ers to act with knights, or through the vigilance of the
Archbishop, they were without effect. The gates remained closed; and
in answer to Sickingen's summons to surrender, Richard replied that he
would find him in the city if he could get inside. In the meantime
Sickingen's friends had signally failed in their attempts to obtain
supplies and reinforcements for him, in the main owing to the
energetic action of some of the higher nobles. The Archbishop of Trier
showed himself as much a soldier as a Churchman; and after a week's
siege, during which Sickingen made five assaults on the city, his
powder ran out, and he was forced to retire. He at once made his way
back to Ebernburg, where he intended to pass the winter, since he saw
that it was useless to continue the campaign, with his own army
diminishing and the hoped-for supplies not appearing, whilst the
forces of his antagonists augmented daily. In his stronghold of
Ebernburg he could rely on being secure from all attack until he was
able to again take the field on the offensive, as he anticipated doing
in the spring.

In spite of the obvious failure of the autumnal campaign, the cause of
the knighthood did not by any means look irretrievably desperate,
since there was always the possibility of successful recruitments the
following spring. Ulrich von Hutten was doing his utmost in Wuertemberg
and Switzerland to scrape together men and money, though up to this
time without much success, while other emissaries of Sickingen were
working with the same object in Breisgau and other parts of Southern
Germany. Relying on these expected reinforcements, Franz was confident
of victory when he should again take the field, and in the meantime he
felt himself quite secure in one or other of his strong places, which
had recently undergone extensive repairs and seemed to be impregnable.
In this anticipation he was deceived, for he had not reckoned with the
new and more potent weapons of attack which were replacing the
battering-ram and other mediaeval besieging appliances. Franz retired
to his strong castle of the Landstuhl to await the onslaught of the
princes which followed in the spring. After heavy bombardment
Sickingen was mortally wounded on May 6th, and the place was
immediately surrendered. The next day the princes entered the castle,
where, in an underground chamber, their enemy lay dying.

He was so near his end that he could scarcely distinguish his three
arch-enemies one