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:
“One strong wolf cannot defeat a pack of dogs; one strong arm cannot defeat many fists.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat ... the redeeming things are not “happiness and pleasure” but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Love your enemies. I saw this admonition now as simple, sensible advice. I knew I could face an angry, murderous mob without even the beginning of fear if I could love them. Like a flame, love consumes fear, and thus make true defeat impossible.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 2, ch. 2 (1962)