Rome

by Matthew Kneale

  If rich and poor Romans led very different lives they had one thing in common: all were less politically independent than their twelfth-century ancestors, and more under the thumb of the papacy. The days were long gone when the city’s great and middling citizens rode out with their pope to Testaccio Hill for the carnival games, or walked barefoot with him on one of his processions around the city. Compared to the medieval papacy, the papacy of 1527 was aloof, private, and above all powerful. If the Romans had learned anything from the bleak decades when the popes abandoned them for Avignon, it was that they needed their popes. The hundred years since the popes had returned saw steadily rising papal control. The last attempt by Rome’s leading families to challenge papal power, in 1511, was easily swatted away by Julius II. Thereafter Rome’s leading families were excluded from the papal court, which, as in the late eleventh century, was filled with Tuscan and German outsiders. Rome still had great families, such as the Barberini and Farnese and, most formidable of all, the Medici’s allies the Orsini and their enemies the Colonna, but even the latter two were now a much diminished force. The Colonna posed a threat to Clement only because they had Charles V’s empire behind them.

  Likewise Rome’s civic government, which had been dominated by the city’s old families, had seen its powers steadily whittled away. Its officials who, as in medieval times, struggled to defend the city’s ruins from papal stone theft, found themselves increasingly sidelined. This was an era when the city’s antiquities were pillaged on a grand scale, as the Colosseum, the forums, the Palatine Palace, and ruined classical temples were denuded of stone, which was used to build palaces, the Ponte Sisto bridge and, most of all, the new St Peter’s. By the 1510s destruction was intense. Among its casualties was Rome’s other pyramid classical tomb that had stood near St Peter’s, and also a triumphal arch near the Baths of Diocletian, the Temple to Ceres on the Via Sacra, and part of the Forum Transitorum, which was burned for lime. The only restraint to the destruction was papal conscience, which led popes to try to preserve at least the more interesting remnants.

  III

  In the early spring of 1527 Pope Clement must have wished he had made more of an effort to woo the Romans, as now he badly needed their help. While Bourbon’s army made its dash for Rome, Clement belatedly appealed to his subjects at a great council of Rome in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli on the Capitoline. Clement begged them to fight, assuring them that they would only need to hold out for three days as they would then be rescued by the League army.

  On the afternoon of 5 May Romans could see the threat facing them as a huge force advanced towards the city. It was larger than any that had approached Rome for many centuries, containing 700 lancers, 800 light cavalry, 3,000 Italian adventurers, 5,000 Spanish and 10,000 Germans. At almost 20,000 men it was five times the size of Robert Guiscard’s army. Yet the Romans’ situation was better than it might have been. The Romans, who only eight months before had happily watched Pompeo Colonna’s soldiers process through the city, responded to Clement’s call, declaring that they would live or die beside him, like the sons of Mars of ancient times. Their change of mind seems to have been inspired by Colonna’s raid. The humiliation Clement had suffered left his subjects more sympathetic towards him.

  The city was fairly well defended. Its walls were antiquated, it was true, but they still formed a formidable barrier to an army with no artillery. Despite Clement’s disastrous decision to stand down his troops once again, Rome had a good-sized force of defenders. As well as a mixed bag of civilians from the city’s various districts – those who had not been stolen away by the city’s wealthy to defend their palaces – there were 4,000 regular soldiers and 2,000 Swiss troops. Most formidable of all, there were a further 2,000 members of the elite Italian Black Bands force, which had been led by Clement VII’s cousin Giuliano until his death a few months earlier. Rome also had a highly competent commander, Renzo da Ceri. Only three years earlier Renzo had thwarted another imperial army, also commanded by Bourbon, which besieged Marseilles for a month, only to be humiliatingly forced to retreat. Everything suggested that Renzo was now about to enjoy an even greater triumph. Without food or shelter the imperial army could not survive outside the walls for more than a few days and the League army was expected to arrive shortly. A desperate imperial retreat to Naples beckoned.

