CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE MAKING OF MODERN EUROPE

The French Revolution with its attendant wars
which culminated in the Treaties of Vienna,
marked the founding of a New Europe conspi-
cuously different from that which had preceded
it—F. J. C. HEARNSHAW

Modern Europe is the product of several historical pro-
cesses : religious, political, and economic. In religion we
have already described the division of Europe into Catholic
and Protestant, apart from the Eastern (Greek) and Western
(Roman) branches of the former, and the Lutheran, Cal-
vinist and Zwinglian divisions of the latter. Broadly speak-
ing, the religious struggle between the Reformation and the
Counter-Reformation forces—on a European scale—reached
its climax in the Thirty -Years' War (161848) of which the
main theatre was Central Europe. It began as a small
dispute over the accession of a Spanish Roman Catholic
prince to the throne of Bohemia (present Czechoslovakia),
but soon developed into a European war in which several
countries were involved. The political issue was eclipsed
by religious differences, in which, Catholic Spain and Austria
(united under the Hapsburgs) had to fight the Protestant
combination of North Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Holland,
and England. France, though Catholic, joined the latter
group for political reasons: she hated the Hapsburgs and
wanted to extend her national boundaries to the Rhine if