In 1552 Charles saw his ambitious plans for the government of the world failing at every point. By the treaty of Passau, religious freedom had been conceded to the Protestants; and while his army was needed to fight the Turks in Hungary, Henry II. of France (who had succeeded Francis I., 1547), in league with the Protestant states, was invading Lorraine. Sick at heart and failing in health, the weary Emperor (1556) resolved to lay down the heavy crown he had worn for thirty-six years. To his son Philip II. he gave the Netherlands, Naples, Spain, and the American Colonies, while the Imperial title, and the German-Austrian lands passed to his brother Ferdinand I. The singular cause of his death, two years later, makes us wonder whether his unfortunate mother Joanna could have transmitted to her son the insanity which darkened her own life. At the monastery at St. Juste to which the Imperial monk had retired after his abdication, he yielded to a morbid whim to rehearse his own funeral. The grave-clothes were damp. He was seized with a chill, and after a brief illness died (1558). Charles had been thwarted in his two great aims of establishing the supremacy of his Church, and the permanent union of Germany and Spain. But perhaps his bitterest disappointment was in not being permitted to leave the Imperial crown to his son Philip. His brother Ferdinand, although firmly Catholic, was a just and moderate prince, who had always favored conciliatory measures to the Protestants while the course of Philip II., in the Netherlands, soon showed how heavily his hand would have rested upon Germany. He appointed the Duke of Alva Spanish governor in that unfortunate territory. Never had cruel king more cruel agent in carrying out his policy. Torture, fire, and sword were the instruments intended to subjugate, but which in the end brought about the independence of Holland. The prelates of the Church in 1543 had come together in what was called the "Council of Trent," with the avowed object of reforming abuses which had crept into the Church. The real purpose, however, was to examine the foundations of that venerable structure, to discover where it had been injured in the assaults made upon it since 1517, and to strengthen it where it seemed to need new supports. In 1563, after eighteen years' deliberation, the work of this Council was finished. The cardinal doctrines of purgatory, absolution, celibacy, invocation of saints, censorship of press, etc., etc., were reaffirmed, and terrible anathemas pronounced against such as should reject them. Thus was created a chasm which nothing could ever bridge, eternally dividing the old religion from the new. Another tremendously re-enforcing agent was at work in Loyola's Society of Jesus, which was to be to the Church what the brain is to the human body. In 1540 Loyola's ten disciples received the papal blessing. In 1600 there were ten million Jesuits, and in 1700 twenty millions! CHAPTER X.