Close upon the election of Charles V as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire came the first of a series of wars between that sovereign and Francis I, King of France, who had been Charles's rival for the imperial crown. The Emperor was at this time, 1521, favored by Henry VIII of England, and a secret treaty with Charles was finally concluded by Pope Leo X, who from the first had hesitated between the two young rivals, and who had already treated with Francis. The papal support proved the foundation of future power for Charles in Italy. The Pope and the Emperor agreed to unite their forces for expulsion of the French from their seat in the duchy of Milan.In 1521 hostilities broke out in Navarre and in the Netherlands, and finally in the Milanese, where the people were tired of French government. The various allies drove the French completely out of Italy, and Charles invaded France, but was there repulsed. King Francis, elated by this last success, determined upon another invasion of the Milanese. He went in person to Italy, leaving his mother as regent in France. With largely superior forces, he drove the imperialists before him.Instead, however, of pursuing the enemy, whom he might have overtaken at an untenable position, Francis, against the almost unanimous advice of his generals, laid siege to the strongly fortified city of Pavia, only to meet before it the crushing defeat which for centuries settled the fate of Italy. Pavia was held by a strong imperialist force under Lannoy.
Close upon the election of Charles V as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire came the first of a series of wars between that sovereign and Francis I, King of France, who had been Charles's rival for the imperial crown. The Emperor was at this time, 1521, favored by Henry VIII of England, and a secret treaty with Charles was finally concluded by Pope Leo X, who from the first had hesitated between the two young rivals, and who had already treated with Francis. The papal support proved the foundation of future power for Charles in Italy. The Pope and the Emperor agreed to unite their forces for expulsion of the French from their seat in the duchy of Milan.
In 1521 hostilities broke out in Navarre and in the Netherlands, and finally in the Milanese, where the people were tired of French government. The various allies drove the French completely out of Italy, and Charles invaded France, but was there repulsed. King Francis, elated by this last success, determined upon another invasion of the Milanese. He went in person to Italy, leaving his mother as regent in France. With largely superior forces, he drove the imperialists before him.
Instead, however, of pursuing the enemy, whom he might have overtaken at an untenable position, Francis, against the almost unanimous advice of his generals, laid siege to the strongly fortified city of Pavia, only to meet before it the crushing defeat which for centuries settled the fate of Italy. Pavia was held by a strong imperialist force under Lannoy.
Francis prosecuted the siege with obstinacy equal to the rashness with which he had undertaken it. During three months everything known to the engineers of that age, or that could be effected by the valor of his troops, was attempted, in order to reduce the place; while Lannoy and Pescara, unable to obstruct his operations, were obliged to remain in such an ignominious state of inaction that a pasquinade was published at Rome offering a reward to any person who could find theimperial army, lost in the month of October in the mountains between France and Lombardy, and which had not been heard of since that time.
Leyva, well acquainted with the difficulties under which his countrymen labored, and the impossibility of their facing, in the field, such a powerful army as formed the siege of Pavia, placed his only hopes of safety in his own vigilance and valor. The efforts of both were extraordinary, and in proportion to the importance of the place with the defence of which he was intrusted. He interrupted the approaches of the French by frequent and furious sallies. Behind the breaches made by their artillery he erected new works, which appeared to be scarcely inferior in strength to the original fortifications. He repulsed the besiegers in all their assaults, and by his own example brought not only the garrison, but the inhabitants, to bear the most severe fatigues, and to encounter the greatest dangers, without murmuring. The rigor of the season conspired with his endeavors in retarding the progress of the French. Francis, attempting to become master of the town by diverting the course of the Tessino, which is its chief defence on one side, a sudden inundation of the river destroyed, in one day, the labor of many weeks, and swept away all the mounds which his army had raised with infinite toil as well as at great expense.
Notwithstanding the slow progress of the besiegers, and the glory which Leyva acquired by his gallant defence, it was not doubted but that the town would at last be obliged to surrender. Pope Clement, who already considered the French arms as superior in Italy, became impatient to disengage himself from his connections with the Emperor, of whose designs he was extremely jealous, and to enter into terms of friendship with Francis. As Clement's timid and cautious temper rendered him incapable of following the bold plan which Leo had formed of delivering Italy from the yoke of both the rivals, he returned to the more obvious and practicable scheme of employing the power of the one to balance and to restrain that of the other.
For this reason he did not dissemble his satisfaction at seeing the French King recover Milan, as he hoped that the dread of such a neighbor would be some check upon the Emperor's ambition, which no power in Italy was now able to control. Helabored hard to bring about a peace that would secure Francis in the possession of his new conquests; and as Charles, who was always inflexible in the prosecution of his schemes, rejected the proposition with disdain, and with bitter exclamations against the Pope, by whose persuasions, while Cardinal di Medici, he had been induced to invade the Milanese, Clement immediately concluded a treaty of neutrality with the King of France, in which the republic of Florence was included.
Francis having, by this transaction, deprived the Emperor of his two most powerful allies, and at the same time having secured a passage for his own troops through their territories, formed a scheme of attacking the kingdom of Naples, hoping either to overrun that country, which was left altogether without defence, or that at least such an unexpected invasion would oblige the viceroy to recall part of the imperial army out of the Milanese. For this purpose he ordered six thousand men to march under the command of John Stuart, Duke of Albany. But Pescara, foreseeing that the effect of this diversion would depend entirely upon the operations of the armies in the Milanese, persuaded Lannoy to disregard Albany's motions, and to bend his whole force against the King himself; so that Francis not only weakened his army very unseasonably by this great detachment, but incurred the reproach of engaging too rashly in chimerical and extravagant projects.
