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you are right about France and Spain carving up the Germanic states but they did not "carve up Europe" -- the British Isles were dominated by the English, Scandanavia still had the weak Danish-Norwegian joint kingdom, Spain still existed as a separate country, Italy was left to it's own devices as it wasn't involved in the 30 years war, the Balkans were where the Austrians were fighting the Ottomans who were about to overrun Europe with their Hungarian Calvinist ally and this would continue until the Ottomans were defeated at the gates of Vienna on Sep 12 1683 (9/12)

the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was still in control of her territory that includes most of what is now Poland, Lithuania, Kaliningrad, Belarus, Western Ukraine, Bessarabia etc.

The only "carving up" was the Germanic lands and the real victors were the Swedes. The French just got a divided Germany (which was a big win for them).

Finally, these two states didn't "pretty much killed most of the people in the German speaking areas." -->Neither France nor Sweden can be blamed for what the Germanics did to themselves

Again, the population loss, while huge was not "most of the people" -- the reduction in population is estimated at 15% to 30% including deaths due to disease and of course the scorched Earth policies etc. The Peace of Westphalia did not give the concept of the nation-state. That was more formed due to the French Revolution and in the middle 1800s.

until the middle 1800s, you could be "French" or "Russian" or "British" and speak "Breton" or "Polish" or "Welsh", but by the mid to late 1800s there was a drive to stamp out this and make the states one in language, etc. etc.

Yeah, the Swedes and French can be blamed for what happened in the German speaking areas. They reduced the ratio to 1 man for 15 women, and the number of women had been reduced as well.

That quickly gets you into the sort of math that shows a loss of MORE THAN HALF the population.

If you rely only on the infrequent censuses taken in the region you'll get different numbers. The ratio tells the story.

In 1648 the Peace of Westphalia RECOGNIZED the right of a nationstate to BE a sovereign nationstate in the modern sense.

When the American colonies were liberated in the 1770/80 period the standards set in that corpus guided the minds of the writers of the Treaty of Paris.

By the mid 1800s (long after the French Revolution) I doubt they even thought all that much about Westphalia anymore. Nations were nations!

You really have to go back to the 1600s for the full sovereignty idea ~ 200 years later it was certainly in full flower ~ even Latin American "nations" had arisen out of the wreckage of the Spanish Empire (and that, itself, was a guide to the 1960s when the Brits and French Empires were disposed of like rubbish).

I think what's happening here is you slipped a cog and missed that ever critical "8" when you meant "6".

I'm still trying to figure out when the Kalmar Union reasserted itself in a "weak" Norwegian-Danish whatever ~ at any time AFTER Agustus Adulphus ~ just not in there guy!

Once DeLaGardie reorganized the Swedish Army there was no turning back ~ the Swedes kicked butt everywhere they went and there was ONLY the Swedish Empire in the North, with vassal states in the South.

Too bad they wasted it in the late 1700s, but there you have it.