Leo Africanus

by Amin Maalouf

  ‘What does she want today?’

  He had a worried air. He stopped his horse in the middle of the street, at the very entrance to the Ponte Vecchio, on which the crowd had parted to let him pass through, and from which some cheers were coming.

  ‘Florence wants to be governed by a prince, on condition that it should be governed as a republic. Every time that our ancestors forgot this, they had cause to regret it bitterly. Today the Medici are represented in the city of their birth by that presumptuous young Alessandro. He is barely fifteen, and he thinks that because he is a Medici and the son of the Pope, Florence belongs to him, women and goods.’

  ‘Son of the Pope?’

  My surprise was genuine. Giovanni burst out laughing.

  ‘Don’t tell me that you have lived seven years in Rome without knowing that Alessandro was Clement’s bastard?’

  I confessed my ignorance. He was delighted to enlighten me:

  ‘At a time when he was still neither Pope nor cardinal, my cousin knew a Moorish slavegirl in Naples, who bore him this son.’

  We were going back up towards the Palazzo Pitti. Soon, we crossed the Porta Romana, where Giovanni was cheered once more. But, sunk in his thoughts, he did not reply to the crowd. I hastened to do so in his place, which amused my son Giuseppe so much that all along the road he constantly begged me to make the same gestures, bursting out with laughter each time.

  The very day of our arrival in Rome, Giovanni of the Black Bands insisted that we should go to the Pope together. We found him in conclave with Guicciardini, who did not seem at all pleased at our arrival. He had probably just convinced the Holy Father to take some painful decision and feared that Giovanni might make him change his mind. To conceal his anxiety, and to sound out our intentions, he adopted, as was his wont, a jocular tone:

  ‘So there can be no more meetings between Florentines unless a Moor is among us!’

  The Pope gave an embarrassed smile. Giovanni did not even smile. For my part I replied in the same tone, with a gesture of marked irritation:

  ‘There can be no meeting between Medici unless the people join with us!’

  This time Giovanni’s laugh cracked like a whip, and his hand came down on my back in a formidable friendly hug. Laughing in his turn, Guicciardini quickly passed on to the events of the moment:

  ‘We have just received a message of the utmost importance. King François will leave Spain before Ash Wednesday.’

  A discussion ensued in which Giovanni and I put forward, with due diffidence, arguments in favour of coming to terms with Charles V. But in vain. The Pope was entirely under the influence of Guicciardini, who had persuaded him to stand up to ‘Caesar’ and to be the soul of the anti-imperial coalition.

  On 22 May 1526 a ‘Holy League’ came into existence in the French town of Cognac. As well as François and the Pope, it included the Duke of Milan and the Venetians. It was war, one of the most terrible that Rome would ever know. Because, though he had temporized after Pavia, this time the emperor was determined to push matters to their conclusion against François, whom he had released in exchange for a written agreement which was quickly declared null and void as soon as the latter had crossed the Pyrenees, and against the Pope, ally of ‘the perjurer’. The imperial armies began to regroup in Italy, beside Milan, Trent and Naples. Against them, Clement could count only on the bravura of the Black Bands and their commanders. Judging that the principal danger would come from the north, the latter left for Mantua, determined to prevent the enemy from crossing the Po.

  Alas! Charles V also had his allies, even within the papal state, a clan which was called ‘Ia imperialista’, headed by the powerful Cardinal Pompeo Colonna. In September, taking advantage of the fact that the Black Bands were far away, the cardinal burst into the quarters of Borgo and Trastevere at the head of a band of pillagers who set fire to several houses and proclaimed in public that they were going to ‘deliver Rome from the tyranny of the Pope’. Clement VII hurriedly took refuge in Castel San Angelo, where he barricaded himself in while Colonna’s men were sacking the palace of St Peter. I thought of taking Maddalena and Giuseppe to the castle, but I gave up the idea, considering that it would be most unwise to cross the Ponte San Angelo in the circumstances. I went to earth in my own house, letting matters take their own course in those difficult times.

