Defeat
Sickingen left Ebernberg to spend the winter in his castle in Landstuhl, his strongest castle, which had recently had extensive repairs, where he hoped to carry on the struggle. Sickingen's castle at Landstuhl was reckoned to be one of the strongest castles in Germany. Sickingen felt safe in Landstuhl. Hutten fled to Switzerland, and with other emissaries began looking for support for a new military campaign for the following year.
When Ludwig of Palatine, Philip of Hesse and Richard of Trier laid siege to his castle in Landstuhl, Sickingen fully expected to last at least four months, by which time reinforcements would arrive to rescue him. However, he had underestimated the power of the new artillery weapons, and within one week his defences were in ruins and he had received a very serious wound himself. When he surrendered to the three princes on the 7th of May, he died the same day.
With his death, Knighthood as a significant force in Central Europe died too. Hutten only outlived Sickingen by a few months, first meeting the reformer Huldrych Zwingli in Zürich, before dying alone of syphilis in a Swiss monastery.
Read more about this topic: Knights' Revolt
Famous quotes containing the word defeat:
“History by apprising them [students] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“A self-denial, no less austere than the saint’s, is demanded of the scholar. He must worship truth, and forgo all things for that, and choose defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is thereby augmented.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I never liked bananas much anyway. Two-thirds of the way down even one banana I am willing to concede defeat smilingly and give the rest to the nearest monkey.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)