  Renzo organized the city’s defences as skilfully as he could in the short time left to him. Aware that, as well as Bourbon’s army to the north and west of the city, he might also have to deal with a Colonna attack from the south, he manned the south and eastern Aurelian Walls, though with his worst troops: Roman civilians and even some monks and priests. He placed his best soldiers in the parts of the city that were directly threatened by Bourbon’s armies: in the Borgo, in Trastevere and along the north section of the Aurelian Walls. Renzo recognized that the Borgo was the city’s weakest spot, and that the greatest part of the Borgo was by the Santo Spirito Gate, where the walls were lower than elsewhere and faced on to high ground, and where Pompeo Colonna had broken through eight months earlier. Renzo placed artillery at a number of locations, which between them fully covered the danger area. His heaviest guns he placed in Castel Sant’Angelo. He also wanted to cut the bridges over the Tiber so that, if the Borgo and Trastevere fell, the city beyond the river could be saved, but this was prevented by the Romans, who had no wish to see their city disrupted. It was a decision they would soon regret.

  On the night of 5 May 1527 Roman defenders could see the campfires of the 20,000 imperial troops on Monte Mario. On the Capitoline Hill, Rome’s ancient citadel, the great bell rang, tolling the alarm and the streets below rang with shouts of, ‘Arms, arms!’ The Romans’ greatest fear was of betrayal: an understandable concern with so many Colonna supporters in the city. But, as events would soon show, danger would come in quite another form, which neither Rome’s defenders nor the Imperialists had foreseen.

  Outside the walls in the small hours of the morning, Bourbon made the traditional speech to urge on his troops. He ordered them to build scaling ladders from fences and any other wood they could find. His hope was to break into the city in the same way as Robert Guiscard had four and a half centuries earlier. His soldiers were to scale the walls and make for the weak spot that Bourbon had noticed when he made his inspection hours earlier. It was close to Santo Spirito Gate in a part of the Leonine Wall that had been constructed around a poorly camouflaged private house, and in which a gun port had been made from a window that was too large for safety. Yet, compared to Bourbon, Robert Guiscard had had a great advantage: surprise. Bourbon’s troops were to assault the exact area that the Roman commander, Renzo, had anticipated would be attacked.

  Sure enough the Imperialists soon found themselves struggling. After a firefight between arquebusiers on both sides, Bourbon, wearing a white cloak over his armour, urged his soldiers to hurl themselves at the walls. In the face of arquebus and artillery fire the attackers suffered high casualties and before long the defenders had captured five of their battle standards, which they carried in triumph back to the Borgo. But then, just when things were going well for the Romans, the battleground became quietly and gently transformed. Luigi Guicciardini, who ruled Florence for the Medici at this time, and later wrote an account of the 1527 disaster in Rome, described how, ‘about this time a heavy fog began to appear, which spread itself thickly over the ground and became increasingly dense as the day approached. This often happens in the middle of spring, and this fog was so thick that people could not see each other at a distance of six feet.’2

  Thanks to the fog, which was made denser by gun smoke, those on the city walls and in the Castel Sant’Angelo could not see to aim and they were forced to fire blind, aiming towards the sound of the enemy. Before long the Imperialists’ superior numbers began to tell. Renzo, who had been on a section of the Aurelian Walls, hurried to the Borgo to take personal command and ordered in reinforcements, but there were none to be found. But then, just a
s the Imperialists were gaining ground, they were struck by a disaster: one that would have grave consequences for the Romans. As Guicciardini tells us: ‘Monseigneur de Bourbon was to be seen encouraging the troops … holding onto one of the ladders leaning against the wall with his left hand, and with his right hand signalling and urging the men to ascend it. Suddenly he was shot through by a ball from an arquebus …’3

  Struck in the forehead, Bourbon died instantly. Benvenuto Cellini, the silversmith and autobiographer, who was never one to let the truth spoil a good story, offered his own version of the event. Encouraged by a friend who wanted to see what was happening, he found himself on the walls by Campo Santo in the midst of the fighting. Though his friend panicked and wanted to run, Cellini would have none of it:

