If the Diet was unlikely to play the part of an English Parliament, neither was the Emperor likely to play the part of Henry VIII. For the interests of Germany, Charles V., who had been elected in 1519, was weak where he ought to have been strong, and strong where he ought to have been weak. As Emperor, he was nothing. As feudal sovereign and national ruler, he was very little. But he was also a prince of the Empire, and as such he ruled over the Austrian duchies and Tyrol. Further than this, he was one of the most powerful sovereigns of Europe. He was king of Spain, and of the Indies with all their mines. In Italy, he disposed of Naples and the Milanese. Sicily and Sardinia were his, and, under various titles, he ruled over the fragments of the old Burgundian inheritance, Franche Comté, and the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands. Such a man would influence the progress of affairs in Germany with a weight out of all proportion to his position in the German constitution. And unhappily, with the power of a foreign sovereign, he brought the mind of a foreigner. His mother's Spanish blood beat in his veins, and he had the instinctive aversion of a Spaniard to anything which savoured of opposition to the doctrines of the Church. 'That man,' he said, when he caught sight of Luther for the first time, 'shall never make me a heretic.' [Sidenote: 1552. § 4. The Convention of Passau.] Of this antagonism between the minority of the princes backed by the majority of the nation, and the majority of the princes backed by an Emperor who was also a foreign sovereign, civil war was the natural result. In the end, the triumph of the Protestants was so far secured that they forced their opponents in 1552 to yield to the Convention of Passau, by which it was arranged that a Diet should be held as soon as possible for a general pacification. [Sidenote: 1555. § 5. The peace of Augsburg.] That Diet, which was assembled at Augsburg in 1555, met under remarkably favourable circumstances. Charles V., baffled and disappointed, had retired from the scene, and had left behind him, as his representative, his more conciliatory brother Ferdinand, who was already King of Hungary and Bohemia, and was his destined successor in the German possessions of the House of Austria. Both he and the leading men on either side were anxious for peace, and were jealous of the influence which Philip, the son of Charles V., and his successor in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands, might gain from a continuance of the war. [Sidenote: § 6. Its terms.]