But the overall deaths from the wars of Religion (depending on when you start and end) could possible be in the range roamer mentioned (100 million or so). If you figure the disruption war causes on any subsistence society, most of the deaths are disease and starvation unrelated to fighting. I have read those numbers also, from scholars not apologists, and they are very hard to estimate. For instance, we know that vast parts of France were depopulated during the Hundred Years war (where England was backing one Pope and France another). Population estimates from the times before the war show that possibly 1 million or more were killed or displaced in that war.
So it ends up a question of definitions. What is considered a religious war?
Precisely. The papacy may have been in the middle of the Hundred Years War, but the war was between England and France for control of French territory.
And while the Thirty Years War started as a religious war, in reality it soon became a political war between the French kings and the Hapsburgs (Holy Roman Empire).
Kings fought wars for land, because land meant money and power. They may have used religion as a pretense, but it was always about land, money and power. To believe otherwise is to ignore history.