  I checked him and shouted, ‘Now you’ve brought me here, we must show that we’re men.’ At the same time I pointed my arquebus towards the thickest and most closely packed part of the enemy, taking direct aim at someone I could see standing out from the rest … We all fired, twice in succession, and I looked cautiously over the wall. The enemy had been thrown into the most extraordinary confusion, because one of our shots had killed the Constable of Bourbon. From what I learned later he must have been the man I saw standing out from the others.’4

  News of Bourbon’s death spread rapidly on both sides of the walls. For a brief time the defenders imagined they were saved, but then the imperial commanders rallied their forces, transforming their soldiers’ shock into hunger for revenge. The attack was renewed more fiercely than before and the Romans, seeing they might be defeated, desperately flung burning liquids over the wall and fired into the fog. It was no use. Around ten o’clock a small band of Spanish troops were seen inside the city. Whether they had got in through the oversized gun port or by scaling the walls is unknown. As to what happened next, all the sources are broadly agreed, though they differ as to who was most to blame. Guicciardini, whose brother was leading papal troops under the League commander, the duke of Urbino – and leading them very ineffectually – had no wish to let any other papal commander look good. Accordingly, he portrayed Renzo da Ceri as both incompetent and cowardly, saying that he shouted out, ‘The enemy are within! Save yourselves, retreat to the strongest & safest places!’5 Other sources report that Renzo resisted bravely, trying to kill any who fled from the walls. Whatever he did, his efforts were to no avail. Panic swept through the defenders and resistance collapsed.

  At the death of Charles Bourbon, the troops of Charles V storm the walls of Rome, from a sixteenth-century engraving.

  Before long the gates had been opened and Imperialists were pouring into the Borgo, shouting ‘Spain! Spain! Kill! Kill!’ So began an event that still has the power to cause great shock even five centuries later, and which has been described as the sixteenth century’s 9/11. In every regard it seems to have been far more terrible than any of the other sacks the city had suffered. Of course, this may be in part because the others have been remembered in less detail. Yet the situation on 6 May 1527 was undeniably horrific. The imperial army was not only fired up by desperation and by religious passion; it also lacked the restraining influence of authoritative commanders. Georg von Frundsberg was in Germany, having never recovered from his stroke, and Bourbon was dead. Even had he lived, it is highly doubtful that he would have been able to exert much control over his troops during the first hours, but he might have later. Without him his soldiers felt freer, and also had cause to seek revenge.

  Many Romans had assumed that if Rome fell the result would be much as it had been eight months earlier when they watched Colonna’s troops process through the city. Instead the Borgo became a slaughterhouse. A few defenders managed to save themselves in the initial confusion by merging with the attackers, but most were not so lucky. Some tried to flee across the river in boats and many drowned. Only a handful of the elite Black Bands survived. The Swiss made a stand by the obelisk in front of St Peter’s, where they were torn apart. The imperial soldiers, with nobody left to oppose them, then went through the Borgo like a scythe, killing all they met. The commander of the Swiss Guards, Röust, who had been carried heavily wounded to his quarters nearby, was cut to pieces in front of his wife. A monk from the monastery of San Salvatore reported that ‘Everyone in the Santo Spirito hospital was killed apart from the few who managed to flee.’6 A good number were thrown alive into the Tiber. The same monk also reported that all the orphans in the La Pietà orphanage were killed and that many ‘were thrown from windows into the street’.

  As the slaughter began, people tried to flee to the safety of the Castel Sant’Angelo, including Pope Clement VII. He had been praying and attending mass in St Peter’s and, as during the Colonna raid, was persuaded to leave just in time. As he hurried down the papal escape passage to the castello, he and his entourage were spotted by Spanish troops, who took pot shots at him from below. A large crowd of soldiers, churchmen, merchants, nobles, courtiers, women and children soon formed outside the castello, pressing so tightly that they prevented the gate from being closed. By the time the portcullis was finally dropped a large number had got inside. As Archbishop Pesaro of Zara reported, the situation brought out Clement VII’s ruthless side: ‘The pope was told that there were many people in the castle, most of them of no military use, and there was little grain, so many of the useless ones were thrown out.’7 Their fate is unknown. Yet there was still room inside for the right sort of person. Elderly Cardinal Pucci, who had hurled abuse at the attackers during the fighting on the walls, and who was knocked down and trampled in the ensuing panic, was hauled up by rope through a window. Another cardinal, Armellino, was pulled over the battlements in a basket.

