Starting around 1560, prosecutions of alleged witches rose dramatically. The next century would see between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand people tried for witchcraft, which resulted in forty thousand to sixty thousand executions. Possible explanations for this phenomenon include changes in legal procedures, the religious upheaval of the Reformation, the social and economic dislocation created by a changing agricultural economy, the efforts of early modern states to assert greater control over their subjects, and new definitions of witchcraft. It should be stressed, however, that each witchcraft trial was different and that a different combination of factors was in play in each case. While shaped by larger social and cultural trends, witchcraft trials were, in the end, local events, and the relationships and personal histories of the individuals involved were at the heart of each outbreak of accusations.