At the Peace of Augsburg of 1555, which ended a period of armed conflict between Roman Catholic and Protestant forces within the Holy Roman Empire, the rulers of the German-speaking states and the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, agreed to accept this principle. In practice the principle had already been implemented between the time of the Nuremberg Religious Peace of 1532 and the 1546-1547 Schmalkaldic War. Now legal in the "de jure" sense, it was to apply to all the territories of the Empire except for the Ecclesiastical principalities and some of the cities in those ecclesiastical states, where the question of religion was addressed under the separate principles of the and the , which also formed part of the Peace of Augsburg. This agreement marked the end of the first wave of organized military action between Protestants and Catholics; however, these principles were factors during the wars of the 1545–1648 Counter-Reformation.