By this time the garrison of Pavia was reduced to extremity; their ammunition and provisions began to fail; the Germans, of whom it was chiefly composed, having received no pay for seven months, threatened to deliver the town into the enemy's hands, and could hardly be restrained from mutiny by all Leyva's address and authority. The imperial generals, who were no strangers to his situation, saw the necessity of marching without loss of time to his relief. This they had now in their power. Twelve thousand Germans, whom the zeal and activity of Bourbon taught to move with unusual rapidity, had entered Lombardy under his command, and rendered the imperial army nearly equal to that of the French, greatly diminished by the absence of the body under Albany, as well as by the fatigues of the siege and the rigor of the season.
But the more their troops increased in number, the moresensibly did the imperialists feel the distress arising from want of money. Far from having funds for paying a powerful army, they had scarcely what was sufficient for defraying the charges of conducting their artillery and of carrying their ammunition and provisions. The abilities of the generals, however, supplied every defect. By their own example, as well as by magnificent promises in name of the Emperor, they prevailed on the troops of all the different nations which composed their army to take the field without pay; they engaged to lead them directly toward the enemy, and flattered them with the certain prospect of victory, which would at once enrich them with such royal spoils as would be an ample reward for all their services. The soldiers, sensible that, by quitting the army, they would forfeit the great arrears due to them, and eager to get possession of the promised treasures, demanded a battle with all the impatience of adventurers who fight only for plunder.
The imperial generals, without suffering the ardor of their troops to cool, advanced immediately toward the French camp. On the first intelligence of their approach, Francis called a council of war to deliberate what course he ought to take. All his officers of greatest experience were unanimous in advising him to retire, and to decline a battle with an enemy who courted it from despair. The imperialists, they observed, would either be obliged in a few weeks to disband an army which they were unable to pay, and which they kept together only by the hope of plunder, or the soldiers, enraged at the nonperformance of the promises to which they had trusted, would rise in some furious mutiny, which would allow their generals to think of nothing but their own safety; that meanwhile he might encamp in some strong post, and, waiting in safety the arrival of fresh troops from France and Switzerland, might before the end of spring take possession of all the Milanese without danger or bloodshed. But in opposition to them, Bonnivet, whose destiny it was to give counsels fatal to France during the whole campaign, represented the ignominy that it would reflect on their sovereign if he should abandon a siege which he had prosecuted so long, or turn his back before an enemy to whom he was still superior in number, and insisted on the necessity of fighting the imperialists rather than relinquish an undertaking on the successof which the King's future fame depended. Unfortunately, Francis' notions of honor were delicate to an excess that bordered on what was romantic. Having often said that he would take Pavia or perish in the attempt, he thought himself bound not to depart from that resolution; and, rather than expose himself to the slightest imputation, he chose to forego all the advantages which were the certain consequences of a retreat, and determined to wait for the imperialists before the walls of Pavia.
The imperial generals found the French so strongly intrenched that, notwithstanding the powerful motives which urged them on, they hesitated long before they ventured to attack them; but at last the necessities of the besieged and the murmurs of their own soldiers obliged them to put everything to hazard. Never did armies engage with greater ardor or with a higher opinion of the importance of the battle which they were going to fight; never were troops more strongly animated with emulation, national antipathy, mutual resentment, and all the passions which inspire obstinate bravery. On the one hand, a gallant young monarch, seconded by a generous nobility and followed by subjects to whose natural impetuosity indignation at the opposition which they had encountered added new force, contended for victory and honor. On the other side, troops more completely disciplined, and conducted by generals of greater abilities, fought from necessity, with courage heightened by despair. The imperialists, however, were unable to resist the first efforts of the French valor, and their firmest battalions began to give way. But the fortune of the day was quickly changed. The Swiss in the service of France, unmindful of the reputation of their country for fidelity and martial glory, abandoned their post in a cowardly manner. Leyva, with his garrison, sallied out and attacked the rear of the French, during the heat of the action, with such fury as threw it into confusion; and Pescara, falling on their cavalry with the imperial horse, among whom he had prudently intermingled a considerable number of Spanish foot armed with the heavy muskets then in use, broke this formidable body by an unusual method of attack, against which they were wholly unprovided. The rout became universal; and resistance ceased in almost every part but wherethe King was in person, who fought now, not for fame or victory, but for safety. Though wounded in several places, and thrown from his horse, which was killed under him, Francis defended himself on foot with a heroic courage.
Many of his bravest officers, gathering round him, and endeavoring to save his life at the expense of their own, fell at his feet. Among these was Bonnivet, the author of this great calamity, who alone died unlamented. The King, exhausted with fatigue, and scarcely capable of further resistance, was left almost alone, exposed to the fury of some Spanish soldiers, strangers to his rank and enraged at his obstinacy. At that moment came up Pomperant, a French gentleman, who had entered together with Bourbon into the Emperor's service, and, placing himself by the side of the monarch against whom he had rebelled, assisted in protecting him from the violence of the soldiers, at the same time beseeching him to surrender to Bourbon, who was not far distant. Imminent as the danger was which now surrounded Francis, he rejected with indignation the thoughts of an action which would have afforded such matter of triumph to his traitorous subject, and calling for Lannoy, who happened likewise to be near at hand, gave up his sword to him; which he, kneeling to kiss the King's hand, received with profound respect; and taking his own sword from his side, presented it to him, saying that it did not become so great a monarch to remain disarmed in the presence of one of the Emperor's subjects.
Ten thousand men fell on this day, one of the most fatal France had ever seen. Among these were many noblemen of the highest distinction, who chose rather to perish than to turn their backs with dishonor. Not a few were taken prisoners, of whom the most illustrious was Henry d'Albret, the unfortunate King of Navarre. A small body of the rear-guard made its escape under the command of the Duke of Alençon; the feeble garrison of Milan, on the first news of the defeat, retired, without being pursued, by another road; and, in two weeks after the battle, not a Frenchman remained in Italy.
