What were the two largest europian conflicts? why did they start and how did they end?

The European Wars of Religion were a series of religious wars waged in Europe from ca. 1524 to 1648, following the onset of the Protestant Reformation in Central, Western and Northern Europe. Although sometimes unconnected, all of these wars were strongly influenced by the religious change of the period, and the conflict and rivalry that it produced. This is not to say that the combatants can be neatly categorised by religion or were divided by their religion alone, as this was often not the case.

Individual conflicts that can be distinguished within this topic include:

Conflicts immediately connected with the Reformation of the 1520s to 1540s: The German Peasants' War (1524-1525) The battle of Kappel in Switzerland (1531) The Schmalkaldic War (1546-1547) in the Holy Roman Empire The Eighty Years' War (1568-1648) in the Low Countries The French Wars of Religion (1562-1598) The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), affecting the Holy Roman Empire including Habsburg Austria and Bohemia, France, Denmark and Sweden The Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639-1651), affecting England, Scotland and Ireland Scottish Reformation and Civil Wars English Reformation and Civil War Irish Confederate Wars and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland

Although later wars such as the Nine Years' War (1688-97) had a religious component that was important locally in some arenas, they were more fundamentally undertaken for political reasons, with coalitions forming across religious divisions. Purely political motivations and cross-religious alliances were also significant in many of the earlier war