his strong arm and steadfast will for their
own objects. When the peasant army broke into his territories, he and
his kinsmen were utterly at a loss what to do, and wrote for advice.
The answer was suppressed by his mother-in-law and wife, and he was
left to his own judgment, and had not sufficient adroitness to withdraw
himself from the thronging insurgents. Had he been like many of his
cotemporaries, such as Max Stumpf, he would have abandoned the peasants
in spite of all his vows. But although not really faithful to them,
true to the letter of his word, he adhered to them till the four weeks
were passed, for which he had bound himself though he was not in fact
their leader but their prisoner. After that he lived some years in
close imprisonment, then for a long time in strict confinement at his
castle. He was surrounded by a new generation, engaged in vehement
strife, and he himself was grieving the while that he had acted in the
peasant struggle as an honourable knight, and that still true to his
word, he had even now to count the steps which he was allowed to take
beyond the gates of his castle. After sixteen years of solitary
seclusion he was in his old age twice called to take part in the
warfare of a younger race, which neither brought him adventures nor any
opportunity to acquire fame or booty. When at last he died in peace at
his Castle of Hornburg, at the age of eighty-two, Luther had been dead
sixteen years, and the Emperor Charles V. had been interred in a
cloister four years before; but the long period from the year 1525
occupies few pages in his autobiography, although it was written in the
last year of his life. There will be given here fragments from his
account of the Nuremberg feud.

Goetz von Berlichingen.

"1512. Now I will not conceal from any one that I was desirous of
coming to blows with the Nurembergers; I revolved the thing in my mind,
and thought that I must pick a quarrel with the priest, the Bishop of
Bamberg, that I might bring the Nurembergers into play. I waylaid
ninety-five merchants who were under the safe conduct of the Bishop; I
was so kind that I did not seize any of their goods, except those
belonging to the Nurembergers; of these there were about thirty. I
attacked them on the Monday after Our Lord's Ascension-day, about eight
or nine in the morning, and rode along with them all Tuesday, that
night, and Wednesday: I had my good friend Hans von Selbitz