Editing Renaissance (section)

==Political happenings==
This was fine and dandy in of itself, but in coincided with other big changes. Kings began to consolidate power for themselves with the aim of keeping their squabbling vassals in line. [[Gun]]s were making an increasing impact on the battlefield. The Spanish finally managed to drive the Muslims out of Iberia in the Reconquista and emerged as a new powerful European state. Not too long after that, thanks to improvements in ship design and navigation methods, Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa to India and later an Italian guy named Cristoforo Columbo set out sailing west across the Atlantic to prove <s>to the ignorant masses that world was round</s> that you could get to India by circumnavigation without starving to death first and ended up finding the Caribbean, thus beginning the colonization of the New World. The Spanish and Portuguese were the first to start setting up shop in the Americas, followed by the French, Dutch and Englis. Add to that some religious upheaval which shook the foundations of Christendom in the form of the likes of Hussites and eventually the start of the Protestant Reformation and you got a period of massive upheaval, to say the least. All this ultimately culminated in the Thirty Years War, which was the first time people not directly victimized started realizing that maybe this war thing isn't all that good (it took a thorough ass-fucking of the continent and even then the lesson didn't stick).

The broad strokes of the Renaissance-era wars were that the Protestants and Catholics hated the shit out of each other, with each side bringing in more and more forces until the entire continent was ablaze. This is also the period where modern day political thought started to take shape, with Machiavelli's ''magnum opus'' "The Prince", bringing concepts such as pragmatism and balance of power to the forefront. An ostensibly religious war would lead to hilarious abominations like Catholic France (''de facto'' run by Cardinal Richelieu at the time, no less) allying with Protestant Swedes (that Exterminatused large portions of Germany) against Catholic Habsburgs as alliances shifted. 

Physically and politically at the center of all this, the Holy Roman Empire was an absolute shitshow for most of the era and had mostly themselves to blame. They kept trying to rule the French, but the French had their one really competent king who [[Emprah|refused to die]]. Meanwhile the Pope was having problems with the English, who also had their one really competent [[Monarchy|king]] who didn't like the Pope telling him he couldn't have a divorce, along with his daughter, who was even better at the job and really fucking hated Spain. The Spanish colonized everything, found a literal mountain made of silver and built the biggest overseas empire ever seen, only to lose it all to dynastic struggle, inflation, deindustrialization, and getting their prized armada destroyed by the English and a colossal storm. The Venetians were making shittons of money by dominating the Mediterranean trade, the Swiss were killing people for money and guarding the Pope, and the Italians were killing each other over who was more Catholic. '''And with few exceptions, almost every one of them would be at one point fighting against, and at another point allied with, every other one.'''  It was that crazy.