from the other. "My dear lord," he said to the Count
Palatine, his feudal superior, "I had not thought that I should end
thus," taking off his cap and giving him his hand. "What has impelled
thee, Franz," asked the Archbishop of Trier, "that thou hast so laid
waste and harmed me and my poor people?" "Of that it were too long to
speak," answered Sickingen, "but I have done nought without cause. I
go now to stand before a greater Lord." Here it is worthy of remark
that the princes treated Franz with all the knightliness and courtesy
which were customary between social equals in the days of chivalry,
addressing him at most rather as a rebellious child than as an
insurgent subject. The Prince of Hesse was about to give utterance to
a reproach, but he was interrupted by the Count Palatine, who told
him that he must not quarrel with a dying man. The Count's chamberlain
said some sympathetic words to Franz, who replied to him: "My dear
chamberlain, it matters little about me. It is not I who am the cock
round which they are dancing." When the princes had withdrawn, his
chaplain asked him if he would confess; but Franz replied: "I have
confessed to God in my heart," whereupon the chaplain gave him
absolution; and as he went to fetch the host "the last of the knights"
passed quietly away, alone and abandoned. It is related by Spalatin
that after his death some peasants and domestics placed his body in an
old armour-chest, in which they had to double the head on to the
knees. The chest was then let down by a rope from the rocky eminence
on which stands the now ruined castle, and was buried beneath a small
chapel in the village below.

The scene we have just described in the castle vault meant not merely
the tragedy of a hero's death, nor merely the destruction of a faction
or party, it meant the end of an epoch. With Sickingen's death one of
the most salient and picturesque elements in the mediaeval life of
Central Europe received its death-blow. 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." Hutten,
already an exile in Switzerland, did not many months survive his
patron and leader, Sickingen. The role which Erasmus played in this
mi