Richard’s aid. After seven days siege, including five assault attempts, Von Sickingen ran out of gunpowder, and retreated to Ebernberg. Meanwhile, the Imperial Regency Council laid on him the Ban of the Empire. During his retreat, his detractors alleged that he plundered the entire countryside, including the town of Kaiserslautern. However, his supporters maintained that they only plundered Catholic churches and monasteries. Siege of Nanstein Castle Sickingen left Ebernberg to spend the winter at Nanstein Castle near Landstuhl, his strongest castle, which had recently had extensive repairs, where he hoped to carry on the struggle. Nanstein was reckoned to be one of the strongest castles in Germany. Sickingen felt safe in Landstuhl. Hutten fled to Switzerland, and with other emissaries began looking for support for a new military campaign for the following year. When Archbishop Richard of Trier, Count Louis V of the Palatine, and Landgrave Philip of Hesse laid siege to his castle in Landstuhl; Sickingen fully expected to last at least four months, by which time reinforcements would arrive to rescue him. However, he had underestimated the power of the new artillery weapons, and within one week his defences were in ruins and he had received a very serious wound himself. On 7 May 1523, he surrendered to the three princes, and died of his wounds. With his death, knighthood as a significant force in Germany died too. 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. Aftermath Most of the Revolt's significant supporters had their castles confiscated. The Archbishop of Mainz was even fined for his suspected complicity in the plot. The knights were now generally bankrupt as a result of the Revolt's inability to change their situation in the face of increasing inflation, declining agriculture, increased demands by the princes, and the inability to live by legal ‘highway robbery’. Most knights thereafter lived as petty feudal masters, making a living by taxing their peasants hard. They had no real independence now, and those that did rise above their status did so by acting as competent managers, priests, and generals for the princes. A few, such as Florian Geyer, refused to give in, and assisted the peasants in their own rebellion a few years later. The widespread refusal to pay church tithes during the Revolt subsequently spread to the peasant classes,