Delayed by the war with France and Turkey, the diet for the settlement of the religious difficulty did not meet at Augsburg until February 1555. Ferdinand represented his brother, and after a prolonged discussion conditions The peace of Augsburg. of peace were arranged. Romanists and Lutherans were placed upon an equal footing, but the toleration which was granted to them was not extended to the Calvinists. Each secular prince had the right to eject from his land all those who would not accept the form of religion established therein; thus the principle of cujus regio ejus religio was set up. Although the Lutherans did not gain all their demands, they won solid advantages and were allowed to keep all ecclesiastical property secularized before the peace of Passau. A source of trouble, however, was the clause in the treaty usually called the ecclesiastical reservation. This required an ecclesiastical prince, if he accepted the teaching of the confession of Augsburg, or in other words became a Lutheran, forthwith to resign his principality. The Lutherans denied the validity of this clause, and notwithstanding the protests of the Roman Catholics several prelates became Lutheran and kept their territories as secular possessions. The peace of Augsburg can hardly be described as a satisfactory settlement. Individual toleration was not allowed, or only allowed in unison with exile, and in the treaty there was abundant material for future discord.
After Maurice of Saxony had made terms with Charles at Passau he went to help Ferdinand against the Turks, but one of his allies, Henry II. of France, continued the war in Germany while another, Albert Alcibiades, entered End of the reign. upon a wild campaign of plunder in Franconia. The French king seized Metz, which was part of the spoil promised to him by his allies, and Charles made an attempt to regain the city. For this purpose he took Albert Alcibiades into his service, but after a stubborn fight his troops were compelled to retreat in January 1553. Albert then renewed his raids, and these became so terrible that a league of princes, under Maurice of Saxony, was formed to crush him; although Maurice lost his life at Sievershausen in July 1553, this purpose was accomplished, and Albert was driven from Germany. After the peace of Augsburg, which was published in September 1555, the emperor carried out his intention of abdicating. He entrusted Spain and the Netherlands to Philip, while Ferdinand took over the conduct of affairs in Germany; although it was not until 1558 that he was formally installed as his brother’s successor.
Ferdinand I., who like all the German sovereigns after him was recognized as emperor without being crowned by the pope, made it a prime object of his short reign to defend and enforce the religious peace of Augsburg for which Ferdinand I. he was largely responsible. Although in all probability numerically superior at this time to the Romanists, the Protestants were weakened by divisions, which were becoming daily more pronounced and more serious, and partly owing to this fact the emperor was able to resist the demands of each party and to moderate their excesses. He was continually harassed by the Turks until peace was made in 1562, and connected therewith were troubles in Bohemia and especially in Hungary, two countries which he had acquired through marriage, while North Germany was disturbed by the wild schemes of Wilhelm von Grumbach (q.v.) and his associate John Frederick, duke of Saxony. With regard to the religious question efforts were made to compose the differences among the Protestants; but while these ended in failure the Roman Catholics were gaining ground. Ferdinand sought earnestly to reform the church from within, and before he died in July 1564 the Counter-Reformation, fortified by the entrance of the Jesuits into Germany and by the issue of the decrees of the council of Trent, had begun.
Under Ferdinand’s rule there were some changes in the administration of the Empire. Lutherans sat among the judges of the Reichskammergericht, and the Aulic Council, or Hofrat, established by Maximilian I. for the Austrian Administrative changes. lands, extended its authority over the Empire and was known as the Reichshofrat. Side by side with these changes the imperial diet was becoming more useless and unwieldy, and the electors were gaining power, owing partly to the Wahlkapitulation, by which on election they circumscribed the power of each occupant of the imperial throne.
Ferdinand’s son and successor, the emperor Maximilian II., was a man of tolerant views; in fact at one time he was suspected of being a Lutheran, a circumstance which greatly annoyed the Habsburgs and delayed his own Maximilian II. election as king of the Romans. However, having given to the electors assurances of his fidelity to the Roman Church, he was chosen king in November 1562, and became ruler of Germany on his father’s death nearly two years later. Like other German sovereigns Maximilian pursued the phantom of religious union. His first diet, which met at Augsburg in 1566, was, however, unable, or unwilling, to take any steps in this direction, and while the Roman Catholics urged the enforcement of the decrees of the council of Trent the serious differences among the Protestants received fresh proof from the attempt made to exclude the Calvinist prince Frederick III., elector palatine of the Rhine, from the benefits of the peace of Augsburg. After this Frederick and the Calvinists looked for sympathy more and more to the Protestants in France and the Netherlands, whom they assisted with troops, while the Lutherans, whose chief prince was Augustus, elector of Saxony, adopted a more cautious policy and were anxious not to offend the emperor. There were, moreover, troubles of a personal and private nature between these two electors and their families, and these embittered their religious differences. But these divergences of opinion were not only between Roman Catholic and Lutheran or between Lutheran and Calvinist, they were, in electoral and ducal Saxony at least, between Lutheran and Lutheran. Thus the Protestant cause was weakened just when it needed strengthening, as, on the other side, the Roman Catholics, especially Albert, duke of Bavaria, were eagerly forwarding the progress of the older faith, which towards the end of this reign was restored in the important abbey of Fulda. In secular affairs Maximilian had, just after his accession, to face a renewal of the Turkish war. Although his first diet voted liberal assistance for the defence of the country, and a large and splendid army was collected, he had gained no advantage when the campaign ended. The diet of Spires, which met in 1570, was mainly occupied in discussing measures for preventing the abuses caused by the enlistment by foreigners of German mercenary troops, but nothing was done to redress this grievance, as the estates were unwilling to accept proposals which placed more power in the emperor’s hands. Maximilian found time to make earnest but unavailing efforts to mediate between his cousin, Philip II. of Spain, and the revolted Netherlands, and also to interfere in the affairs of Poland, where a faction elected him as their king. He was still dealing with this matter and hoping to gain support for it from the diet of Regensburg when he died (October 1576).
Maximilian’s successor was his son, Rudolph II., who had been
chosen king of the Romans in October 1575, and who in his
later years showed marked traces of insanity. The
new emperor had little of his father’s tolerant spirit,
Rudolph II.
and under his feeble and erratic rule religious and
political considerations alike tended to increase the disorder
in Germany. The death of the Calvinist leader, the elector
palatine Frederick III., in October 1576 and the accession of
his son Louis, a prince who held Lutheran opinions, obviously
afforded a favourable opportunity for making another attempt
to unite the Protestants. Under the guidance of Augustus of
Saxony a Lutheran confession of faith, the Formula concordiae,
was drawn up; but, although this was accepted by 51 princes
and 35 towns, others—like the landgraves of Hesse and the
cities of Madgdeburg and Strassburg—refused to sign it, and thus
it served only to emphasize the divisions among the Protestants.
Moreover, the friendship between the Saxon and the Palatine
houses was soon destroyed; for, when the elector Louis died
in 1583, he was succeeded by a minor, his son Frederick IV.,
who was under the guardianship of his uncle John Casimir
