*After the end of the Hundred Years War in 1453, France made peace with England, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire.  This allowed France to make war on Italy.

*The Italian Wars involved, at various points, France, the Empire, the various Italian city-states and small kingdomws (including the Papal States), England, Scotland, and the Ottoman Empire.  They began as struggles over who would inherit the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples, but became larger power struggles that ultimately left the Holy Roman Empire more powerful and France weaker during the 16th Century.

*During the 1500s, one of the dominant forces in France was not the king, but the kings' mother.  Catherine de' Medici, daughter of Lorenzo de' Medici (grandson of Lorenzeo the Great and the man to whom The Prince was dedicated), married the prince who would be King Henry II of France in 1533. 

*Although Henry and Catherine eventually had three sons, he spent most of his time with his mistresses.  When he died in 1559, the ambitious and intelligent Catherine was compelled to guide their three young and sickly sons through the process of becoming kings.  All of them died young, and she served as regent for both of the first two (Francis II and Charles IX).  Even her third son, Henry III followed her advice until the very end of her life.  In many ways, she ruled France through them until shortly before her death in Janurary 1589 (which preceded Henry III's death by less than a year).

*During the 1500s, France was torn by civil and religious wars, commonly known as the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) between rural Catholic peasants and conservative nobility and urban Huguenots (some of whom were also noblemen).  The Huguenots were strict Calvinists, wanting to simplify the Church, remove trappings of wealth and ceremony, and break away from Rome (with whom France had long had an uneasy relationship). 

*The wars followed a pattern of peace under royal protection (or at least tolerance) for the Huguenots broken by a massacre of Huguenots.  The wars began with a massacre of between 20 and several hundred Huguenot at Vassy (or Wassy).  This forced the Huguenots across France to work together, and at their strongest, they held about 60 fortified cities.  They also gained a powerful ally, Prince Henry of Navarre (a kingdom in what is now Southwestern France (and formerly Northern Spain)).

*The worst violence of the wars came in 1572 when Catherine de' Medici, although a staunch Catholic, agreed to marry her daughter to Henry of Navarre to form an alliance between Catholics and Huguenots.  Many Catholics resented this, but Huguenots were prepared to celebrate what they hoped might really be an end to decades of hostility.

*The presence of thousands of Huguenots in Paris infuriated that very Catholic city, as did the expense of the wedding at a time when many Parisians were starving.  Shortly after the wedding, a powerful Huguenot leader (Admiral Coligny) was almost assassinated, and badly wounded.  No-one knows who was behind it—perhaps powerful Catholic nobles, perhaps the Spanish, perhaps the Queen mother herself.

*When Huguenots demanded justice, Catherine de' Medici and King Charles IX feared an uprising, and decided to act first.  They  decided to have Protestant leaders killed, and summoned the king's bodyguard to do it.  As the king's guard began killing Huguenot nobles, common Parisians began killing common Protestants on 24 August, 1572.  It is estimated that 2,000 Huguenots were killed in Paris and 3,000 more elsewhere.

*Pope Gregory VII ordered a mass sung in celebration and had medals struck and murals painted to celebrate (in 1997 Pope John Paul II issued a statement that some have viewed as an apology for this).  The Holy Roman Emperor described the slaughter as shameful.  Queen Elizabeth's ambassador to France barely escaped with his life.

*Twenty more years of fighting followed.  Many Huguenots fled to England (and from there many later came to America).  Others fled to other Protestant countries.

*When King Charles IX died in 1584, his brother, Henry III tried to make peace with the Huguenots.  However, he had no sons, and when his younger brother died, that made his distant cousin, Henry of Navarre, heir to the throne.  Under pressure from Catholic priests and nobles, Henry III issued an edict suppressing Protestants and denying Henry of Navarre's right to the throne of France.  This led to the War of the Three Henrys (Henry III, Henry of Navarre, and Henry Guise, a powerful Catholic duke). 

*During this war, the Pope became dissatisfied with Henry III's failure to suppress the Protestants, as did many other church leaders.  Henry III was forced to flee Paris, but his followers did manage to stab Henry of Guise in the heart.  This was very unpopular, and when Henry III allied with Henry of Navarre against The Catholic League.  Henry III was declared unfit to rule France by the Paris city government.  Knowing that he was in danger, he named Henry IV as his heir (just to keep things clear).  In 1589 he was assassinated by a monk who came to him with a secret message.  When they were alone, he leant over to whisper to the king and stabbed him in the spleen (Pope Sixtus V praised the monk, and making him a saint was considered).

