with me,
and altogether our party amounted to thirty. But the other travellers
were numerous; these I drove away in small bodies to whatever places
they appeared to belong. My comrade, Hans von Selbitz, also an enemy of
the Bishop of Bamberg, about a fortnight afterwards burnt his castle
and a city, called, if I remember it rightly, Vilseck, so that this
affair bore double fruit.

"In order that every one may know why and wherefore I quarrelled with
and attacked the men of Nuremberg, I will state the causes. Fritz von
Littwach, a Margrave's page, with whom I had been brought up as a boy,
who had been my companion-in-arms, and who was very good to me, once
disappeared mysteriously in the neighbourhood of Onolzbach, being made
prisoner and carried off, so that for a long time no one knew where he
was or who had carried him away. Long afterwards, the Margrave caught a
man, who gave him and the knights accompanying him many true tidings.
Then it became known where Fritz von Littwach had been taken to; so I
begged and prayed of my patron and relation Herr Hans von Seckendorf,
who was the Margrave's majordomo, that he would procure me the
confession of the traitor. Thereby it was discovered that those in the
service of the Nurembergers had done the deed, and it might be assumed
that he had been taken to one of their houses or a public gaol. This
was one of my grounds of complaint against the Nurembergers.

"Further, I had hired a servant called Georg von Gaislingen, who had
promised to enter my service, but who had been, when with his Junker
Eustach von Lichtenstein, stabbed and severely wounded by the men of
Nuremberg; his Junker had been so likewise, but survived. Although many
others besides the Nurembergers were hostile to Fritz von Littwach, yet
I never perceived any one who had 'belled the cat,' as they say, or had
taken up the matter, except poor truehearted Goetz von Berlichingen:
these are the grounds of offence that I have everywhere and in every
way notified and proved against the Nurembergers, every day in which I
have negotiated with them before the commissaries of his Imperial
Majesty, and also before the ecclesiastical and temporal princes.[62]

"I will now show further what happened to me and my relations in the
Nuremberg feud. The States of the Empire ordered out four hundred
horsemen against me, amongst whom were counts and lords, knights and
vassals; their challenges are still in existence. I and my broth