In 1462, on the 28th of October, Archbishop Adolph of Nassau captured the city of Mayence and gave it over to his soldiers for plunder. The typesetters and printers, with all the other artisans whose work depended upon the commerce of the city, were driven to flight and it appeared for the moment as if the newly instituted printing business had been crushed. The result of the scattering of the printers was, however, the introduction of the new art into a number of other centres where the influences were favourable for its development. The typesetters of Mayence, driven from their printing offices by the heavy hand of the Church, journeyed throughout the world and proceeded to give to many communities the means of education and enlightenment through which the great revolt against the Church was finally instituted. An important influence in securing for the work of the early printer-publishers of Germany a greater freedom from restriction than was enjoyed by their contemporaries in France was the fact that, in Germany, the beginning of printing, or at least its development, took place, not in a university centre but in a commercial town and was from the outset carried on not by scholars but by workers of the people. This brought the whole business of the production and the distribution of books in Germany into closer relations with the mass of the people than was the case in France. The direct association with the university of the first printers in France (who were themselves the immediate successors of the official university scribes) brought the printing-press under the direct control of the university and rendered easy the establishment by the university authorities, and particularly by the theologians, of a continued censorship.