By the Peace of Augsburg, the attempt of Charles to re-establish the unity of the Church on the basis of a revived Empire of the West, received its final death-blow; and the principle of autonomy in ecclesiastical matters was definitely recognised. Had Charles been victorious over his foreign enemies, in all probability he would, for a time at least, have gained his end. Had he been less ambitious, and confined his attention to Germany, he might possibly have succeeded in crushing out Lutheranism. But the very magnificence of his aims prevented their realisation. Again and again, when he was about to strike, some exigency of politics intervened to thwart him; and eventually the principle of territorialism, when supported by the foreigner, proved too strong. Yet it would not be fair to charge the Protestants with having used a religious cry to further their political ends. In Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, the religious element perforce connected itself with politics. The Reformation furnished a creed and a new enthusiasm to the political aspirations already existing, and eventually gave the victory to those political tendencies which were the strongest. Had Charles been a different man, he might have adopted Protestantism and thereon founded a united kingdom in Germany. But this his character and his Spanish sympathies prevented, and, short of complete victory on his part, there was no alternative but that of decentralisation. Henceforth, Germany abandoned all hope of reconciling the two religions by means of a general or even a national Council in Germany. The Lutheran Church obtained a legal recognition, and the Protestant states claimed to pursue their course without the intervention of any external ecclesiastical authority. In this way the mediæval conception of Church and State was completely revolutionised, and the temporal authority gained an independence it had not enjoyed before. Nevertheless, the settlement was by no means final, and bore in it the seeds of future discord. The principle of individual toleration was not conceded. If the Princes usually adopted the religion of the majority of their subjects, the rights of the minority were not respected. The ‘ecclesiastical reservation’ was certain hereafter to lead to serious disputes. Above all, the Calvinists, who were shortly to become the most active of the Reformers, were not included in the peace. The religious quarrels which ensued between them and the Lutherans embittered the political jealousies already existing. The Catholics took advantage of this, and Germany had yet to undergo the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, before the religious question should receive its final settlement. | Truce of Vaucelles. Feb. 1556.