How did religious wars reshape Europe from the mid-sixteenth century through the seventeenth century?

The conflicts between Protestants and Catholics that challenged the established political order, such as King Philip's militant Catholicism and Henry IV and the French Wars of Religion; population decline and rising social tensions; the Thirty Years' War; the Peace of Westphalia that gave Sweden, France, and their allies new territories and divided the Holy Roman Empire into more than 300 independent states.