THE EMPEROR CHARLES V.
From the picture by Titian in the Prado Gallery, Madrid
Equally inconsistent in appearance, but natural in the circumstances, was his conduct in reference to Bourbon's outrageous proceedings. When news of the sack reached Madrid, he affected great indignation, and put his court into mourning. On the 25th of July, he addressed to the magistracy of Rome a letter defending his proceedings. After narrating his liberation of Francis, and the various other sacrifices made by him, preliminary to such a general pacification as might enable all Christian powers to unite their arms against the Infidel, he charged the Pope with defeating this scheme by suddenly, and without reason, instigating an attack upon him and the imperial dignity, whereby he was compelled from self-defence to march fresh forces upon Italy, in what he regarded as a worse than civil broil. Moreover, new alliances against him having been arranged by his Holiness, and the truce actually broken, his troops had no alternative but to adopt compulsory measures. That these should, by the blunders of his officers, have led to the siege of the city, without his knowledge, he deeply regretted, and gladly would shed his best blood to repair its disasters. But great as had been the sacrifice, he consoled himself with a hope of its paving the way for a general peace, which he would do his utmost to accelerate. In fine, he wound up with most sonorous professions of devotion to the grandeur of the Roman name.[19]
The Pontiff's natural dissatisfaction with his ambassador at Madrid was very plainly expressed in a letter of the 20th of August, which taxed him with undue reliance upon the Emperor's vague protestations, imputing generally to him a want of foresight preceding the calamity of Rome, and a neglect of the proper remedies for that mischief. To this brief, Castiglione answered at considerable length, and with unnecessary diffuseness, as soon as it reached him in December.[20] The substance of his defence is that, on every occasion during the four years of his mission, he had laboured to establish a good understanding between his Holiness and Charles, and had been met with assurances, verbal and written, of his Majesty's anxious desire to meet these views; but that the great distance, and the delays of communication with Rome, not only rendered it impossible to provide for the successive exigencies as they arose, but left him entirely in the dark as to the most important movements until too late to avert impending mischief. Thus he had no intelligence of the truce arranged with Lannoy on the 15th of March, till he heard of its being rejected by Bourbon. These excuses ostensibly satisfied Clement; and, however inadequate they might be deemed in ordinary cases of diplomatic blundering, they may be allowed some weight in this instance; for, although the Emperor could scarcely fail to anticipate from the sack of Rome new facilities for domination in Italy, in consequence of the permanent humiliation of the papacy, history must acquit him of a preconcerted plan to bring about a catastrophe which incidentally resulted from Bourbon's disobedience and the disorganisation of his army. Indeed, had Charles been as much interested in the welfare of the Eternal City as Castiglione himself, he would have been powerless to arrest the destroyer, whose death had removed him from all reckoning on this side of the grave, and prevented his master from sacrificing him in token of good faith. It is, however, impossible to regard without contempt the hollow professions of an autograph letter addressed by the Emperor to Clement, on the 22nd of November, wherein he congratulated his Holiness on his supposed liberation, thanking God for it "with joy as sincere as was the grief with which I heard of your detention from no fault of mine." Avowing himself his most humble and loyal son, ready to use every effort for the restoration and increment of the apostolic dignity, he besought the Pontiff to credit nothing to the contrary that might be inserted by false and interested suggestions.[21]
Such are the considerations which seem calculated, and not altogether inadequate, to account for the eccentric policy and hollow professions of Charles, in so far as we can gather from the strange events thus briefly sketched. But, if we are to rely upon a different view brought forward by the Sieur de Brantôme in his anecdotes of Bourbon, the advance of the imperialist army was not dictated from Madrid. In his gossiping and often apocryphal pages is detailed a conversation held by him at Gaeta with a veteran, who in youth had been with the Constable, and who imputed to that renegade an intention of seizing upon the sovereignty of Rome. His overweening vanity and unbounded ambition countenance the idea, and the way in which he is there stated to have conciliated his soldiery, by pandering to their worst passions, gives colour to the charge. If it be credited, Clement's indignation was misplaced, and Charles might have defended his consistency at the expense of his pride, could he have demeaned himself to acknowledge having been baffled and betrayed by his own general.
Thus ended the Sack of Rome. No similar calamity had befallen the Holy City since the devastation of Robert Guiscard, who, four centuries and a half before, at the head of his Apulian Normans, laid in ruin and ashes the most monumental portion of the imperial capital. On this occasion, fewer remains of antiquity were exposed to destruction, but the people suffered far more severely. From four to six thousand of them fell in the first fury of the barbarians, besides many who perished by more mature cruelties. Thirty thousand are said to have sunk under the famine and pestilence which, during many subsequent months, ravaged the devoted city, leaving only about as many more for its entire population, which, according to Giovio, had, ten years before, amounted to eighty-five thousand. The value of property pillaged and destroyed was supposed to exceed two millions of golden ducats; the amount extorted in ransoms has been stated at a nearly equal sum. So general a pauperism ensued, that regular distributions were long continued from the papal treasury, drained as it had been. But a great revival of religious observances followed, being inculcated by the clergy and government, and practised very generally among the inhabitants, whose oblivion of such duties, and addiction to debauchery, usury, and every grovelling pursuit, had hitherto been scandalously apparent. Throughout all these scenes of misery, the Pontiff had bewailed the misfortunes of his subjects more than his own sufferings, and had penitently confessed himself their author. It was not till the 6th of October, in the following year, that he returned to his capital, pale and thin, languid and disheartened; and at the moment of his arrival, a preternatural storm burst over the city, succeeded by a most destructive flood. Nor were such omens out of season. In him had set the ancient glory of the papacy. From the moment that his predecessors, mingling in the arena of international strife, descended from arbiters to parties in the conflicts of Europe, their influence waned. When they had to canvass for the support of temporal sovereigns, they ceased to command them. But, after Clement was reduced to sue for personal protection to the successor of one who had knelt before a pontiff, the prestige of papal power was gone, its sceptre was shivered in the dust.[22]