The European Religious Wars were a series of wars fought in Europe in the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. Those that were fought after the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in 1517, interrupted the religious and political order in the Catholic countries of Europe. However, religion was not the only cause of wars, which also included social upheavals, dynastic territorial ambitions, diplomacy and conflicts between the great powers. All part of a clash between social classes, at the beginning of the Modern Age in the 16th century, and that would extend until the French Revolution at the beginning of the Contemporary Age. Napoleon, in his historical studies, considered that Emperor Charles V (1500-1558) had missed a great opportunity to unify Germany in his period of command (1519-1558). Thus, perhaps, it had altered or diminished the future impacts of the Thirty Years' (1618-1648) and Seven Years' Wars (1765-1763). Going further in this hypothesis, and if the Habsburgs had acted as a believer in the European balance of power, seeking to unify Germany, confederate Italy - in order to unify in the near future -, limit the greedy expansionisms of the Valois and Tudors, mediate - Catholic Church versus Reformation - the pacification of the Christian faith and, with this accumulated power, expel the Ottoman Empire from Europe.
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