*Henry IV converted to Catholicism and became the first king of the Bourbon dynasty (Henry III was last of the Valois).  In 1598 he issued the Edict of Nantes, tolerating Protestans (although this was later overturned in the 1660s, some Protestants remained in southern central France until the 1700s).

*Henry was very popular, and was known as Henry the Good.  He did not war with his nobles—he bribed them to behave.  He tried to improve the lives of all his people--he said God willing, every working man in my kingdom will have a chicken in the pot every Sunday, at the least!  Although some Huguenots felt he had betrayed them by converting to Catholicism, some Catholics also distrusted him, and in 1610 a fanatical Catholic stabbed him to death.

*Henry's son, Louis XIII, was only nine, so his mother (Henry's second wife), Marie de Medici, served as regent.  She arranged his marriage to a Spanish-Austrian Hapsburg princess and ran France on behalf of her son until he reached the age of 15, after which Cardinal Richelieu was the power behind the Throne.

*Richelieu helped make Louis XIII a powerful king, both internationally and within his own country, suppressing the nobility's power while keeping its loyalty.  They built a powerful Navy and expanded the kingdom into the New World as New France spread all the way from Quebec to Montreal.

*As part of the monarchy's growing power, Louis XIII became the last King of France to call a session of the Estates-General (France's parliament) for over a century and a half, as the Kings of France found ways to raise money with the consent of the representatives of the Three Estates.

*Louis XIII also died young, and his wife Anne of Austria served as regent for five-year-old Louis XIV, who would go on to be Europe's greatest absolute monarch.

*In the 1500s, though, the greatest monarch in Europe had been the King of Spain, Charles I and V.

*The grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella and head of the House of Hapsburg, Charles fully unified the old kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula into the modern nation-state of Spain.  This also gave him possession of all of Spain's colonies (and, according to the Treaty of Tordesillas, the right to colonise the western half of the world—Charles described it as an empire on which the sun never sets).  As head of the house of Hapsburg, he ruled Austria, parts of Northern Italy, Southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, Hungary, the Netherlands (including Belgium and Luxembourg), and parts of Germany.  In 1519 he was elected Holy Roman Emperor.

*While arguably the most powerful man in the world, Charles face innumerable problems, not least of which was leading so large an empire in an era before fast or reliable communication.  Furthermore, he was a deeply Catholicism ruler in the age of the Reformation.

*Two years after becoming Emperor, Charles V convened the Diet of Worms, where, following Luther's refusal to recant, he issued the Edict of Worms, declaring that anyone who was found posessing any of Luther's writings was to be put to death.  He then had to deal with the Knights' Revolt, the Peasants' Revolt, and all the religious fighting within the Empire until the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 (after which he abdicated and retired to a monastery).  After this, the Hapsburg empire would be divided between the Spanish Hapsburgs, who also ruled the Netherlands and Naples (starting with Charles's son, Philip II) and the Austrian Hapsburgs, who were typically elected Emperors as well (starting with his brother Ferdinand I).

*Philip II would, in turn, have his own glories and worries.

*As the Reformation spread beyond the Empire, some of the Netherlands (where Calvinism had become popular) began to resent the increasing use of the Inquisition to suppress dissent.  Beginning in 1568, the 17 Provinces revolted, beginning the Eighty Years War.  At first the Spanish were successful in keeping the Netherlands under control. 

*By 1572, though, the northern provinces had gained the upper hand and by 1781 had effectively (although not officially until 1648) gained independence.  One of the principal leaders was PrinceWilliam of Orange (or William the Silent) a wealthy nobleman (and the first   leader assassinated with a gun) whose descendants would become Stadtholders, and eventually kings, of the Netherlands.

*Many of the leading figures of the Spanish Netherlands fled to the Dutch Netherlands, sparking a Renaissance of sorts there, including the creation of a trading empire in the Spice Islands and elsewhere.  Indonesia would exist as the Dutch East Indies from 1619 until 1949 (and parts of it longer than that).  The Dutch also set up smaller colonies in South America, the Caribbean, built trading posts in India, China, and Japan (being after 1641 the only Europeans allowed in Japan), and set up the Cape Colony in South Africa.  Although it was lost to the British in 1795, the Boers of South Africa remain a powerful cultural and political force in the country today, and shaped much of its 19th and 20th century history.

*Philip II expanded the Spanish empire (encompassing the Philippines) and led the Holy League to victory at Lepanto in 1571, beginning to turn the tide against the Ottoman Empire. 

