Thirty years war

the Spanish general  Don Ambrosio Spinola

Ferdinand the second holy roman emperor  

The thirty years war was a conflict between most of Europe .it started out as a religious war and ended out as a war for power and land .here's how it started . There were many German states in the holy roman empire and some of them were Protestant or Luther and some were Catholic .so there started to be tensions between the states and it seemed they were going to fight each other .so the holy roman emperor ( a devout Catholic ) quickly made a law that said all states can worship whatever they want. but that didn't work because in 1618 the bohemian ( now part of the czech republic ) revolt began. the Protestant bohemians did not like there Catholic rulers and a group of them threw two catholic noble men or prague castle window ! what they did was called the defenestration of Prague which means throwing someone out the window . after that the bohemian noble men chose Protestant Frederick to be there king and he became allies with the ottomans by sending Ambassadors to Istanbul . The ottomans in return send ambassadors to prague . The ottomans attacked Poland won a few battles then lost one and withdrew from the war after that they stopped there alliance with bohemia . Catholic holy roman emperor Ferdinand became emperor in 1619 and send his army to bohemia . in 1 year defeated the bohemians .Frederick fled to Protestant Netherlands .now bohemia was Catholic . Spain entered the war in 1621. (Here are the reasons they enters the war . #1 because Ferdinand the II war a member of the Hapsburg family which included Spain and Austria #2 because they wanted power and they thought if they helped the holy roman empire he would give them some power ) on the empires side and attacked the Netherlands in 4 years Netherlands asked Denmark and England to help the English could not help much because they were in the middle of a civil war . Under Christian IV Denmark attacked the northern holy roman empire and took some land .Then Denmark asked France to help even though France was Catholic it helped Denmark because it's enemy's were the Hapsburg's the combined army of the French and the Danes took more land . So Ferdinand the II holy roman emperor made Tilly and Wallenstein his generals and Tilly marched towards the Danes while

Gustavus Adolphus

Wallenstein marched towards a Protestant German army . The Danes were defeated because France were in a civil war ( the war with the Protestant Huguenots ) and England was also in the middle of a civil war . The Germans were also defeated at the battle of Dessau bridge . The swedes enters the war under Gustavus Adolphus  ( here are the reasons the swedes entered the war • Gustavus wanted to become Holy roman emperor
• the swedes thought that the Hapsburg's were to powerful
• the swedes wanted to help the Protestant cause ) and won many battles there biggest victory was the battle of Breitenfeld but at the battle of Lützen Gustavus was killed and the swedes withdrew a year or so later . After that the French kept fighting they lost to the Spanish at the starting but defeated them later the .Danes helped the Spanish fight the French after they were conquered by Tilly . The war ended with the peace treaty of Westphalia . after the war France became the most powerful european nation . Many people died during the war not only the soldiers but civilians to . The war nearly halved the population of most German states .

Cardinal de Richelieu of France 

Wallenstien the Catholic  general