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Today in History - 24th October

24th October 1648 - Peace of Westphalia brings Thirty Years' War to an end

377 years ago today, the Peace of Westphalia was signed, bringing an end to one of the most devastating conflicts in European history, the Thirty Years' War. The treaties, signed in the German cities of Münster and Osnabrück, redrew the map of Europe and laid the foundations for the modern system of nation-states.

The war began in 1618, when Protestant nobles in Bohemia rebelled against the Catholic rule of Emperor Ferdinand II, sparking a conflict between the Catholic Hapsburg powers of Austria and Spain on one side, and the Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire, backed by Sweden, Denmark, and later France, on the other. Whilst it began as a religious war, the conflict soon became a struggle for political dominance in Europe.

After thirty years of devastating warfare, famine, and disease, the Peace of Westphalia finally brought an end to the fighting. It recognized the sovereignty of the Holy Roman Empire’s individual states, granting their rulers the right to determine their own religions, as well as confirming the independence of the Dutch Republic and Switzerland from Hapsburg rule.

The settlement not only ended a catastrophic war but also marked a turning point in European politics — diminishing the power of supranational entities like the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy, replacing it with a system which saw individual nation states all on an equal footing with each other.

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