Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
Spain, France, Sweden, the Holy Roman Empire, many German princes, the Netherlands, and the Swiss confederacy were represented. This was the first all-Europe, diplomatic conference. [Furtado: 1001 Days] "The Peace of Westphalia (German: Westfälischer Friede) was a series of peace treaties signed between May and October 1648 in the Westphalian cities of Osnabrück and Münster, largely ending the European wars of religion. The treaties of Westphalia brought to an end, a calamitous period of European history which caused the deaths of approximately eight million people." [Wikipedia] "When the most important international settlement of early modern times–the Peace of Westphalia, concluded in 1648–redrew the religious map of central Europe, it did so without reference to the Pope, despite the involvement of all the great Catholic powers. . . . As the essence of sovereignty is its self-sufficiency, by virtue of its definition as ‘ultimate authority from which there is no appeal’, no state can tolerate the interference of an international authority such as the papacy." [Blanning: Pursuit of Glory, p. 362-3] "Louis XIV’s power, which had allowed him to reverse the verdict of five years of warfare between Sweden and Brandenburg, rested on several foundations. One was the settlement that brought the Thirty Years War to an end in 1648. The Peace of Westphalia gave France very little in terms of territory–ten towns in Alsace and the fortress of Breisach–but a great deal in terms of security. The formal recognition of Dutch independence by Spain greatly diminished, if it did not entirely dispel, the nightmare dating back to the late fifteenth century of encirclement by Habsburg territory." [Blanning: Pursuit of Glory, p. 535]