Meanwhile the work of agitation was carried on far and wide throughout the South German territories.

Preachers of discontent among the peasantry and the former towns were everywhere agitating and organizing with a view to a general rising in the ensuing spring.
Negotiations were carried on throughout the winter with nobles and the authorities without important results.

A diversion in favour of the peasants was caused by Duke Ulrich of Wuertemberg favouring the peasants' cause, which he hoped to use as a shoeing-horn to his own plans for recovering his ancestral domains, from which he had been driven on the grounds of a family quarrel under the ban of the empire in 1519.

He now established himself in his stronghold of Hohentwiel, in Wuertemberg, on the Swiss frontier.

By February or the beginning of March peasant bands were organizing throughout Southern Germany.
Early in March a so-called Peasants' Parliament was held at Memmingen, a small Swabian town, at which the principal charter of the movement, the so-called "Twelve Articles," was adopted.