Lannoy, though he treated Francis with all the outward marks of honor due to his rank and character, guarded him with the utmost attention. He was solicitous, not only to preventany possibility of his escaping, but afraid that his own troops might seize his person and detain it as the best security for the payment of their arrears. In order to provide against both these dangers, he conducted Francis, the day after the battle, to the strong castle of Pizzichitone, near Cremona, committing him to the custody of Don Ferdinand Alarcon, general of the Spanish infantry, an officer of great bravery and of strict honor, but remarkable for that severe and scrupulous vigilance which such a trust required.
Francis, who formed a judgment of the Emperor's dispositions by his own, was extremely desirous that Charles should be informed of his situation, fondly hoping that from his generosity or sympathy he should obtain speedy relief. The imperial generals were no less impatient to give their sovereign an early account of the decisive victory which they had gained, and to receive his instructions with regard to their future conduct. As the most certain and expeditious method of conveying intelligence to Spain at that season of the year was by land, Francis gave thecommendadorPennalosa, who was charged with Lannoy's despatches, a passport to travel through France.
Charles received the account of this signal and unexpected success that had crowned his arms with a moderation which, if it had been real, would have done him more honor than the greatest victory. Without uttering one word expressive of exultation or of intemperate joy, he retired immediately into his chapel, and, having spent an hour in offering up his thanksgivings to heaven, returned to the presence-chamber, which by that time was filled with grandees and foreign ambassadors assembled in order to congratulate him. He accepted of their compliments with a modest deportment; he lamented the misfortune of the captive King, as a striking example of the sad reverse of fortune to which the most powerful monarchs are subject; he forbade any public rejoicings, as indecent in a war carried on among Christians, reserving them until he should obtain a victory equally illustrious over the infidels; and seemed to take pleasure, in the advantage which he had gained, only as it would prove the occasion of restoring peace to Christendom.
Charles, however, had already begun to form schemes in his own mind which little suited such external appearances. Ambition,not generosity, was the ruling passion in his mind; and the victory at Pavia opened such new and unbounded prospects of gratifying it as allured him with irresistible force. But it being no easy matter to execute the vast designs which he meditated, he thought it necessary, while proper measures were taking for that purpose, to affect the greatest moderation, hoping under that veil to conceal his real intentions from the other princes of Europe.
Meanwhile France was filled with consternation. The King himself had early transmitted an account of the rout at Pavia in a letter to his mother, delivered by Pennalosa, which contained only these words: "Madam, all is lost except our honor." The officers who made their escape, when they arrived from Italy, brought such a melancholy detail of particulars as made all ranks of men sensibly feel the greatness and extent of the calamity. France, without its sovereign, without money in her treasury, without an army and without generals to command it, and encompassed on all sides by a victorious and active enemy, seemed to be on the very brink of destruction. But on that occasion the great abilities of Louise, the regent, saved the kingdom which the violence of her passions had more than once exposed to the greatest danger. Instead of giving herself up to such lamentations as were natural to a woman so remarkable for her maternal tenderness, she discovered all the foresight and exerted all the activity of a consummate politician. She assembled the nobles at Lyons, and animated them, by her example no less than by her words, with such zeal in defence of their country as its present situation required. She collected the remains of the army which had served in Italy, ransomed the prisoners, paid the arrears, and put them in a condition to take the field. She levied new troops, provided for the security of the frontiers, and raised sums sufficient for defraying these extraordinary expenses. Her chief care, however, was to appease the resentment or to gain the friendship of the King of England; and from that quarter the first ray of comfort broke in upon the French.
Though Henry, in entering into alliances with Charles or Francis, seldom followed any regular or concerted plan of policy, but was influenced chiefly by the caprice of temporary passions,such occurrences often happened as recalled his attention toward that equal balance of power which it was necessary to keep between the two contending potentates, the preservation of which he always boasted to be his peculiar office. He had expected that his union with the Emperor might afford him an opportunity of recovering some part of those territories in France which had belonged to his ancestors, and for the sake of such an acquisition he did not scruple to give his assistance toward raising Charles to a considerable preëminence above Francis. He had never dreamed, however, of any event so decisive and so fatal as the victory at Pavia, which seemed not only to have broken, but to have annihilated, the power of one of the rivals; so that the prospect of the sudden and entire revolution which this would occasion in the political system filled him with the most disquieting apprehensions. He saw all Europe in danger of being overrun by an ambitious prince, to whose power there now remained no counterpoise; and though he himself might at first be admitted, in quality of an ally, to some share in the spoils of the captive monarch, it was easy to discern that with regard to the manner of making the partition, as well as his security for keeping possession of what should be allotted him, he must absolutely depend upon the will of a confederate, to whose forces his own bore no proportion.
He was sensible that if Charles were permitted to add any considerable part of France to the vast dominions of which he was already master, his neighborhood would be much more formidable to England than that of the ancient French kings; while at the same time the proper balance on the Continent, to which England owed both its safety and importance, would be entirely lost. Concern for the situation of the unhappy monarch coöperated with these political considerations; his gallant behavior in the battle of Pavia had excited a high degree of admiration, which never fails of augmenting sympathy; and Henry, naturally susceptible of generous sentiments, was fond of appearing as the deliverer of a vanquished enemy from a state of captivity. The passions of the English minister seconded the inclinations of the monarch. Wolsey, who had not forgotten the disappointment of his hopes in two successive conclaves, which he imputed chiefly to the Emperor, thought this a properopportunity of taking revenge; and, Louise courting the friendship of England with such flattering submissions as were no less agreeable to the King than to the Cardinal, Henry gave her secret assurances that he would not lend his aid toward oppressing France in its present helpless state, and obliged her to promise that she would not consent to dismember the kingdom even in order to procure her son's liberty.