*Philip II also became Philip I of Portugal in 1580 when the disappearance of King Sebastian in battle and the death of Cardinal-King Henry of old age led to a dispute over succession so confused that many Portuguese leaders invited Philip to be their king.  His son and grandson would also hold that title (until Philip III (IV of Spain) tried to reduce the power of the Portuguese nobility and Portugal revolted).

*However, Philip II suffered a terrible defeat in 1588 when his Invincible Armada tried to conquer England, which he saw as Spain's by right (through his marriage to Bloody Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon (his great-aunt, making Mary his second cousin, once removed).  This was the beginning of the end of Spain's dominance of the globe, although Spain would remain wealthy and influential for decades to come (although its colonial wealth also led to inflation and stagnation and Philip II's successors were not nearly as capable as he; furthermore, his efforts to keep Spain pure also led him to stifle intellectual discourse which led to the decline of Spanish scholarship). 

*Perhaps a good symbol of Spain's decline is its greatest novel (perhaps the world's first novel), Don Quixote by Miguel Cervantes, a veteran of Lepanto.  It simultaneously romanticises the old ways while criticising those who romanticise them.  It is the work, perhaps, of a man who recognised that Spain was stuck in a medieval world while the rest of Europe passed it by.

*The Hapsburg family would be dealt another severe blow in the 1600s.  Following the Peace of Augsburg, the Holy Roman Emperors had (mostly) tried religious toleration, in order to avoid religious wars like those in France.  This did not prevent some violence in the Empire, but nothing serious happened until 1618.

*The year before, Ferdinand of Styria had been chosen to be the next King of Bohemia, but he was an extremist Catholic, and most Bohemians were Protestants.  In 1618 Ferdinand sent to representatives to Prague to deal with his new subjects, and they were ritually thrown out a window in the Defenestration of Prague. 

*Soon Bohemia and the areas around it were in revolt against their Catholic lords.  In 1619 the old Emperor died, and Ferdinand became the Holy Roman Emperor, despite the efforts of many to have Frederick, Elector Palatine, chosen instead, or at least made King of Bohemia.  This angered many Protestants (in part because Ferdinand II used his new powers to try to crush the Bohemian Revolt).  This began the Thirty Years' War.

*The Thirty Years' War was actually a series of related wars, all fought within the Holy Roman Empire, although many of the combatants were from outside the Empire and merely used Germany for a battlefield.  Initially it was a war between Protestants and Catholics in the Empire and their co-religionist from outside it, but eventually it merely devolved into a struggle over land and power.

*The first, or Bohemian, phase of the war saw the Spanish Hapsburgs go to war to help their Austrian cousins.  It was ultimately a Catholic victory, turning much of Bohemia Catholic after two centuries of Hussite protestantism.

*The Danish Phase began when the Lutherans King of Denmark invaded the Empire to protect Lutherans in Saxony and to protect its own borders.  He was also funded by the French Cardinal Richelieu who wanted to weaken the Hapsburgs and by England.  Ultimately Christian IV was able to secure his borders, but German protestants lost even more land.

*The Swedish Phase began when Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden invaded (also with French, Dutch, and Scottish support) to protect Lutherans and perhaps to gain land around the Baltic Sea.  This is sometimes seen as the beginning of modern warfare, as Gustavus Adolphus was the first general to use guns as the main armaments of some of his units, protecting them with pikes rather than using firearms as support for traditional weapons.  Gustavus Adolphus died in battle, and fighting ceased with the Hapbsburgs still powerful.

*This was too much for France.  Richelieu brought France into the fighting directly, and only his death and Louis XIII's would allow the war to end, as Cardinal Mazarin, guiding France while Louis XIV was a minor, sought to bring and end to the war.

*In 1648, the Thirty Years' War (and the Eighty Years' War) ended with the Peace of Westphalia.

*Germany was mostly destroyed in the War, with 15-20% of the population (or possibly 30% or more) killed by warfare and disease.   Spain lost part of the Netherlands and Portugal.  The Peace of Westphalia, which did a number of things.  Partly it defined the borders of many states which had either changed or been previously unclear—nonetheless, Germany was still about 300 states, barely united by the Holy Roman Empire.  It also defined a citizen or subject’s loyalty as primarily to his own government, not to people with similar religious or cultural backgrounds.  The war also (almost) brought an end to religious warfare within Europe, and saw the beginning of the decline of the use of mercenary soldiers in Europe.  Furthermore, national governments outside the Empire grew much stronger, and much more centralised, to such an extent that some historians view the Peace of Westphalia as the end of Early Modern history and the beginning of a new era.