THE REVOLT OF THE KNIGHTHOOD
We have already pointed out in more than one place the position to
which the smaller nobility, or the knighthood, had been reduced by the
concatenation of causes which was bringing about the dissolution of the
old mediæval order of things, and, as a consequence, ruining the
knights both economically and politically--economically by the rise of
capitalism as represented by the commercial syndicates of the cities;
by the unprecedented power and wealth of the city confederations,
especially of the Hanseatic League; by the rising importance of the
newly developed world-market; by the growing luxury and the enormous
rise in the prices of commodities concurrently with the reduction in
value of the feudal land-tenures; and by the limitation of the
possibilities of acquiring wealth by highway robbery, owing to Imperial
constitutions, on the one hand, and increased powers of defence on the
part of the trading community, on the other--politically, by the new
modes of warfare in which artillery and infantry, composed of
comparatively well-drilled mercenaries (_Landsknechte_), were rapidly
making inroads into the omnipotence of the ancient feudal chivalry, and
reducing the importance of individual skill or prowess in the handling
of weapons, and by the development of the power of the princes or
higher nobility, partly due to the influence which the Roman civil law
now began to exercise over the older customary Constitution of the
empire, and partly to the budding centralism of authority--which in
France and England became a national centralization, but in Germany, in
spite of the temporary ascendancy of Charles V, finally issued in a
provincial centralization in which the princes were _de facto_
independent monarchs. The Imperial Constitution of 1495, forbidding
private war, applied, it must be remembered, only to the lesser
nobility and not to the higher, thereby placing the former in a
decidedly ignominious position as regards their feudal superiors. And
though this particular enactment had little immediate result, yet it
was none the less resented as a blow struck at the old knightly
privilege.
The mental attitude of the knighthood in the face of this progressing
change in their position was naturally an ambiguous one, composed
partly of a desire to hark back to the haughty independence of
feudalism, and partly of sympathy with the growing discontent among
other classes and with the new spirit generally. In order that the
knights might succeed in recovering their old or even in maintaining
their actual position against the higher nobility, the princes, backed
as these now largely were by the Imperial power, the co-operation of
the cities was absolutely essential to them, but the obstacles in the
way of such a co-operation proved insurmountable. The towns hated the
knights for their lawless practices, which rendered trade unsafe and
not infrequently cost the lives of the citizens. The knights for the
most part, with true feudal hauteur, scorned and despised the artisans
and traders who had no territorial family name and were unexercised in
the higher chivalric arts. The grievances of the two parties were,
moreover, not identical, although they had their origin in the same
causes.
The cities were in the main solely concerned to maintain their old
independent position, and especially to curb the growing disposition
at this time of the other estates to use them as milch cows from
which to draw the taxation necessary to the maintenance of the
empire. For example, at the Reichstag opened at Nürnberg on November
17, 1522--to discuss the questions of the establishment of perpetual
peace within the empire, of organizing an energetic resistance to the
inroads of the Turks, and of placing on a firm foundation the
Imperial Privy Council (_Kammergericht_) and the Supreme Council
(_Reichsregiment_)--at which were represented twenty-six Imperial
towns, thirty-eight high prelates, eighteen princes, and twenty-nine
counts and barons--the representatives of the cities complained
grievously that their attendance was reduced to a farce, since they
were always out-voted, and hence obliged to accept the decisions of
the other estates. They stated that their position was no longer
bearable, and for the first time drew up an Act of Protest, which
further complained of the delay in the decisions of the Imperial
courts; of their sufferings from the right of private war, which was
still allowed to subsist in defiance of the Constitution; of the
increase of customs-stations on the part of the princes and
prince-prelates; and, finally, of the debasement of the coinage due
to the unscrupulous practices of these notables and of the Jews. The
only sympathy the other estates vouchsafed to the plaints of the
cities was with regard to the right of private war, which the higher
nobles were also anxious to suppress amongst the lower, though
without prejudice, of course, to their own privileges in this line.
All the other articles of the Act of Protest were coolly waived
aside. From all this it will be seen that not much co-operation was
to be expected between such heterogeneous bodies as the knighthood
and the free towns, in spite of their common interest in checking the
threateningly advancing power of the princes and the central Imperial
authority in so far as it was manned and manipulated by the princes.
