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.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] These troops entered Rome in October, 1526. They were disbanded in March, 1527.
[37] Cellini here refers to the attack made upon Rome by the great Ghibelline house of Colonna, led by their chief captain, Pompeo, in September, 1526. They took possession of the city and drove Clement into the castle of St. Angelo, where they forced him to agree to terms favoring the Imperial cause. It was customary for Roman gentlemen to hire bravoes for the defence of their palaces when any extraordinary disturbance was expected, as, for example, upon the vacation of the papal chair.
[38] All historians of the sack of Rome agree in saying that Bourbon was shot dead while placing ladders against the outworks near the shop Cellini mentions. But the honor of firing the arquebuse which brought him down cannot be assigned to anyone in particular. Very different stories were current on the subject.
[39] Renzo di Ceri was a captain of adventurers, who had conquered Urbino for the Pope in 1515, and afterward fought for the French in the Italian wars. Orazio Baglioni, of the semiprincely Perugian family, was a distinguished condottiere. He subsequently obtained the captaincy of the Bande Nere, and died fighting near Naples in 1528. Orazio murdered several of his cousins in order to acquire the lordship of Perugia. His brother Malatesta undertook to defend Florence in the siege of 1530, and sold the city by treason to Clement.
[40] Giovio, in his Life of the Cardinal Prospero Colonna, relates how he accompanied Clement in his flight from the Vatican to the castle. While passing some open portions of the gallery, he threw his violet mantle and cap of a monseigneur over the white stole of the Pontiff, for fear he might be shot at by the soldiers in the streets below.
[41] The short autobiography of Raffaello da Montelupo, a man in many respects resembling Cellini, confirms this part of our author's narrative. It is one of the most interesting pieces of evidence regarding what went on inside the castle during the sack of Rome. Montelupo was also a gunner and commanded two pieces.
[42] This is an instance of Cellini's exaggeration. He did more than yeoman's service, no doubt, but we cannot believe that, without him, the castle would have been taken.