During the First Margrave War in 1449 Albrecht Achilles invaded Lichtenau, devastated the land and captured the castle. The castle was not returned until 1453. In the course of the Second Margrave War, in 1553, it was totally destroyed by Albrecht Alcibiades even though it had been surrendered without a fight. The Imperial City of Nuremberg had a completely new castle built (by Wolf Jacob Stromer, probably based on older plans by the architect, Antonio Falzon) for 194,000 guilders. Due to the level of destruction, the rebuild took until 1630 to complete. Barely a year later, the fortress was besieged by imperial troops and Georg Scheurl handed over the fortress, again without resisting, to the imperial commander, Tilly who, however, did not damage it. The last major attack on the fortress was in 1688, in a raid by troops of the French "sun king", Louis XIV. The French demanded that the "pfleger", John Frederick Haller of Hallerstein surrender it. He, however, broke the tradition of handing it over without a fight and fought back, whereupon the French gave up storming the fortification.