The encroachment of urban-dominated trade and industry on traditional agriculture, combined with rising interest rates and declining land values, harmed the knights financially, while the increasingly wealthy cities of the Holy Roman Empire had become powerful enough to resist attacks.

In England, the War of the Roses (1455–1485) that brought Henry VII to the throne had spelled the end of the feudal aristocracy.

However, the king realized that a more efficient way of raising money for his government was to tax the income of the rising class of merchants—especially those in the trade in wool and woolen cloth.

Instead, income from trade flowed directly back to the feudal lords located in the various principalities and fiefdoms throughout Germany.

With Germany divided into a patchwork of small kingdoms and fiefdoms, governmental power lay securely under the control of local feudal lords.

[3] In order to bring about the reforms they wanted, the knights needed the united support of both the cities and the peasantry.

Only a plan that included a total abolition of serfdom, bondage, and the privileges of the nobility could induce the peasantry to join the knights in the struggle for reform.

After spending some time in the service of the Emperor Maximillian against Venice, he spent many years terrorizing cities and princes up and down the Rhine, which made him a very rich man.

[9] Hutten and Sickingen hoped that this program would be sufficient to encourage the peasantry to enthusiastically join the knights in bringing about reform.

The Convention elected him as their leader, and resolved to take by force that which the knights had been unable to obtain through their poor representation in the Reichstag.

The target chosen by the knights to start their revolt was Richard, Prince-Bishop of Trier; a staunch opponent of Luther and his supporters.

The excuse used for the attack was an unpaid ransom by two city councillors to another knight who had captured them some years ago.

Sickingen’s declaration of war was full of religious rhetoric designed to encourage the people of the city to surrender and overthrow their archbishop, and so save the knights the trouble of a siege.

When Richard, Prince-Bishop of Trier; Louis V, Count Palatine of the Rhine; and Philip, Landgrave of Hesse laid siege to his castle near Landstuhl; Sickingen fully expected to last at least four months, by which time reinforcements would arrive to rescue him.

Hutten only outlived Sickingen by a few months, first meeting the reformer Huldrych Zwingli in Zürich, before dying alone of syphilis in a Swiss monastery.