The English had a roughly equal force, but with better weapons and with sailors and officers with more experience than the Spaniards.  The Spanish relied on tight formation to prevent the English from concentrating its forces on any particular ship.  The formation was good defense, but not good offense.  So the Spanish admiral anchored at Calais as he tried to think of a way to ferry troops safely to England from Spanish-controlled Flanders (modern-day Belgium).  The English craftily set fire to old ships when the wind was right to set them drifting into the anchored Armada, forcing the Spanish ships out of port.  As they fled in broken formation, the English ships sank some of the Spanish ships.  Then, as if a sign from God, a gale drove the Armada north along the eastern coast of England with the English in pursuit.  To escape, the Spanish sailed through the brutal, stormy North Sea, all the way around the north of Scotland, and back down the western coast. Many ships and men were lost in the storms.  Only half of the original Armada returned, torn and tattered, to Spain.

The English were swept up in great enthusiasm for Queen Elizabeth and their country.  As the Queen stated in a speech in 1601, she acted conscientiously in the interests of her country; she viewed herself not simply as a ruler, but as a servant of God and her country.  William Shakespeare, who began writing plays in the years after the defeat of the Armada, expresses in poetic form on p. 423 the idea that the England and the English were unique and destined by nature and history to some great end.  The English were the first among Europeans to place so much pride and hope in that collectivity known as the country.  It was not the church, not the town, or the county, dukedom, or even the monarch to which the English committed themselves primarily, it was what Elizabeth called "my country."  In an age of uncertainty and doubt; of religious split and political conflict, the English had hit upon a new theme of social unity--love of country, or patriotism.

Reformation and Nation-States

Because the wars of religion were wars about secular power as well as religion, these wars were especially bitter, and especially significant.  The 1500s are thought of by historians as the beginning of the "Early Modern" period.  They say this because it is in this time that the nation-state is becoming the most important institution in European civilization.  The nation-state came to define one's rights and freedoms, one's allegiances, economic opportunities, and one's religion. The Reformation was an important part of the evolution of the nation-state. The question was the religious and moral basis of the state, as well as the right balance between individual freedoms and hierarchical authority.  It was not a matter of whether European nations would have a confessional basis; it was a matter of which confessional foundation would be chosen.  This was a matter bitter hatreds, brutal conflict, and international warfare.  The most fortunate and advanced country in the early modern era was certainly England, blessed with a great ruler, and fortunate to avoid civil war--for a while anyway.  The least fortunate were certainly the German principalities, who were dragged into the horrible catastrophe of the thirty-years' war (1618-1648), divided by religion and by the struggle for power between powerful monarchs all around, such as the French Bourbons and Austrian Habsburgs.  The conflict killed or starved a quarter of the German population to death, and left the German people poorer and more divided than ever.  France had survived its own terrible civil conflict, and was determined to reap the political, military and economic benefits of peace by dividing and weakening Germany and simultaneously creating a strong, centralized national government.  For this reason they developed the theory and practice of royal absolutism, which we will discuss later.