When Ferdinand died, he gave his lands to his son, who gave them to his son, who gave them to his cousin. This was when a war began. At this time, Germany was full of little territories ruled by their own princes. Although each prince had to pay homage to the king, they got to decide whether their territories were Catholic or Protestant. However, Ferdinand the second, the new king, was a very devout Catholic. He wanted to have all his empire be Catholic, so he started to pass laws against Protestantism. The Protestant princes were not happy about this, and as the king wasn't even in Germany, this was a perfect time to start a rebellion. The king had left two officials in charge of the kingdom, and the army of Protestant subjects and princes welled into the palace where they were hiding and pushed the two out a window. Since the Latin word for "window" is "fenestra", the word "defenestration" is just a fancy way of saying "to push someone out a window." The rebelling Protestants stated that they were no longer under Ferdinand's rule. But when the king came back and convinced his allies in France and Spain to help him, the rebellion was crushed. Ferdinand also forced the princes to make him the Holy Roman Emperor. He took away the rebellious Protestant princes' land, and thought that would be the end of it. It wasn't.
There were a few other Protestant princes that had not been part of the rebellion, but when they saw what had happened to the other territories, they got a little anxious. Would their land be next? England and Denmark, two other Protestant countries, were also worried. Germany had formed an alliance with Spain and France. Would the three Catholic countries also try to take control of their land?
The king of Denmark gathered his forces and marched into Germany. Not only was he planning to help save the Protestants, it might be nice to have a little land in the bargain. But his plan failed. Ferdinand's forces crushed Denmark's, and then even took over the country itself.
Denmark was right next to Sweden, and King Gustavus the second was getting worried, too. Would Ferdinand's forces try to attack Sweden? The king and his advisers all agreed it would be better to attack Ferdinand, then to have him attack them. The army joined forces with the other German Protestants. For awhile it looked like they would win the war, but then Gustavus was killed in battle and the army began to fall apart. Soon, the Protestants began to discuss peace. Slowly, a peace treaty was formed. But the war wasn't over yet. The Prime Minister of France declared war on Germany, seeking its land, and the war continued until finally, the heads of both sides died. A peace treaty, called the Peace of Westphalia, was cautiously declared. Even after that, Spain and France kept fighting for eleven more years. The 30 Years War was really the 41 Years War.
Before the 30 Years War had even started, Europe was sending Catholic missionaries over to Japan. Some of the Japanese became Christians. Others hated the religion. They did not want to give up their Buddhist traditions. The emperor, Ieyasu, was puzzled by the new way of life. He did not know what to do. So he asked his Western advisor, who had come to Japan on a Dutch ship. William Adams was a Protestant, and he hated Catholicism. He told the emperor that he should watch out for the missionaries. When a Spanish ship docked in Japan, intending to make maps of the ports, he told Ieyasu that Spain was really trying to capture Japan. So Ieyasu made laws against Christian missionaries coming to Japan.
When his son, Hidetada, came to the throne, he killed Christians and made more laws against them. His son, Ieymitsu decreed that no Japanese person was allowed to travel farther than Korea, so as not to bring any foreign ideas back into Japan. Then, he closed Japan. No one could go out. No one could come in. No one could make ships big enough to sail across the ocean. Only the Protestant Dutch could trade with Japan. They could only send one ship each year. These laws caused a revolt, but it was soon crushed. A new kind of religion, Zen Buddhism, flourished. This religion believed that wisdom came from the inside.
In China, the Ming Dynasty was ruling, and failing. This dynasty came from southern China, where people called the Han Chinese lived. But not everybody was happy with this. A group of rowdy warriors, called the Manchu, set out to attack the Ming Empire. There was also another threat that was making China weak. There were over 160 million people in China, and there simply was not enough food to feed them all. One man, a post man, decided to set up his own government instead of the Ming government. He gathered an army of the discontented Chinese and marched up to the castle. However; he didn't need to fight. All the soldiers had either deserted or die of a plague. The Ming emperor killed himself, and the Ming Dynasty was over. But not all the Ming realized that. One Ming general sent a message to the Manchu, asking to form an alliance against " this rebel peasant and his army." The Manchu were happy to form an army against the peasants, but for a different reason. When they had defeated the mailman and his army, they set their own leader on the throne. The Manchu thought of themselves as better than the Han Chinese. They separated themselves from the Hans, and made them shave their heads as a sign of the authority of the Manchu. Finally, one Manchu emperor, K'ang-hsi, realized, right from the start, that there were more Han Chinese than Manchu Chinese, and so he made friends with them. He lowered their taxes, and even put some of them into his government. China became stronger and prospered under his rule.
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