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1525
Peasants' Revolt
Peasants that were led by Thomas Muntzer took Martin Luther’s idea and applied them to society, rising up against the feudal order. Luther condemned them and encouraged the German princes to use force to put down the revolt. In about 1 year around 100,000 soldiers and peasants died. -
1542
Roman Inquisition in Spain
As part of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church made peaceful attempts to keep people in the church, such as reforms in the Council of Trent, but they also increased their persecution of heretics. -
1553
Bloody Mary
Mary was a devout catholic whose mother had been rejected by Henry when he established the Anglican Church. His son, Edward, made the English church clearly Protestant but when Mary inherited the throne in 1553 she wanted to return England to Catholicism and carried out bloody purges of Protestants. Around 300 were burned during her 5-year reign and many fled to Europe. She was succeeded by her sister, Elizabeth. -
1572
The St Bartholomew's Day Massacre
This was supposed to be a celebration of peace between French Catholics and the growing Protestant Huguenot movement, as France celebrated the marriage of the King’s Catholic sister to a Protestant nobleman and claimant to the throne (Henry of Navarre). Instead, the royal family ordered assassinations of leading Protestant nobles who had assembled in Paris for the wedding and Catholic mobs took this as approval to start beating to death any Protestants they could find - more than 5000 died. -
Philip of Spain Invasion attempt
Philip of Spain was disappointed Elizabeth returned England to Protestantism in 1558 and angry when she eventually executed the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots (after repeated assassination attempts against Elizabeth by Mary’s supporters). He attempted to invade England with the Spanish Armada, but this was stopped by Drake’s fire ships and a storm. Hundreds of Spanish downed. -
Guy Fawkes
Religious violence remained an issue in England for centuries - one example is the Guy Fawkes conspiracy, where a group of Catholics planned to blow up the Protestant King and Parliament in 1605. The English Civil Wars of 1642-1651 and execution of Charles I in 1649 was mostly because English Protestants feared he was trying to make England Catholic again. In Ireland, the Catholic-Protestant conflict would remain a source of violence and deaths until the 1990s -
War struck out
The worst of these episodes of religious violence was the 30 Years’ War of 1618-1648, fought largely in Germany, which killed an estimated 8 million people - around 40% of Germany’s population. It began when the catholic Ferdinand II, King of Bohemia, invaded some of his own territories to force the local Protestant princes to return to Catholicism. Other neighbouring Protestant rulers (Christian IV of Denmark and Gustav II of Sweden) invaded in return.