The Treaty of Augsburg did not include the followers of Zwingli and Calvin, who were getting to be quite numerous in Southern and Western Germany, and they were left without any recognized rights. Nevertheless, what the Lutherans had gained was also gained for them, in the end; and the Treaty, although it did not secure equal justice, gave the highest sanction of the Empire to the Reformation. The Pope rejected and condemned it, but without the least effect upon the German Catholics, who were no less desirous of peace than the Protestants. Moreover, their hopes of a final triumph over the latter were greatly increased by the zeal and activity of the Jesuits, who had been accepted and commissioned by the Church of Rome fifteen years before, who were rapidly increasing in numbers, and professed to have made the suppression of Protestant doctrines their chief task. This treaty was the last political event of Charles V.'s reign. One month later, to a day, he formally conferred on his son, Philip II., at Brussels, the government of the Netherlands, and on the 15th of January, 1556, he resigned to him the crowns of Spain and Naples. He then sailed for Spain, where he retired to the monastery of St. Just and lived for two years longer as an Imperial monk. He was the first monarch of his time and he made Spain the leading nation of the world: his immense energy, his boundless ambition, and his cold, calculating brain reëstablished his power again and again, when it seemed on the point of giving way; but he died at last without having accomplished the two chief aims of his life--the reunion of all Christendom under the Pope, and the union of Germany with the Spanish Empire. The German people, following the leaders who had arisen out of their own breast,--Luther, Melanchthon, Reuchlin and Zwingli--defeated the former of these aims: the princes, who had found in Charles V. much more of a despot than they had bargained for, defeated the latter. [Sidenote: 1558. FERDINAND OF AUSTRIA EMPEROR.] The German Diet did not meet until March, 1558, when Ferdinand of Austria was elected and crowned Emperor, at Frankfort. Although a Catholic, he had always endeavored to protect the Protestants from the extreme measures which Charles V. attempted to enforce, and he faithfully observed the Treaty of Augsburg. He even allowed the Protestant form of the sacrament and the marriage of priests in Austria, which brought upon him the condemnation of the Pope. Immediately after the Diet, a meeting of Protestant princes was held at Frankfort, for the purpose of settling certain differences of opinion which were not only disturbing the Lutherans but also tending to prevent any unity of action between them and the Swiss Protestants. Melanchthon did his utmost to restore harmony, but without success. He died in 1560, at the age of sixty-three, and Calvin four years afterwards, the last of the leaders of the Reformation.