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 to attempt 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 and churchis 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."