During these transactions, Charles, whose pretensions to moderation and disinterestedness were soon forgotten, deliberated, with the utmost solicitude, how he might derive the greatest advantages from the misfortunes of his adversary. Some of his counsellors advised him to treat Francis with the magnanimity that became a victorious prince, and, instead of taking advantage of his situation to impose rigorous conditions, to dismiss him on such equal terms as would bind him forever to his interest by the ties of gratitude and affection, more forcible as well as more permanent than any which could be formed by extorted oaths and involuntary stipulations.
Such an exertion of generosity is not, perhaps, to be expected in the conduct of political affairs, and it was far too refined for that prince to whom it was proposed. The more obvious but less splendid scheme, of endeavoring to make the utmost of Francis' calamity, had a greater number in the council to recommend it, and suited better with the Emperor's genius. But though Charles adopted this plan, he seems not to have executed it in the most proper manner. Instead of making one great effort to penetrate into France with all the forces of Spain and the Low Countries; instead of crushing the Italian states before they recovered from the consternation which the success of his arms had occasioned, he had recourse to the artifices of intrigue and negotiation. This proceeded partly from necessity, partly from the natural disposition of his mind. The situation of his finances at that time rendered it extremely difficult to carry on any extraordinary armament; and he himself, having never appeared at the head of his armies, the command of which he had hitherto committed to his generals, was averse to bold and martial counsels, and trusted more to the arts with which he was acquainted. He laid, besides, too much stress upon the victoryof Pavia, as if by that event the strength of France had been annihilated, its resources exhausted, and the kingdom itself, no less than the person of its monarch, had been subjected to his power.
Full of this opinion, he determined to set the highest price upon Francis' freedom; and, having ordered the Count de Roeux to visit the captive King in his name, he instructed him to propose the following articles as the conditions on which he would grant him his liberty: That he should restore Burgundy to the Emperor, from whose ancestors it had been unjustly wrested; that he should surrender Provence and Dauphiné, that they might be erected into an independent kingdom for the constable Bourbon; that he should make full satisfaction to the King of England for all his claims, and finally renounce the pretensions of France to Naples, Milan, or any other territory in Italy. When Francis, who had hitherto flattered himself that he should be treated by the Emperor with the generosity becoming one great prince toward another, heard these rigorous conditions, he was so transported with indignation that, drawing his dagger hastily, he cried out, "'Twere better that a king should die thus." Alarcon, alarmed at his vehemence, laid hold on his hand; but though he soon recovered greater composure, he still declared in the most solemn manner that he would rather remain a prisoner during life than purchase liberty by such ignominious concessions.
The chief obstacle that stood in the way of Francis' liberty was the Emperor's continuing to insist so peremptorily on the restitution of Burgundy as a preliminary to that event. Francis often declared that he would never consent to dismember his kingdom; and that, even if he should so far forget the duties of a monarch as to come to such a resolution, the fundamental laws of the nation would prevent its taking effect. On his part he was willing to make an absolute cession to the Emperor of all his pretensions in Italy and the Low Countries; he promised to restore to Bourbon all his lands which had been confiscated; he renewed his proposal of marrying the Emperor's sister, the queen-dowager of Portugal; and engaged to pay a great sum by way of ransom for his own person.
But all mutual esteem and confidence between the two monarchswere now entirely lost; there appeared, on the one hand, a rapacious ambition, laboring to avail itself of every favorable circumstance; on the other, suspicion and resentment, standing perpetually on their guard; so that the prospect of bringing their negotiations to an issure seemed to be far distant. The Duchess of Alençon, the French King's sister, whom Charles permitted to visit her brother in his confinement, employed all her address in order to procure his liberty on more reasonable terms. Henry of England interposed his good offices to the same purpose; but both with so little success that Francis, in despair, took suddenly the resolution of resigning his crown, with all its rights and prerogatives, to his son, the Dauphin, determining rather to end his days in prison than to purchase his freedom by concessions unworthy of a king. The deed for this purpose he signed with legal formality in Madrid, empowering his sister to carry it into France, that it might be registered in all the parliaments of the kingdom; and, at the same time, intimating his intention to the Emperor, he desired him to name the place of his confinement, and to assign him a proper number of attendants during the remainder of his days.
This resolution of the French King had great effect; Charles began to be sensible that, by pushing rigor to excess, he might defeat his own measures; and instead of the vast advantages which he hoped to draw from ransoming a powerful monarch, he might at last find in his hands a prince without dominions or revenues. About the same time one of the King of Navarre's domestics happened, by an extraordinary exertion of fidelity, courage, and address, to procure his master an opportunity of escaping from the prison in which he had been confined ever since the battle of Pavia. This convinced the Emperor that the most vigilant attention of his officers might be eluded by the ingenuity or boldness of Francis or his attendants, and one unlucky hour might deprive him of all the advantages which he had been so solicitous to obtain. By these considerations he was induced to abate somewhat of his former demands. On the other hand, Francis' impatience under confinement daily increased; and having received certain intelligence of a powerful league forming against his rival in Italy, he grew more compliant with regard to his concessions, trusting that, if he could onceobtain his liberty, he would soon be in a condition to resume whatever he had yielded.
Such being the views and sentiments of the two monarchs, the treaty which procured Francis his liberty was signed at Madrid on January 14, 1526.
