Most of early history, these was no seperation of church and state, so they were one and the same.
This applies to both the English civil war ( if you can call any war civil) and the Dutch revolt. Both were to end Catholic domination of the Protasant subjects.
All wars are both religious and political. But end up anti-religious as they violate the very tenets of any religion they expound so it is only being about power.
Protasants revolted against the Catholics for freedom but then in-fighting over which Protasant religion is good.
The politics of any war are power and greed. Someone wants what someone else has and demands the right to take it and deny others taking it from them.
Many claim they are trying to protect the ' true' religion or claim for religious freedom and then show they are no better then the heritics they decry and deny others the same freedoms they want,
When all is said and done - all is just for power.
War has never settled any differences. It just pospones the reversal of power as will always happen. The French Revolution almost did by beheading the royals but as many escaped and Napolian brought new ones in. Nothing much changed.
The American revolution - which was the 1st non-religious war started the change for wars to not just be about religion.
Yes. People usually hire others to influence government officials. For example,we are told that in 2016 Taiwanese officials hired an American senator to set up a phone call with Donald Trump and the Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen.
The direct cause of WWI was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. However historians feel that a number of factors contributed to the rivalry between the Great powers that allowed war on such a wide-scale to break out.