Thirty-Six.

This is coolbert:

"Calling these wars of religion is intended to draw our gaze to the wrong culprit.  Religion was a pretext; political power was the objective."

The Thirty Years War I have heard of. The Eighty Years War I have heard of.

The Thirty-Six Year War I had not heard of but only perhaps in the most vague of manner.

"War"

The Lew Rockwell article by Bionic Mosquito, original material courtesy Brad S. Gregory.

"Beginning in 1562, a series of eight civil wars ensue; from start to finish, these last longer than the Thirty Years’ War with perhaps 3 million deaths.  As in Germany, what is described as French Wars of Religion might be better described as wars for political power: a dynastic power struggle between powerful noble families in the line for succession to the French throne – one Catholic and the other Reformed – with the reigning royal family trying to stride the middle in the form of Catholic conciliation."

"Massacres, conversions, refugees, assassinations, acts of revenge.  After thirty-six years, in 1598, King Henry IV signed the Edict of Nantes, granting the Huguenots substantial rights but leaving them with no army.  Fearing an erosion of these rights – as would soon enough prove a rational fear – hundreds of thousands of Huguenots flee France for Calvinist territories in England, the Dutch Republic, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Carolina Coast of the New World."

"By 1650 [the end of the Thirty Years War], it looks as though all the political leaders who were confident God was on their side were wrong.  Perhaps God had never been on anyone’s side."

That number of three million dead from a population of about twenty million French as alive in the year 1600!

coolbert.