War was thus declared between Pope and king. Though the position of both parties was sufficiently precarious, Henry was at the moment in the worst position for carrying on an internecine combat. He could count very little on the support of his German subjects. Those who most feared the Pope were the self-seekers and the simoniacs, whose energy was small and whose loyalty less. The saints and the zealots were all against him. The Saxons profited by his embarrassments to renew their revolt, and soon chased his garrisons out of their land. The secular nobles, who saw in his policy the beginnings of an attempt at despotism, held aloof from his court. It was to no purpose that Henry answered the anathemas of Gregory with denunciations equally unmeasured, and complained that Gregory had striven to unite in his hands both the spiritual and the temporal swords, that God had kept asunder. Hermann, Bishop of Metz, the Pope’s legate in Germany, ably united the forces against him. At last, the nobles and bishops of Germany gathered together on 16th October 1076 at Tribur, where the papal legates were treated with marked deference, though Henry took up his quarters at Oppenheim, on the other bank of the Rhine, afraid to trust himself amidst his disaffected subjects. [Sidenote: Diet of Tribur, 1076.] Henry soon saw that he had no alternative but submission. The magnates were so suspicious of him that it needed the personal intercession of Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, to prevail upon them to make terms with him at all. Finally a provisional agreement was patched up, upon conditions excessively humiliating to Henry. [Sidenote: Humiliation of Henry.] The barons refused to obey him until he had obtained absolution from the Pope, who, moreover, had promised to go to Germany in person and hold a council in the succeeding February. Pending this, Henry was to remain at Speyer without kingly revenue, power, or dignity, and still shut off by his excommunication from the offices of the Church. If Henry could not satisfy the Pope in February, he was to be regarded as deposed.