Amid the decaying knighthood there was, as we have already intimated,
one figure which stood out head and shoulders above every other noble
of the time, whether prince or knight, and that was Franz von
Sickingen. He has been termed, not without truth, "the last flower of
German chivalry," since in him the old knightly qualities flashed up
in conjunction with the old knightly power and splendour with a
brightness hardly known even in the palmiest days of mediæval life. It
was, however, the last flicker of the light of German chivalry. With
the death of Sickingen and the collapse of his revolt the knighthood
of Central Europe ceased any longer to play an independent part in
history.
Sickingen, although technically only one of the lower nobility, was
deemed about the time of Luther's appearance to hold the immediate
destinies of the empire in his hand. Wealthy, inspiring confidence and
enthusiasm as a leader, possessed of more than one powerful and
strategically situated stronghold, he held court at his favourite
residence, the Castle of the Landstuhl, in the Rhenish Palatinate, in
a style which many a prince of the empire might have envied. As
honoured guests were to be found attending on him humanists, poets,
minstrels, partisans of the new theology, astrologers, alchemists, and
men of letters generally--in short, the whole intelligence and culture
of the period. Foremost amongst these, and chief confidant of
Sickingen, was the knight, courtier, poet, essayist, and pamphleteer,
Ulrich von Hutten, whose pen was ever ready to champion with unstinted
enthusiasm the cause of the progressive ideas of his age. He first
took up the cudgels against the obscurantists on behalf of Humanism as
represented by Erasmus and Reuchlin, the latter of whom he bravely
defended in his dispute with the Inquisition and the monks of Cologne,
and in his contributions to the _Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_ we see
the youthful ardour of the Renaissance in full blast in its onslaught
on the forces of mediæval obstruction. Unlike most of those with whom
he was first associated, Hutten passed from being the upholder of the
New Learning to the rôle of champion of the Reformation; and it was
largely through his influence that Sickingen took up the cause of
Luther and his movement.
Sickingen had been induced by Charles V to assist him in an abortive
attempt to invade France in 1521, from which campaign he had returned
without much benefit either material or moral, save that Charles was
left heavily in his debt. The accumulated hatred of generations for
the priesthood had made Sickingen a willing instrument in the hands of
the reforming party, and believing that Charles now lay to some extent
in his power, he considered the moment opportune for putting his
long-cherished scheme into operation for reforming the Constitution of
the empire. This reformation consisted, as was to be expected, in
placing his own order on a firm footing, and of effectually curbing
the power of the other estates, especially that of the prelates.
Sickingen wished to make the Emperor and the lower nobility the
decisive factors in his new scheme of things political. The Emperor,
it so happened, was for the moment away in Spain, and Sickingen's
colleagues of the knightly order were becoming clamorous at the
unworthy position into which they found themselves rapidly being
driven. The feudal exactions of their princely lieges had reached a
point which passed all endurance, and since they were practically
powerless in the Reichstags, no outlet was left for their discontent
save by open revolt. Impelled not less by his own inclinations than by
the pressure of his companions, foremost among whom was Hutten,
Sickingen decided at once to open the campaign.
Hutten, it would appear, attempted to enter into negotiations for the
co-operation of the towns and of the peasants. So far as can be seen,
Strassburg and one or two other Imperial cities returned favourable
answers; but the precise measure of Hutten's success cannot be
ascertained, owing to the fact that all the documents relating to the
matter perished in the destruction of Sickingen's Castle of Ebernburg.
It should be premised that on August 13th, previous to this
declaration of war, a "Brotherly Convention" had been signed by a
number of the knights, by which Sickingen was appointed their captain,
and they bound themselves to submit to no jurisdiction save their own,
and pledged themselves to mutual aid in war in case of hostilities
against any one of their number. Through this "Treaty of Landau,"
Sickingen had it in his power to assemble a considerable force at a
moment's notice. 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.
