On the 2nd of August, 1552, the famous treaty of Passau was concluded. By this treaty it was agreed that the Land-grave should be set at liberty, and conveyed in safety to his own dominions; that within six months, a diet should be held of all the states, to deliberate on the best means of terminating the existing religious dissensions, and that in the meantime no molestation whatever should be offered to those who adhered to the Augsburg confession; that, if the diet thus to be held, should fail to effect an amicable adjustment of their religious disputes, the treaty of Passau should remain in force forever. Thus was peace restored to the empire, and entire freedom conceded to the Protestant faith. This was followed by the "Recess of Augsburg" in 1555, which not only ratified the peace of Passau, but enlarged the religious
liberties of Germany. It was this memorable convention which gave to the Protestants, after so much slaughter and so many calamities and conflicts, that firm and stable religious peace which they still enjoy. But alas! the youthful Maurice, who played so conspicuous a part, both in the defeat and the triumph of the Protestants, fell in battle, in less than a year after the peace of Passau, so that he was not permitted to see the full results of his bold undertaking.
All these arrangements and treaties were deeply mortifying to the disappointed ambition of Charles. Protestantism, which he had intended to crush entirely, was flourishing throughout the empire. The mass-priests were dismissed; the banished pastors were brought back with great joy to their beloved flocks. The esteemed Frederick, who had been carried about from place to place by the Emperor for five years, had found his way home to his affectionate family and friends; but everything shaped itself in dark and gloomy colors before the troubled mind of Charles. He never had a heart for friendship, and, it is said, he never made a friend. Thus, faint and weary, the friendless Emperor hid himself in the fastnesses of Carinthia. From civil history we learn that, at this very moment, war was going on in Hungary against the still advancing Turks. Henry II., according to his agreement with Maurice, took the field early, with a numerous and well appointed army, and completely defeated the Spanish forces in Lorraine and Alsace. Italy was on the eve of outbreak and anarchy. But the Emperor was in exile; his treasury empty; his credit gone; his armies scattered and dispirited; and, feeling himself rapidly falling from the lofty elevation which he had so long maintained, he resolved to withdraw entirely from the affairs of this world, in order that he might spend the remainder of his days in retirement and solitude.
Accordingly, at the comparatively early age of fifty-six, he filled all Europe with astonishment, by resigning the imperial crown to his brother Ferdinand, and the remainder of his vast possessions in Europe and America to his son Philip II., whom he had already, on his marriage with Mary of England, invested with Naples and Sicily. The following year, after settling his affairs, he retired to the monastery of St. Juste, near the town of Placentia, in Spain. But he was still suffering so severely from the gout, that he had to be conveyed sometimes in a chair, and sometimes in a horse-litter, suffering exquisite pain at every step, and advancing with the greatest difficulty. Like most of the religious houses
in those days, the monastery of St. Juste was beautifully situated:-"it lay in a little vale, watered by a small brook, and surrounded by rising grounds covered with lofty trees; from the nature of the soil, as well as the temperature of the climate, it was esteemed the most healthful and delicious situation in Spain." Here Charles lived about two years, and died on the 21st of September, 1558, in the fifty-ninth year of his age.