  In fact the Pope was obliged to accept all Colonna’s demands. He signed an agreement promising to withdraw from the Holy League against the emperor, and refrain from taking any sanctions against the guilty cardinal. Of course, as soon as the attackers had gone he made it known to all that there was no question of him respecting a treaty imposed under conditions of duress, terror and sacrilege.

  The day after this violent incident, while Clement was still fulminating against the emperor and his allies, news arrived in Rome of the victory of Sultan Sulaiman at Mohàcs, and of the death of the King of Hungary, the emperor’s brother-in-law. The Pope summoned me to ask me whether, in my opinion, the Turks were going to launch an assault on Vienna, whether they would soon push on into Germany, or move towards Venice. I had to say that I did not have the slightest idea. The Holy Father seemed extremely concerned. Guicciardini judged that the responsibility for this defeat lay entirely with the emperor, who was waging war in Italy and attacking the King of France instead of defending the lands of Christendom against the Turks, instead of fighting the heresy which was devastating Germany. He added:

  ‘Why should one expect the Germans to go to the aid of Hungary if Luther tells them morning and night: “The Turks are the chastisement which God has sent us. To oppose them is to oppose the wish of the Creator!” ’

  Clement VII nodded in approval. Guicciardini waited until we were outside to let me share in his extreme satisfaction:

  ‘The victory of the Ottoman will change the course of history. Perhaps this is the miracle which we were waiting for.’

  That year I put the final touches to my Description of Africa. Then, without taking a single day’s rest, I decided to set to work on the chronicle of my own life and the events in which I had been involved. Maddalena thought that the sight of me working with such frenzy was a bad omen.

  ‘It’s as if our time was running out,’ she would say.

  I would have liked to reassure her, but my mind was beset by the same obsessive apprehensions: Rome was fading away, my Italian existence was coming to an end, and I did not know when I would have the time to write again.

  The Year of the Lansquenets

  933 A.H.

  8 October 1526 – 26 September 1527

  Thus came my fortieth year, that of my last hope, of my final desertion.

  Giovanni of the Black Bands was sending the most reassuring news from the front, confirming the Pope, the Curia and the whole of Rome in the false impression that the war was very far away and would remain there. The Imperial forces are north of the Po and will never cross it, the condottiere promised. And from Trastevere to the Trevi quarter people delighted to boast of the gallantry of the Medici and his men. Romans longstanding or of passage vied with each other in their contempt for ‘those barbarian Germans’, who, as everyone knows, have always looked at the Eternal City with envy, greed and a relentless lack of understanding.

  I could not join in this mad euphoria, so deeply were tales of the last days of Granada engraved upon my memory, when my father, my mother, Sarah and the whole crowd of those soon to be exiled were persuaded that deliverance was certain, when they affected unanimous contempt for a triumphant Castile, when they cast deep suspicion upon anyone who dared to question the imminent arrival of assistance. Having learned from the misfortune of my own family, I had come to be distrustful of appearances. When everyone persists in the same opinion, I turn away from it; the truth is surely elsewhere.

  Guicciardini reacted in the same way. Appointed lieutenant-general of the papal troops, he was in the north of Italy, together with Giovanni, whom he observed with a mixture of admiration and fury:
He is a man of great courage, but he risks his life in the merest skirmish. But if anything should happen to him, it would be impossible to contain the flood of the imperial troops. Written in a letter to the Pope, these complaints only came to light in Rome when they already had become meaningless; struck down by a falconer’s ball, the chief of the Black Bands had his leg shattered. An amputation was necessary. It was dark, and Giovanni insisted on holding the torch himself while the doctor cut off the limb with a saw. Pointless suffering, because the wounded man expired shortly after the operation.

  Of all the men I have known, Tumanbay the Circassian and Giovanni of the Black Bands were certainly the most courageous. The first had been killed by the Sultan of the East, the second by the Emperor of the West. The first had been unable to save Cairo; the second could not spare Rome from the suffering which awaited her.