By an effective piece of audacity, that of sporting the Imperial flag
and the Burgundian cross, Franz spread abroad the idea that he was
acting on behalf of the Emperor, then absent in Spain; and this
largely contributed to the result that his army speedily rose to 5,000
knights and 10,000 footmen. The Imperial Diet at Nürnberg now
intervened, and ordered Sickingen to cease the operations he had
already begun, threatening him with the ban of the empire and a fine
of 2,000 marks if he did not obey. To this summons Franz sent a
characteristically impudent reply, and light-heartedly continued the
campaign, regardless of the warning which an astrologer had given him
some time previously, that the year 1522 or 1523 would probably be
fatal to him. It is evident that this campaign, begun so late in the
year, was regarded by Sickingen and the other leaders as merely a
preliminary canter to a larger and more widespread movement the
following spring, since on this occasion the Swabian and Franconian
knighthood do not appear to have been even invited to take part in it.
After an easy progress, during which several trifling places, the most
important being St. Wendel, were taken, Franz with his army arrived on
September 8th before the gates of Trier. He had hoped to capture the
town by surprise, and was indeed not without some expectation of
co-operation and help from the citizens themselves. On his arrival he
shot letters within the walls summoning the inhabitants to take his
part against their tyrant; but either through the unwillingness of the
burghers 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 Würtemberg
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 mediæval 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 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 mediæval 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 rôle which Erasmus played in this
miserable tragedy was only what was to be expected from the moral
cowardice which seemed ingrained in the character of the great
Humanist leader. Erasmus had already begun to fight shy of the
Reformation movement, from which he was about to separate himself
definitely. He seized the present opportunity to quarrel with Hutten;
and to Hutten's somewhat bitter attacks on him in consequence he
replied with ferocity in his _Spongia Erasmi adversus aspergines
Hutteni_.
Hutten had had to fly from Basel to Mülhausen and thence to Zürich, in
the last stages of syphilitic disease. He was kindly received by the
reformer, Zwingli of Zürich, who advised him to try the waters of
Pfeffers, and gave him letters of recommendation to the abbot of that
place. He returned, in no wise benefited, to Zürich, when Zwingli
again befriended the sick knight, and sent him to a friend of his, the
"reformed" pastor of the little island of "Ufenau," at the other end
of the lake, where after a few weeks' suffering he died in abject
destitution, leaving, it is said, nothing behind him but his pen. The
disease from which Hutten suffered the greater part of his life, at
that time a comparatively new importation and much more formidable
even than nowadays, may well have contributed to an irascibility of
temper and to a certain recklessness which the typical free-lance of
the Reformation in its early period exhibited. Hutten was never a
theologian, and the Reformation seems to have attracted him mainly
from its political side as implying the assertion of the dawning
feeling of German nationality as against the hated enemies of freedom
of thought and the new light, the clerical satellites of the Roman
see. He was a true son of his time, in his vices no less than in his
virtues; and no one will deny his partiality for "wine, women, and
play." There is reason, indeed, to believe that the latter at times
during his later career provided his sole means of subsistence.
