17th Century (October Plotters)

1605

 * Plague is wiped out in London leading to Parliament convening in October.
 * The Houses of Parliament are blown up leaving England's fledgling democracy crippled. King James and his wife were killed in the cataclysm.
 * The plotters seize Princess Elizabeth as a hostage. Prince Charles is also captured.
 * Catholics are appalled at the mass murder as are Protestants.
 * The English took up arms in a panic, turning upon the Catholics in their respective areas, and imprisoning or slaughtering them.
 * Protestant militia and vigilantes converged on the rebels in the Midlands and overwhelmed them. The conspirators fortunately had not murdered the royal children when surrounded. Their actual conduct when brought to bay was that of a high-minded resignation to martyrdom.
 * Catholic countries weakly protest but the murder of King and Parliament silence their protest.
 * Prince Charles is crowned King of England, Scotland and Ireland.

1606-1618
During Charles's infancy a regency council stabilises the country though the Parliament and the countries nobility is broken. Inf act in the process of stabilisation of England, the country is run from the much stabler Scotland. One of these stabilisation policies is to bring the three kingdoms into the Protestant Union by marrying Princess Elizabeth to Elector Frederick who became King of Bohemia in 1619

1619

 * An 18 year old Charles takes the reigns of power himself. He goes south to England where he sweeps asdie the remnants of the crippled nobility and secures himself as absolute monarch.
 * The stabilisation policies of the regency council as well as Charles's devout Protestantism, make him extremely popular, in England and Scotland.
 * He established a bureaucracy to run the country and generally established his Divine Right as King.
 * Fredeick V becomes King of Bohemia strengthening Charles's ties to the Protestant Union.

1620

 * The King of Bohemia, husband of Elizabeth is unseated by Catholics. King Charles declares war on the Catholic Hapsburgs and joins the Protestants in the Thirty Years War.
 * Bohemia rebels against the Catholic takeover and letters sent to the former King of Bohemia are captured. Lower Austria also rebels against the Catholics.
 * Osman II offers his support to the Protestants.
 * Poland is crushed by the Ottomans.
 * Savoy is broken by the Hapsburg and an important ally falls out of the war.

1621-1625
A series of terrible catastrophes for the Protestants. Austria and Bohemia are pacified and a war in the Rhine rages. Frederick V goes to curry favour with other European powers. England and Scotland pledge their support and begin raising an army and the revenues to go with it. The war is immensely popular. Fortunately for the Protestants, France a strong Catholic country was taken out of the war fighting a civil war with the Huguenot Protestants. This dragged England straight into the conflict. This conflict ended abruptly when France agreed to side against Spain and the Holy Roman Empire.

1625-1629
Denmark entered into the war on the side of the Protestants to stop the Saxon tide. France and England supported the stable Protestant northern kingdom. Unfortunately for Denmark, the English were economically weak, France was in the midst of a civil war, Sweden was at war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and neither Brandenburg nor Saxony were interested in changes to the tenuous peace in eastern Germany. This was a dark era for the Protestants. Only the port of Stralsund continued to hold out.

1630-1635
The excellent General Wallenstein was dismissed by the Emperor. This was his folly for the Swedish entered the war against Catholicism. He came to aid the German Lutherans, to forestall Catholic aggression against their homeland, and to obtain economic influence in the German states around the Baltic Sea. The Swedish army pushed back the Imperial army and retook the Protestant northern kingdoms. King Gustavus crushed the Catholic Leagues forces under General Tilly. Scotland who was more economically stable than their faltering cousins to the south entered the war in Germany on the side of the Swedes. By the Spring of 1635, all Swedish resistance in the south of Germany had ended. The Peace of Prague entailed a delay in the enforcement of the Edict of Restitution for 40 years and allowed Protestant rulers to retain secularized bishoprics held by them in 1627. This protected the Lutheran rulers of northeastern Germany, but not those of the south and west.

The treaty also provided for the union of the army of the Emperor and the armies of the German states into a single army of the Holy Roman Empire (although Johann Georg of Saxony and Maximillian of Bavaria kept, as a practical matter, independent command of their forces, now nominally components of the "Imperial" army). Finally, German princes were forbidden from establishing alliances amongst themselves or with foreign powers, and amnesty was granted to any ruler who had taken up arms against the Emperor after the arrival of the Swedes in 1630.

1635-48
This treaty failed to satisfy France, however, because of the renewed strength it granted the Habsburgs. France then entered the conflict, beginning the final period of the Thirty Years' War. France declared war on Spain in May. However for the early period of the war the French intervention was a military disater with the Spanish wreaking chaos across the country. I9n 1636 the Spanish were pushed back to the borders of France. The Swedes crushed the Danish and the French annihilated the Bavarians. Only Austria was safe in the hands of the Hapsburgs. French General Louis II de Bourbon, 4th Prince de Condé, Duc d'Enghien, The Great Condé defeated the Spanish at the Battle of Rocroi in 1643, which led to negotiations. Over a four year period, the parties were actively negotiating at Osnabrück and Münster in Westphalia. The end of the war was not brought about by one treaty but instead by a group of treaties such as the Treaty of Hamburg. On 15 May 1648, the Treaty of Osnabrück was signed. Over five months later, on 24 October, the Treaty of Münster was signed, ending both the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War.

1649
A minor extension of the Thirty Years War was Spanish aid sent to dissenting Irish Catholics. In 1649 they exploded in all out war. They didn't need much encouragement what with the King being such an avowed hater of Papists. Unfortunately for the Irish, King Charles sent Oliver Cromwell a fierce Puritain general who had proved his mettle in the war with France. Irish Catholicism was broken as was the remnants of the Hapsburg greatness.