  In the city, there was immediate panic once the news of his death became known. The enemy had only advanced a few miles, but it was as if they were already at the gates of the city, as if the disappearance of Giovanni had torn down the fortresses, dried up the rivers and flattened the mountains.

  In fact, nothing seemed able to halt the advancing tide. Before his death, the chief of the Black Bands was desperately attempting to prevent two powerful imperial armies joining forces in northern Italy; the one, composed principally of Castilians, was in the vicinity of Milan, while the other, by far the more dangerous, consisted of German lansquenets, almost all of whom were Lutherans from Bavaria, Saxony and Franconia. They had crossed the Alps and invaded the Trentino with the conviction that they had been entrusted with some divine mission, to chastise the Pope, who was guilty of having corrupted Christianity. Ten thousand uncontrollable heretics, marching against the Pope under the banner of a Catholic emperor; such was the calamity which engulfed Italy that year.

  The death of Giovanni, followed by the hurried retreat of the Black Bands, had enabled all the imperial troops to join forces and to cross the Po, determined to go as far as the palace of St Peter. There must have been about thirty thousand soldiers, badly dressed, badly fed and badly paid, who reckoned on living off the country and exploiting it. They came first to Bologna, which put up a considerable ransom in order to be spared; then it was the turn of Florence, where the plague had just broken out, and which also paid a heavy tribute to prevent itself being pillaged. Guicciardini, who had played a part in these negotiations, strongly advised the Pope to make a similar agreement.

  Once more, there was a sense of euphoria; peace was within reach, people said. On 25 March 1527 the Viceroy of Naples, Charles de Lannoy, the special envoy of the emperor, arrived at Rome to conclude an agreement. I was in the middle of the crowd in St Peter’s Square, to be present at this moment of deliverance. The weather was fine, a marvellous spring day, when the notable arrived, surrounded by his bodyguard. But at the very moment when he entered the gate of the Vatican, there was a flash of lightning, followed by a torrential outburst of rain which poured down on us with a noise which seemed to herald the end of the world. When the first shock had passed I ran to take shelter in a doorway, which was soon surrounded by a sea of mud.

  At my side, a woman was soon wailing loudly, lamenting this evil portent. Hearing her, I remembered the flood at Granada, which I had experienced through the eyes of my mother, may God surround her with His mercy! Was this, once again, a sign from Heaven, a harbinger of disaster? However, that day there was no overflowing of the Tiber, nor ruinous floods, nor great slaughter. In fact the peace agreement was signed at the end of the afternoon. To ensure that the city should be spared, it stipulated that the Pope should hand over a substantial sum of money.

  The money was indeed handed over, sixty thousand ducats, someone told me, and as a sign of his good faith, Clement VII decided to dismiss the mercenaries whom he had recruited. But this was not enough to stop the imperial army from moving forward. Officers who dared to mention retreat were threatened with death at the hands of their own troops; at the height of the quarrel, the chief of the lansquenets was brought down by a fit of apoplexy, and the command passed to the Constable of Bourbon, cousin and sworn enemy of the King of France. He was a man without much authority, who was following the imperial army rather than commanding it. No one else could control this mob any longer, not even the emperor, who was, besides, in Spain. Uncontrollable, unyielding, destroying everything before it, it was advancing towards Rome, where hopes for peace had given way to a panic becoming increasingly insane every day. The cardinals in particular could think only of hiding themselves or of running away with their riches.

  The Pope persisted in believing that his agreement with the viceroy would eventually be respected, even if this were to be at the very last moment. It was only at the end of April, when the imperial troops reached the Tiber, a few miles upstream from the city, that the Holy Father resolved to organize its defence. As the papal coffers were empty, he elevated six rich merchants to the rank of cardinal, who handed over two hundred thousand ducats for the privilege. With this money, an army of eight thousand could be raised, two thousand Swiss guards, two thousand soldiers from the Black Bands, and four thousand volunteers from among the inhabitants of Rome.

