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Updated: May 11, 2025
All agreed that something should be done to better the Church, few realized how divergent were the real ends in view. The princes listened to Luther because they hoped to control the churchmen and their property and check the outflow of money to Rome. The knights, under Sickingen, hated the princes, of whose increasing power they were jealous.
"Franz von Sickingen," he wrote, "by his great ill-will injures the cause of Luther; and notwithstanding that he be entirely dissevered from him, nevertheless whenever he undertaketh war he wisheth to seem to act for the public benefit, and not for his own. He doth even now pursue a most infamous course of plunder on the Rhine."
The knighthood as a distinct factor in the polity of Europe henceforth existed no more. Spalatin relates that on the death of Sickingen the princely party anticipated as easy a victory over the religious revolt as they had achieved over the knighthood. "The mock Emperor is dead," so the phrase went, "and the mock Pope will soon be dead also."
Glapio, the emperor's confessor, who had tried a similar trick upon the Elector Frederick, conceived the idea that if Von Sickingen and Bucer could be won for the plot, a proposal to compromise the whole matter amicably might serve to beguile him to the château of his friend at Ebernburg till his safe-conduct should expire, and then the liars could throw off the mask and dispose of him with credit in the eyes of Rome.
His fiery poems have been the source from which many a German bard has derived his inspiration, and Freiligrath who now lives in sight of his tomb, has published an indignant poem, because an inn with gaming tables has been established in the ruins of the castle near Creuznach, where Hutten found refuge from his enemies with Franz von Sickingen, brother-in-law of "Goetz with the iron Hand."
The latter, son-in-law to Sickingen, a man of upright, honourable, Christian character, had published a couple of little tracts in Luther's spirit.
As a young man of only twenty years of age, in the beginning of 1525, he had rendered valuable service by his energy, resolution, and warlike ability, in the defeat of Sickingen, and again when opposed to the seditious peasants.
His strong Castle of Landstühl was besieged by the Catholic princes, and cannon was used in this siege for the first time in history. The walls of Landstühl, twenty-five feet thick, were battered down, and Sickingen himself was killed by the falling of a beam. The war was over, and nothing worthy had been accomplished.
He went with the imperial chamberlain, Paul von Armsdorf, to Sickingen and Hutten at the Castle of Ebernburg, spoke of Luther as he had formerly done to Bruck, in an unconstrained and friendly manner, and offered to hold a peaceable interview with Luther in Sickingen's presence.
Consequently, a few days after the issue of the above manifesto, on August 27, 1522, Sickingen was able to start from the Castle of Ebernburg with an army of 5,000 foot and 1,500 knights, besides artillery, in the full confidence that he was about to destroy the position of the Palatine prince-prelate and raise himself without delay to the chief power on the Rhine.
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