Charles, Duc de Bourbon, known as the Constable de Bourbon, became famous in the wars of the emperor Charles V with Francis I, King of France. The vast estates of both branches of the Bourbon family were united in the possession of the Constable, making him a person of importance independently of his military career. He was born in 1490, and was made Constable of France for his services at the battle of Melegnano (1515), in which Francis gained a brilliant victory over the Swiss.The attempt of powerful enemies to undermine Bourbon in the favor of the King led to the threatened loss of the Constable's dignities and lands, and provoked him to renounce the French service. After making a secret treaty with Charles V and with his ally, Henry VIII of England, Bourbon led a force of German mercenaries into Lombardy, where in 1523 he joined Charles' Spanish army, and next year aided in driving the French from Italy. Invading France, he marched under the Emperor's orders to Marseilles and laid siege to the city, but failed to take it.Bourbon contributed materially to the Emperor's great victory at Pavia, and was rewarded by being made Duke of Milan and commander in Northern Italy. But although Charles thus honored Bourbon he did not trust him, and was not really desirous of advancing a person of such great resource and consequence. In the peace between Spain and France in 1526 Bourbon's great interests were neglected. Notwithstanding these things, when Charles V wished to punish Pope Clement VII, who had joined a league against him, Bourbon, with George of Frundsberg, led an army of Spanish and German mercenaries to Rome.The description of the sack which followed, written by Benvenuto Cellini, the celebrated Italian artist, shows him as an effective participant in the defence. This account of a combatant is of course only fragmentary, and is supplemented by Trollope's critical narrative.
Charles, Duc de Bourbon, known as the Constable de Bourbon, became famous in the wars of the emperor Charles V with Francis I, King of France. The vast estates of both branches of the Bourbon family were united in the possession of the Constable, making him a person of importance independently of his military career. He was born in 1490, and was made Constable of France for his services at the battle of Melegnano (1515), in which Francis gained a brilliant victory over the Swiss.
The attempt of powerful enemies to undermine Bourbon in the favor of the King led to the threatened loss of the Constable's dignities and lands, and provoked him to renounce the French service. After making a secret treaty with Charles V and with his ally, Henry VIII of England, Bourbon led a force of German mercenaries into Lombardy, where in 1523 he joined Charles' Spanish army, and next year aided in driving the French from Italy. Invading France, he marched under the Emperor's orders to Marseilles and laid siege to the city, but failed to take it.
Bourbon contributed materially to the Emperor's great victory at Pavia, and was rewarded by being made Duke of Milan and commander in Northern Italy. But although Charles thus honored Bourbon he did not trust him, and was not really desirous of advancing a person of such great resource and consequence. In the peace between Spain and France in 1526 Bourbon's great interests were neglected. Notwithstanding these things, when Charles V wished to punish Pope Clement VII, who had joined a league against him, Bourbon, with George of Frundsberg, led an army of Spanish and German mercenaries to Rome.
The description of the sack which followed, written by Benvenuto Cellini, the celebrated Italian artist, shows him as an effective participant in the defence. This account of a combatant is of course only fragmentary, and is supplemented by Trollope's critical narrative.
The whole world was now in warfare. Pope Clement had sent to get some troops from Giovanni de' Medici, and when they came they made such disturbances in Rome that it was ill living in open shops.[36]On this account I retired to a good snughouse behind the Banchi, where I worked for all the friends I had acquired. Since I produced few things of much importance at that period, I need not waste time in talking about them. I took much pleasure in music and amusements of the kind.
On the death of Giovanni de' Medici in Lombardy, the Pope, at the advice of Messer Jacopo Salviati, dismissed the five bands he had engaged; and when the Constable of Bourbon knew there were no troops in Rome, he pushed his army with the utmost energy up to the city. The whole of Rome upon this flew to arms. I happened to be intimate with Alessandro, the son of Piero del Bene, who, at the time when the Colonnesi entered Rome, had requested me to guard his palace.[37]On this more serious occasion, therefore, he prayed me to enlist fifty comrades for the protection of the said house, appointing me their captain, as I had been when the Colonnesi came. So I selected fifty young men of the highest courage, and we took up quarters in his palace, with good pay and excellent appointments.
Bourbon's army had now arrived before the walls of Rome, and Alessandro begged me to go with him to reconnoitre. So we went with one of the stoutest fellows in our company; and on the way a youth called Cecchino della Casa joined himself to us. On reaching the walls by the Campo Santo, we could see that famous army, which was making every effort to enter the town. Upon the ramparts where we took our station, several young men were lying, killed by the besiegers; the battle raged there desperately, and there was the densest fog imaginable. I turned to Alessandro and said: "Let us go home as soon as we can, for there is nothing to be done here; you see the enemies are mounting, and our men are in flight." Alessandro, in a panic, cried, "Would God that we had never come here!" and turned in maddest haste to fly. I took him up somewhat sharply with these words: "Since you have brought me here, I must perform someaction worthy of a man"; and, directing my arquebuse where I saw the thickest and most serried troop of fighting men, I aimed exactly at one whom I remarked to be higher than the rest: the fog prevented me from being certain whether he was on horseback or on foot. Then I turned to Alessandro and Cecchino, and bade them discharge their arquebuses, showing them how to avoid being hit by the besiegers. When we had fired two rounds apiece I crept cautiously up to the wall, and, observing among the enemy a most extraordinary confusion, I discovered afterward that one of our shots had killed the Constable of Bourbon; and, from what I subsequently learned, he was the man whom I had first noticed above the heads of the rest.[38]
Quitting our position on the ramparts, we crossed the Campo Santo, and entered the city by St. Peter's; then, coming out exactly at the Church of Santo Agnolo, we got with the greatest difficulty to the great gate of the castle; for the generals, Renzo di Ceri and Orazio Baglioni, were wounding and slaughtering everybody who abandoned the defence of the walls.[39]
By the time we had reached the great gate, part of the foemen had already entered Rome, and we had them in our rear. The castellan had ordered the portcullis to be lowered, in order to do which they cleared a little space, and this enabled us four to get inside. On the instant that I entered, the captain Palone de' Medici claimed me as being of the papal household and forced me to abandon Alessandro, which I had to do much against my will. I ascended to the keep, and at the same instant Pope Clement came in through the corridors into the castle; he had refused to leave the palace of St. Peter earlier, being unableto believe that his enemies would effect their entrance into Rome.[40]
Having got into the castle in this way, I attached myself to certain pieces of artillery, which were under the command of a bombardier called Giuliano Fiorentino. Leaning there against the battlements, the unhappy man could see his poor house being sacked, and his wife and children outraged; fearing to strike his own folk, he dared not discharge the cannon, and, flinging the burning fuse upon the ground, he wept as though his heart would break, and tore his cheeks with both his hands.[41]
Some of the other bombardiers were behaving in like manner; seeing which, I took one of the matches, and got the assistance of a few men who were not overcome by their emotions. I aimed some swivels and falconets at points where I saw it would be useful, and killed with them a good number of the enemy. Had it not been for this, the troops who poured into Rome that morning and were marching straight upon the castle might possibly have entered it with ease, because the artillery was doing them no damage. I went on firing under the eyes of several cardinals and lords, who kept blessing me and giving me the heartiest encouragement. In my enthusiasm I strove to achieve the impossible; let it suffice that it was I who saved the castle that morning, and brought the other bombardiers back to their duty.[42]I worked hard the whole of that day, and when the evening came—while the army was marching into Rome through Trastevere—Pope Clement appointed a great Roman nobleman named Antonio Santacroce to be a captain of all the gunners. The first thing this man did was to come to me, and, having greetedme with the utmost kindness, he stationed me with five fine pieces of artillery on the highest point of the castle, to which the name of the "Angel" specially belongs.