  At the age of forty, I did not feel capable of bearing arms. However, I volunteered to run the arms and munitions store at the Castel San Angelo. In order to fulfil satisfactorily a task which required my vigilant presence day and night, I decided to take up residence in the fortress, arranging to move Maddalena and Giuseppe in there as well. It was in fact the best-defended part of the whole city, and it soon became flooded with refugees. I had occupied my former room, which made me seem most affluent, since the newcomers were obliged to cram themselves by whole families into the corridors.

  In the first days of May a strange atmosphere came over this makeshift encampment, fertile ground for the most bizarre excitements. I shall always remember the moment when a fife player in the papal orchestra arrived quite out of breath, shouting at the top of his voice:

  ‘I’ve killed the Bourbon! I’ve killed the Bourbon!’

  It was a certain Benvenuto Cellini from Florence. One of his brothers had fought in the ranks of the Black Bands, but he himself, a medal-maker by trade, had never belonged to any army. He had gone off to fight, he said, with two of his friends near the Porta Trittone.

  ‘There was a thick fog,’ he declared, ‘but I could make out the silhouette of the constable on horseback. I fired my arquebus. A few minutes later the mist cleared, and I saw the Bourbon lying on the ground, evidently dead.’

  Hearing this, I simply shrugged my shoulders. Others snapped at him harshly; the battle was raging on the city walls, especially near the Borgo, and the shooting had never been so heavy; a tumult of war, suffering and fear rose from the city; this was not the time for vain boasting.

  However, I must say that to my greatest surprise before the end of the day the news was confirmed. The Bourbon had indeed been killed in the vicinity of the Porta Trittone. When a cardinal announced it to us, a broad smile lighting up his haggard face, there were several shouts of victory. At my side there was a man who did not express the slightest joy. He was a veteran of the Black Bands, and he was boiling with rage.

  ‘Is this the way wars are fought these days? With these accursed arquebuses, the most valiant of cavalrymen can be picked off from afar by a fife player! This is the end of chivalry! The end of wars of honour!’

  However, the Florentine fife player became a hero in the eyes of the multitude. He was given drinks, he was begged to tell the story of his exploit again, he was carried about in triumph. The celebration was uncalled for, because the death of the Bourbon did not delay the assault of the imperial armies for a second. Quite the contrary: it could be said that the disappearance of the commander of the army had served only to arouse his troops even further. Taking advantage of the fog, which meant that the artillery installed at Castel San Angelo could not function, the lansquenets scaled the walls in several pla
ces and poured into the streets. Some survivors were still able to get to the castle, their eyes full of the tales of the first horrors. Other accounts were to follow.

  By the God who caused me to traverse the wide world, by the God who has made me live through the torments of Cairo and those of Granada, I have never encountered such bestiality, such hatred, such bloody destruction, such pleasure in massacre, destruction and sacrilege!

  Would anyone believe me if I were to say that nuns were raped on the altars of the churches before being strangled by laughing lansquenets? Would anyone believe me if I were to say that the monasteries were sacked, that the monks were relieved of their habits and forced under the threat of the whip to trample on the crucifix and proclaim that they worshipped the cursed Satan, that the old manuscripts from the libraries fed huge bonfires, around which drunken soldiers danced, that no sanctuary, no palace, no house, escaped being looted, that eight thousand citizens perished, mostly from among the poor, while the rich were held hostage until their ransom was paid?

  Contemplating the thick columns of smoke rising up over the city in ever growing number from the wall of the castle, I could not erase the vision of Pope Leo from my memory, who had predicted this disaster at our first meeting: Rome has just been reborn, but death already stalks her! Death was there, in front of me, spreading through the body of the Eternal City.

  Sometimes, a few militiamen, a few survivors from the Black Bands, tried to block access to a crossroads, but they were quickly submerged under the flood of attackers. In the Borgo quarter, and especially in the immediate neighbourhood of the Vatican palace, the Swiss guards resisted with commendable valour, sacrificing themselves in tens, in hundreds, for each street, each building, and delaying the advance of the imperial armies for several hours. But eventually they yielded through sheer force of numbers, and the lansquenets invaded St Peter’s Square, shouting: