<P> As princes, kings and emperors chose sides in religious debates and sought national unity, religious wars erupted throughout Europe, especially in the Holy Roman Empire . Emperor Charles V was able to arrange the Peace of Augsburg between the warring Catholic and Protestant nobility . However, in 1618, the Thirty Years' War began between Protestants and Catholics in the empire, which eventually involved neighboring countries like France . The devastating war finally ended in 1648 . In the Peace of Westphalia ending the war, Lutheranism, Catholicism and Calvinism were all granted toleration in the empire . The two major centers of power in the empire after the war were Protestant Prussia in the north and Catholic Austria in the south . The Dutch, who were ruled by the Spanish at the time, revolted and gained independence, founding a Protestant country . In 1588 the staunchly Catholic Spanish attempted to conquer Protestant England with a large fleet of ships (the Spanish Armada), however a storm destroyed the fleet, bringing a famous victory to Queen Elizabeth I of England . The defeat of the Spanish Armada associated her name forever with what is popularly viewed as one of the greatest victories in English history . The Elizabethan era is famous above all for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and for the seafaring prowess of English adventurers such as Sir Francis Drake . Her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability and helped forge a sense of national identity . One of her first moves as queen was to support the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the Supreme Governor of what was to become the Church of England . </P> <P> By 1650, the religious map of Europe had been redrawn: Scandinavia, Iceland, north Germany, part of Switzerland, Netherlands and Britain were Protestant, while the rest of the West remained Catholic . A byproduct of the Reformation was increasingly literacy as Protestant powers pursued an aim of educating more people to be able to read the Bible . </P> <P> From its dawn until modern times, the West had suffered invasions from Africa, Asia, and non-Western parts of Europe . By 1500 Westerners took advantage of their new technologies, sallied forth into unknown waters, expanded their power and the Age of Discovery began, with Western explorers from seafaring nations like Portugal and Castile (later Spain) and later Holland, France and England setting forth from the "Old World" to chart faraway shipping routes and discover "new worlds". </P> <P> In 1492, the Genovese born mariner, Christopher Columbus set out under the auspices of the Crown of Castile to seek an oversea route to the East Indies via the Atlantic Ocean . Rather than Asia, Columbus landed in the Bahamas, in the Caribbean . Spanish colonization followed and Europe established Western Civilization in the Americas . The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama led the first sailing expedition directly from Europe to India in 1497 - 1499, by the Atlantic and Indian oceans, opening up the possibility of trade with the East other than via perilous overland routes like the Silk Road . Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer working for the Spanish Crown (under the Crown of Castile), led an expedition in 1519--1522 which became the first to sail from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific Ocean and the first to cross the Pacific . It also completed the first circumnavigation of the Earth (although Magellan himself was killed in the Philippines). </P>

How did the reformation change the political social and cultural patterns of europe