The collapse of the revolt was indeed an important link in the particular chain of events that was so rapidly destroying the independent existence of the lower nobility as a separate status with a definite political position, and transforming the face of society generally.

Life in the smaller castle, the knight's _burg_ or tower, was already tending to become an anachronism.

The Court of the prince, lay or ecclesiastic, was attracting to itself all the elements of nobility below it in the social hierarchy.

The revolt of 1525 gave a further edge to this development, the first act of which closed with the collapse of the knights' rebellion and death of Sickingen in 1523.
The knight was becoming superfluous in the economy of the body politic.
The rise of capitalism, the sudden development of the world-market, the substitution of a money medium of exchange for direct barter--all these new factors were doing their work.

Obviously the great gainers by the events of the momentous year were the representatives of the centralizing principle.