The Civil War, which was the inevitable result of the formation of the Schmalkalden League, had only been postponed. The Emperor and the Catholic princes tried to reduce the Protestant princes to obedience, with the aid of Spanish soldiery, soon after the death of Luther. Though Charles had said he was going to attack the princes and not the towns, the northern towns promised help to the princes. Nuremberg, however, determined to obey the Emperor; she strove, in fact, to pursue, so far as possible, her usual policy of inactive neutrality. Money was paid to the Emperor: but, when urgent appeals for help came from the princes, the Council sent them privately a sum of money, but would take no further step for the Evangelical cause at present. The sympathy of the majority was, indeed, with the League, but they shrank from risking all the great wealth and privileges of the town for the common welfare and for the freedom of religious belief. _Nürnberg trage auf beiden achseln_ was the bitter sneer of the day. The temper of her citizens was sorely tried when the Emperor's ill-behaved Spanish troops were quartered on them. Still, money was supplied loyally enough to the Imperial treasury. In religious matters they remained steadfast, politely but firmly forbidding the Emperor's Confessor to read Mass to the nuns in the Katharinenkirche. The result of Charles' campaigns against the princes was to leave him apparently more powerful than any Emperor since Charlemagne. We can hardly wonder if, in the Reichstag of 1547, he tried to get himself recognised as supreme head of the Empire, not only in political, but also in religious matters. A year later he appointed a Commission which published the "Interim," establishing a half-and-half religion for all not of the Roman Catholic faith. It was called the strait-waistcoat of German Protestantism. Papacy was thereby almost reintroduced. The work of Luther seemed entirely undone. This attempt at repressing Evangelical teaching roused the Nurembergers. Sermons thundered from the pulpit, and the Council was severely criticised. None the less they accepted the "Interim." Osiander resigned his post and shook the dust of Nuremberg from off his feet. Others followed his example. But, in spite of protest, the Catholic reaction was, for the moment, successful. It could not last. The Spanish yoke was in itself intolerable. In 1552 the revolt of the princes, in alliance even with France, began. The Council pursued its old policy of neutrality--a policy destined this time not to pay. Money was contributed to the princes: devotion to the Emperor was expressed. So they thought they were safe. But the Markgraf of Brandenburg, Albert Alcibiades, who had declared for the Protestant cause, held only to the princes' manifesto, that those who were not for them were against them. He turned his eyes on his old enemy, and seized the merchant-trains that were leaving the city in fancied security.