He has robbed a band of merchants on their way from the Frankfort Fair, and, at the prompting of Weislingen, the Emperor puts him under the ban of the Empire, and dispatches an armed force against him.

Beaten in the field and besieged in his own castle, he is at length forced to surrender.

In the fourth act he is a prisoner in Heilbronn, but is rescued by Franz von Sickingen, a knight of the same stamp and with the same political sympathies as himself.

Sickingen, who is on friendly terms with the Emperor, does him the still further service of securing his relief from the ban, whereupon Gottfried settles down to a peaceful life in his own castle, and to relieve its monotony betakes himself to the uncongenial task of writing his own memoirs.

In the fifth act we sup with horrors.