This circular eminence goes round the castle and surveys both Prati and the town of Rome. The captain put under my orders enough men to help in managing my guns, and, having seen me paid in advance, he gave me rations of bread and a little wine, and begged me to go forward as I had begun. I was perhaps more inclined by nature to the profession of arms than to the one I had adopted, and I took such pleasure in its duties that I discharged them better than those of my own art.
Night came, the enemy had entered Rome, and we who were in the castle—especially myself, who have always taken pleasure in extraordinary sights—stayed gazing on the indescribable scene of tumult and conflagration in the streets below. People who were anywhere else but where we were could not have formed the least imagination of what it was.
The combined force of Bourbon and Frundsberg was in all respects more like a rabble-rout of brigands and bandits than an army, and was assuredly such as must, even in those days, have been felt to be a disgrace to any sovereign permitting them to call themselves his soldiers. Their pay was, as was often the case with the troops of Charles V, hopelessly in arrear, and discipline was of course proportionably weak among them. Indeed, it seemed every now and then on the point of coming to an end altogether. The two generals had the greatest difficulty in preventing their army from becoming an entirely anarchical and disorganized mob of freebooters as dangerous to its masters as to everybody else. Of course food, raiment, and shelter were the first absolute essentials for keeping this dangerous mass of armed men in any degree of order and organization, and in fact the present march of Frundsberg and Bourbon had the obtaining of these necessaries for its principal and true object.
The progress southward of this bandit army unchecked by any opposing force—for Giovanni delle Bande Nere had lost his life in the attempt to prevent them from passing the Po; and after the death of that great captain, the army of the league didnot muster courage to attack or impede the invaders in any way—filled the cities exposed to their inroad with terror and dismay. They had passed like a destroying locust swarm over Bologna and Imola, and crossing the Apennines, which separate Umbria from Tuscany, had descended into the valley of the Arno not far from Arezzo. Florence and Rome both trembled. On which would the storm burst? That was the all-absorbing question.
Pope Clement, with his usual avarice-blinded imbecility, had, immediately on concluding a treaty with the Neapolitan viceroy, discharged all his troops except a bodyguard of about six hundred men. Florence was nearly in as defenceless a position. She had, says Varchi, "two great armies on her territory; one that under Bourbon, which came as an enemy to sack and plunder her; and the other, that of a league, which came as a friend to protect her, but sacked and plundered her none the less." It was, however, probably the presence of this army, little as it had hitherto done to impede the progress of the enemy, which decided Bourbon eventually to determine on marching toward Rome.
It seems doubtful how far they were, in so doing, executing the orders or carrying out the wishes of the Emperor. Clement, though he had played the traitor to Charles, as he did to everyone else, and had been at war with him recently, had now entered into a treaty with the Emperor's viceroy. And apart from this there was a degree of odium and scandal attaching to the sight of the "most Catholic" Emperor sending a Lutheran army in his pay to attack the head of the Church, and ravage the venerated capital of Christendom, which so decorous a sovereign as Charles would hardly have liked to incur. Still, it may be assumed that if the Emperor wished his army kept together, and provided no sums for the purpose, he was not unwilling that they should live by plunder. And perhaps his real intention was to extort from Rome the means of paying his troops by the mere exhibition of the danger arising from their propinquity while they remained unpaid. Upon the whole we are warranted in supposing that Bourbon and Frundsberg would hardly have ventured on the course they took if they had not had reason to believe that it would not much displease their master. AndCharles was exactly the sort of man who would like to have the profit of an evil deed without the loss of reputation arising from the commission of it, and who would consider himself best served by agents who could commit a profitable atrocity without being guilty of the annoying want of tact of waiting for his direct orders to commit it.
For the especial business in hand, it was impossible, moreover, to have had two more fitting agents than Bourbon and Frundsberg. It was not every knightly general in those days who would have accepted the task, even with direct orders, of marching to the sack of Rome, and the open defiance of its sacred ruler. A Florentine or a Neapolitan soldier might have had small scruple in doing so; and a Roman baron—a Colonna or an Orsini—none at all. But there would have been found few men of such mark as Bourbon, in either France or Spain, willing to undertake the enterprise he was now engaged in. The unfortunate Constable, however, was a disgraced and desperate man. He was disgraced in the face of Europe by unknightly breach of fealty to his sovereign, despite the intensity of the provocation which had driven him to that step. For all the sanctions which held European society together, in the universal bondage which alone then constituted social order, were involved in maintaining the superstition that so branded him. And he was a desperate man in his fortunes; for though no name in all Europe was at that day as great a military power at the head of a host as that of Bourbon, and though the miserable bearer of it had so shortly before been one of the wealthiest and largest territorial nobles of France, yet the Constable had now his sword for his fortune as barely as the rawest lad in the rabble-rout that followed him, sent out from some landless tower of an impoverished knight, in half-starved Galicia or poverty-stricken Navarre, to carve his way in the world.
Even among those whose ranks he had joined, Bourbon was a disgraced and ruined man beyond redemption. Although his well-known military capacity had easily induced Charles to welcome and make use of him, he must have felt that the step he had taken in breaking his allegiance and abandoning his country had rendered him an outcast and almost a pariah in the estimation of the chivalry of Europe. The feeling he had awakened againsthimself throughout Christendom is strikingly illustrated by an anecdote recorded of his reception at Madrid. When, shortly after winning the battle of Pavia, Bourbon went thither to meet Charles, and the Marquis of Villane was requested to lodge the victorious general in his palace, the haughty Spaniard told the Emperor that his house and all that he possessed were at his sovereign's disposition, but that he should assuredly burn it down as soon as Bourbon was out of it; since, having been sullied by the presence of a renegade, it could no longer be a fitting residence for a man of honor.
So low had Bourbon fallen! Every man's hand was raised against him, and his hand was against every man. And it is easy to conceive what must have been his tone of mind and feeling, as he led on his mutinous robber-rout to Rome, while men of all parties looked on in panic-stricken horror. Thus Bourbon led his unpaid and mutinous hordes to a deed which, none knew better than he, would shock and scandalize all Europe, as a man who, having fallen already so low as to have lost all self-respect, cares not in his reckless despair to what depth he plunges.
As for Frundsberg, he was a mere soldier of fortune, whose world was his camp, whose opinions and feelings had been formed in quite another school from those of his fellow-general; whose code of honor and of morals was an entirely different one, and whose conscience was not only perfectly at rest respecting the business he was bound on, but approved of it as a good and meritorious work for the advancement of true religion. He carried round his neck a halter of golden tissue, we are told, with which he loudly boasted that he would hang the Pope as soon as he got to Rome; and had others of crimson silk at his saddle-bow, which he said were destined for the cardinals!
Too late Clement became aware of the imminence and magnitude of the danger that threatened him and the capital of Christendom. He besought the Neapolitan viceroy, who had already signed a treaty with him, as has been seen, to exert himself and use his authority to arrest the southward march of Bourbon's army. And it is remarkable that this representative of the Emperor in the government of Naples did, as it would seem, endeavor earnestly to avert the coming avalanche from the Eternal City. But, while the Emperor's viceroy used all his authorityand endeavors to arrest the advance of the Emperor's army, the Emperor's generals advanced and sacked Rome in spite of him. Which of them most really acted according to the secret wishes of that profound dissembler, and most false and crafty monarch, it is impossible to know. It may have been that Bourbon himself had no power to stay the plundering, bandit-like march of his hungry and unpaid troops. And the facts recorded of the state of discipline of the army are perfectly consistent with such a supposition.
The Viceroy sent a messenger to Bourbon, while he was yet in Bologna, informing him of the treaty signed with Clement, and desiring him therefore to come no farther southward. Bourbon, bent, as Varchi says, on deceiving both the Pope and the Viceroy, replied that, if the Pope would send him two hundred thousand florins for distribution to the army, he would stay his march. But, while this answer was carried back to Rome, the tumultuous host continued its fearfully menacing advance; and the alarm in Rome was rapidly growing to desperate terror. At the Pope's earnest request, the Viceroy, "who knew well," says Varchi, "that his holiness had not a farthing," himself took post and rode hard for Florence with letters from Clement, hoping to obtain the money there.
The departure of the Viceroy in person, and the breathless haste of his ride to Florence, speak vividly of this Spanish officer's personal anxiety respecting the dreadful fate which threatened Rome. But the Florentines do not seem to have been equally impressed with the necessity of losing no time in making an effort to avert the calamity from a rival city. It was after "much talking," we are told, that they at last consented to advance a hundred fifty thousand florins, eighty thousand in cash down, and the remainder by the end of October. It was now April; and Bourbon had by this time crossed the Apennines, and was with his army on the western slopes of the mountains, not far from the celebrated monastery of Lavernia. Thither the Viceroy hurried with all speed, accompanied by only two servants and a trumpeter; and having "with much difficulty," says Varchi, come to speech with the general, proffered him the eighty thousand florins. Upon which he was set upon by the tumultuous troops, and "narrowly escaped being torn in pieces by them."In endeavoring to get away from them and make his way back to Florence, he fell into the hands of certain peasants near Camaldoli, and was here again in danger of his life, and was wounded in the head. He was, however, rescued by a monk of Vallombrosa, and by him conducted to the neighboring little town of Poppi in the Casentino, or upper valley of the Arno, whence he made his way to Siena, and so back to Rome, with no pleasant tidings of what might be expected from Bourbon and his brigand army.
The Vallombrosan monk, who thus bestead the Viceroy at his need, was, as Varchi records, rewarded by the bishopric of Muro, in the kingdom of Naples, which, adds the historian, "he still holds."
The fate of Rome was no longer doubtful. Clement, who by his pennywise parsimony had left himself defenceless, made a feeble and wholly vain attempt to put the city in a state of defence. The corrupt and cowardly citizens could not have opposed any valid resistance to the ruffian hordes who were slowly but surely, like an advancing conflagration, coming upon them, even if they had been willing to do their best. But the trembling Pope's appeal to them to defend the walls fell on the ears of as sorely trembling men, each thinking only of the possible chances of saving his own individual person. Yet it seems clear that means of defence might have been found had not the Pope been thus paralyzed by terror.
