> The Catholic church was losing power
I've been reading exactly about that... and it's mind blowing that the divide between Catholics and Protestants was what initiated the Eighty Years' War[1] (as mentioned in the video). That War was followed by an even bigger one later, the Thirty Years' War[2] (from 1618 to 1648), the biggest conflict in Europe up until that time (it was huge, parts of today Germany lost 50% of their population). That war started with the infamous Defenestration of Prague [3] in which the representatives of Ferdinand (a Habsburg) the new, fervently catholic King of Bohemia (which was a stronghold of Protestantism), were thrown out of the window of the Prague castle (that's how they used to show their strong discontent diplomatically back then)!
I was recently in Prague and made a point to visit that window :D. Quite amazing to think the places where such events took place are still there and anyone can visit it.
Anyway, after the 30 Years' War, the Habsburgs (which controlled a huge chunk of Europe, from Spain to Flanders, Bohemia to Hungary), lost a lot of power, with France and their ally, Sweden, becoming the dominant powers (can you imagine that the Swedes sieged Prague in 1648!??)... which in turn led to many wars later, including wars between Sweden, the Lithuanian Empire, and the Russian Empire which I find fascinating... all of them had big victories at some point, (e.g. Swedes kicked Russian's asses in 1700 in the Battle of Narva[4] -see also this amazing video by HistoryMarche [5] - but got completely destroyed by the Russians in Poltava [6], current-day Ukraine) but at the end of the wars in 1795 [7], Lithuania and its union buddy Poland basically ceased to exist as an independent entity (after hundreds of years of existence, extending from Kyiv to Villnius, Minsk and as far into Russia as Smolensk!), the Swedes losing almost all of their possessions in mainland Europe (like Estonia) and also Finland to the Russians, and France becoming the main power in Western Europe just in time for Napoleon to rise.
And the story goes on, of course, to this day.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Years%27_War
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague#The_...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Narva_(1700)
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JG0W2o8ULs