  Among those who had managed to get into the castello was Benvenuto Cellini. As fearless as ever, he went directly up to the guns where, as he recounts in his autobiography, he found their commander, Giuliano the Florentine, ‘tearing at his face and sobbing bitterly’. Giuliano did not dare fire in case he hit his own house, where he could see his wife and children being set upon. Fortunately, Cellini was made of sterner stuff:

  I seized one of the fuses, got help from some of the men who were in such a sorry state, and lined up some heavy pieces of artillery and falconets, firing them where I saw a need. In this way I slaughtered a great number of the enemy. If I had not done so the troops who had broken into Rome that morning would have made straight for the castle and could easily have entered, as the artillery was not in action … Anyhow, all I need say is that it was through me that the castle was saved that morning.8

  The imperial forces had captured the Borgo but not the rest of the city. The Castel Sant’Angelo Bridge that led to it was impassable, as it could be raked by the fire of the large guns in the castello itself. After a hurried discussion the imperial commanders decided to launch an attack on Trastevere, which lay behind its own defensive walls half a mile south of the Borgo. By now the fog had lifted so the defenders had a clear view, but the heart had gone from them and resistance was feeble. Imperial forces broke through the walls by San Pancrazio Gate on the Gianicolo Hill and, seizing control of the district, gorged themselves on food they found there.

  Ponte Sisto, Rome’s new bridge that connected Trastevere to the main part of the city, was beyond the range of the guns on Castel Sant’Angelo, and the imperial forces advanced cautiously, only to find it was all but undefended. By then it was evening and the Romans had fled back to their homes. The army crossed the river and split into its two main elements: the Landsknechte made their way to Campo de’ Fiori and the Spanish to the Piazza Navona. For a time both contingents kept formation, ready to fend off an attack. Then, when none came, soldiers began to slip away.

  It was now that the city’s trials truly began. One observer remarked that Rome made hell itself look a place of beauty. Another told how the imperial soldiers, ‘threw the bodies of little children out of doorways into the street. And women were dragged out and outraged on the ground … crying and wailing so loud
ly that all the city could hear.’9 A third reported that ‘ large numbers of the priests are naked and that it is a terrible thing to see the great number of dead, and most of all the little children younger than ten years old’, and that the soldiers ‘are exhausted from lack of sleep, drunk on blood, killing everything’.10 Guicciardini, though he did not witness events himself, also gave a graphic account, which, since he thoroughly disliked both Rome and the Romans, has a discernible whiff of Schadenfreude:

  In the streets there were many corpses. Many nobles lay there cut to pieces, covered with mud and their own blood, and many people only half dead lay miserably on the ground. Sometimes in that ghastly scene a child or man would be seen jumping from a window, forced to jump or jumping voluntarily to escape becoming the living prey of these monsters and finally ending their lives horribly in the street.11

  The Germans plunder Rome, from a nineteenth-century engraving.

  It is unclear how long the violence and destruction lasted. Guicciardini claims that the imperial commanders, concerned that their soldiers were beginning to turn on one another, managed to restrain them after three days: the traditional amount of time allotted to a sack. Another source, Buonaparte, though, writes that after three days the Prince of Orange – who had assumed command after Bourbon’s death – ordered the soldiers to stop sacking the city and begin taking prisoners instead, but the soldiers replied that as Bourbon was dead they no longer had a commander, and carried on more brutally than before. In view of difficulties Bourbon and Frundsberg had had in controlling their troops, Buonaparte’s account seems all too plausible.