The hero of the Reformation, Luther, with whom Melanchthon may be
associated in this matter, could be no less pusillanimous on occasion
than the hero of the New Learning, Erasmus. Luther undoubtedly saw in
Sickingen's revolt a means of weakening the Catholic powers against
which he had to fight, and at its inception he avowedly favoured the
enterprise. In some of the reforming writings Luther is represented as
the incarnation of Christian resignation and mildness, and as talking
of twelve legions of angels and deprecating any appeal to force as
unbefitting the character of an evangelical apostle. That such,
however, was not his habitual attitude is evident to all who are in
the least degree acquainted with his real conduct and utterances. On
one occasion he wrote: "If they (the priests) continue their mad
ravings it seems to me that there would be no better method and
medicine to stay them than that kings and princes did so with force,
armed themselves and attacked these pernicious people who do poison
all the world, and once for all did make an end of their doings with
weapons, not with words. For even as we punish thieves with the sword,
murderers with the rope, and heretics with fire, wherefore do we not
lay hands on these pernicious teachers of damnation, on popes, on
cardinals, bishops, and the swarm of the Roman Sodom--yea, with every
weapon which lieth within our reach, _and wherefore do we not wash our
hands in their blood?_"[19]
It is, however, in a manifesto published in July 1522, just before
Sickingen's attack on the Archbishop of Trier, for which enterprise it
was doubtless intended as a justification, that Luther expresses
himself in unmeasured terms against the "biggest wolves," the bishops,
and calls upon "all dear children of God and all true Christians" to
drive them out by force from the "sheep-stalls." In this pamphlet,
entitled _Against the falsely called spiritual order of the Pope and
the Bishops_, he says: "It were better that every bishop were
murdered, every foundation or cloister rooted out, than that one soul
should be destroyed, let alone that all souls should be lost for the
sake of their worthless trumpery and idolatry. Of what use are they
who thus live in lust, nourished by the sweat and labour of others,
and are a stumbling-block to the word of God? They fear bodily uproar
and despise spiritual destruction. Are they wise and honest people? If
they accepted God's word and sought the life of the soul, God would be
with them, for He is a God of peace, and they need fear no uprising;
but if they will not hear God's word, but rage and rave with bannings,
burnings, killings, and every evil, what do they better deserve than a
strong uprising which shall sweep them from the earth? _And we would
smile did it happen._[20] As the heavenly wisdom saith: 'Ye have
hated my chastisement and despised my doctrine; behold, I will also
laugh at ye in your distress, and will mock ye when misfortune shall
fall upon your heads.'" In the same document he denounces the bishops
as an accursed race, as "thieves, robbers, and usurers." Swine,
horses, stones, and wood were not so destitute of understanding as the
German people under the sway of them and their Pope. The religious
houses are similarly described as "brothels, low taverns, and murder
dens," He winds up this document, which he calls his "bull," by
proclaiming that "all who contribute body, goods, and honour that the
rule of the bishops may be destroyed are God's dear children and true
Christians, obeying God's command and fighting against the devil's
order"; and, on the other hand, that "all who give the bishops a
willing obedience are the devil's own servants, and fight against
God's order and law."[21]
No sooner, however, did things begin to look bad with Sickingen than
Luther promptly sought to disengage himself from all complicity or
even sympathy with him and his losing cause. So early as December 19,
1522, he writes to his friend Wenzel Link: "Franz von Sickingen has
begun war against the Palatine. It will be a very bad business."
(_Franciscus Sickingen Palatino bellum indixit, res pessima futura
est._) His colleague, Melanchthon, a few days later, hastened to
deprecate the insinuation that Luther had had any part or lot in
initiating the revolt. "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." In another letter he says: "I know how this tumult grieveth
him (Luther),"[22] and this respecting the man who had shortly before
written of the princes that their tyranny and haughtiness were no
longer to be borne, alleging that God would not longer endure it, and
that the common man even was becoming intelligent enough to deal with
them by force if they did not mend their manners. A more telling
example of the "don't-put-him-in-the-horse-pond" attitude could
scarcely be desired. That it was characteristic of the "great
reformer" will be seen later on when we find him pursuing a similar
policy anent the revolt of the peasants.
After the fall of the Landstuhl all Sickingen's castles and most of
those of his immediate allies and friends were of course taken, and
the greater part of them destroyed. The knighthood was now to all
intents and purposes politically helpless and economically at the door
of bankruptcy, owing to the suddenly changed conditions of which we
have spoken in the Introduction and elsewhere as supervening since the
beginning of the century: the unparalleled rise in prices,
concurrently with the growing extravagance, the decline of agriculture
in many places, and the increasing burdens put upon the knights by
their feudal superiors, and last, but not least, the increasing
obstacles in the way of the successful pursuit of the profession of
highway robbery. The majority of them, therefore, clung with
relentless severity to the feudal dues of the peasants, which now
constituted their main, and in many cases their only, source of
revenue; and hence, abandoning the hope of independence, they threw in
their lot with the authorities, the princes, lay and ecclesiastic, in
the common object of both, that of reducing the insurgent peasants to
complete subjection.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] Italics the present author's.
[20] Italics the present author's.
[21] _Sämmtliche Werke_ vol. xxviii. pp. 142-201.
[22] _Corpus Reformatorum_, vol. i. pp. 598-9.