Clement, however, was as one fascinated. Martin du Bellay tells us that he himself, then in Italy as ambassador from Francis I, hurried to Rome, and warned the Pope of his danger in abundant time for him to have prepared for the protection of the city by the troops he had at his disposal. But no persuasion availed to induce Clement to take any step for that purpose. Neither would he seek safety by flight, nor permit his unfortunate subjects to do so. John da Casale, ambassador of Henry VIII at Venice, writes thence to Wolsey on May 16th—the fatal tidings of the sack of the city having just reached Venice—as follows: "He"—Clement—"refused to quit the city for some safer place. He even forbade by edict that anyone should carry anything out of the gates on pain of death, though many were anxious to depart and carry their fortunes elsewhere."Meantime Florence, for her own protection, had hastily induced Francesco Maria, Duke of Urbino, to place himself at the head of the remaining forces of the Italian league, and to take up a position at Incisa, a small town in the Upper Valdarno, about twenty miles from the city, on the road to Arezzo. Thus the torrent was turned off from the capital of the commonwealth. Probably as soon as the invading army once found itself to the south of Florence, that wealthy city was in no immediate danger. Rome was metal more attractive to the invaders, even had there not been an army between them and Florence.
And now it became frightfully clear that the doom of the Eternal City was at hand. On came the strangely heterogeneous rout of lawless soldiery, leaving behind them a trail of burned and ruined cities, devastated fields, and populations plague-stricken from the contamination engendered by the multitude of their unburied dead.
On May 5th Bourbon arrived beneath the walls of Rome. During the last few days the unhappy Pope had endeavored to arm what men he could get together under Renzo di Ceri and one Horatius—not Cocles, unhappily—but Baglioni. "Rome contained within her walls," says Ranke, "some thirty thousand inhabitants capable of bearing arms. Many of these men had seen service. They wore swords by their sides, which they had used freely in their broils among each other, and then boasted of their exploits. But to oppose the enemy, who brought with him certain destruction, five hundred men were the utmost that could be mustered within the city. At the first onset the Pope and his forces were overthrown." On the evening of May 6th the city was stormed and given over to the unbridled cupidity and brutality of the soldiers, who during many a long day of want and hardship had been looking forward to the hour that was to repay them amply for all past sufferings by the boundless gratification of every sense, and every caprice of lawless passion. Bourbon himself had fallen in the first moments of the attack, as he was leading his men to scale the walls, and any small influence that he might have exerted in moderating the excesses of the conquerors was thus at an end.
It does not fall within the scope of the present narrative toattempt any detailed account of the days and scenes that followed. They have been described by many writers; and the reader who bears in mind what Rome was—her vileness, her cowardice, her imbecility, her wealth, her arts, her monuments, her memories, her helpless population of religious communities of both sexes, and the sacred character of her high places and splendors, which served to give an additional zest to the violence of triumphant heretics—he that bears in mind all these things may safely give the reign to his imagination without any fear of overcharging the picture. Frundsberg had been wont to boast that if ever he reached Rome he would hang the Pope. He never did reach it, having been carried off by a fit of apoplexy while striving to quell a mutiny among his troops shortly after leaving Bologna on his southward march. But the threat is sufficiently indicative of the spirit that animated his army, to show that Clement owed his personal safety only to the strength of the castle of St. Angelo, in which he sought refuge.
The sensation produced throughout Europe by the dreadful misfortune which had fallen on the Eternal City was immense. John da Casale, in the letter cited above, says that it would have been better for Rome to have been taken by the Turks, when they were in Hungary, as the infidels would have perpetrated less odious outrages and less horrible sacrilege. Clerk, Bishop of Bath, writes to Wolsey from Paris on May 28th following: "Please it, your Grace, after my most humble recommendation, to understand that about the fifteenth of this moneth, by letters sent from Venyce, it was spoken, that the Duke of Burbon with the armye imperyall by vyolence shold enter Rome as the 6th of this moneth; and that in the same entree the said Duke should be slayne; and that the Pope had savyd Himself with the Cardynalls in Castell Angell; whiche tydinges bycause they ware not written unto Venyce, but upon relation of a souldier, that came from Rome to Viterbe, and bycause ther cam hither no maner of confirmation thereof unto this day, thay war not belevyd. This day ther is come letters from Venyce confyrming the same tydinges to be true. They write also that they have sackyd and spoylyd the town, and slayne to the nombre of 45,000,non parcentes nec etati nec sexui nec ordini; amongst other that they have murdyrd a marveillous sorte of fryars, and agaynst pristes andchurchis they have behavyd thymselfes as it doth become Murranys and Lutherans to do."
How deeply Wolsey himself was moved by the news is seen by a letter from him to Henry VIII, written on June 2d following. He forwards to the King the letters "nowe arryved, as wel out of Fraunce as out of Italy, confirming the piteous and lamentable spoiles, pilages, with most cruel murdres, committed by the Emperialls in the citie of Rome,non parcentes sacris, etati, sexui, aut relioni; and the extreme daungier that the Poopes Holines and Cardinalles, who fled into the Castel Angel, wer in, if by meane of the armye of the liege, they should not be shortly socoured and releved. Which, sire, is matier that must nedes commove and stire the hartes of al good christen princes and people to helpe and put their handes with effecte to reformacion thereof, and the repressing of such tirannous demenour."
Even Charles himself affected at least to mourn the success of his own army. Nowhere did this terrible Italian misfortune fail to awaken sympathy and compassion save in a rival Italian city. Florence heard the tidings, says Varchi, with the utmost delight. The same historian expresses his own opinion, that the sack of Rome was at once the most cruel and the most merited chastisement ever inflicted by heaven. And another Florentine writer piously accounts for the failure of all means adopted to avert the calamity, by supposing that it was God's eternal purpose then and thus to chastise the crimes of the Roman prelates—a theory, it may occur to some minds, somewhat damaged by the unfortunate fact that the greater part of the miseries suffered in those awful days were inflicted on the unhappy flocks of those purple shepherds.