The Thirty Years War was one of the most important and devastating wars in European history. The results of it changed the course of history in many ways. When the Treaty of Westphalia was signed, many aspects of European society were changed dramatically. Two significant changes were that the Thirty Years War altered the balance of power between countries and also impacted the role and influence of religion across the continent.
First of all, the Treaty of Westphalia was signed at the end of the war in 1648 after four years of negotiations. The players involved were the territories in Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, the provinces of the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden, as well as France and Spain. This treaty drastically changed the balance of power between these territories. Germany had always been divided into multiple provinces, but with the war being fought on German soil, the country was shattered into hundreds of smaller territories, consequently leaving the country fragmented with no unified power. In the course of the war, hundreds of thousands of people were killed and many farms were destroyed. This severely depleted the labor force and agricultural production and left the economy in peril. As a result, the government raised taxes in an attempt to rebuild the country, further crippling the nation financially. Germany remained a fragmented nation for a considerable while after. The Holy Roman Empire also floundered after the war and would never be the world power it had previously been. Loss of power for Germany and the Holy Roman Empire led to gains of power for other territories. The Netherlands and Switzerland were beneficiaries of the war and with their new independence were able to prosper on their own. The Dutch, when granted independence from Spain as a result of the treaty, were able to create their own overseas trade and develop an economy better than most countries at the time.
