The intellectuals most critical of the Spanish presence in Naples, Sicily, Sardinia and Milan at the beginning of the Modern Age affirmed that humanism had been achieved despite the Spanish and French barbarians, when in part it had been achieved thanks to them, who led new trends around the globe. Of those so summary voices was born at the end of the centuries the myth that the Renaissance it ended because of the wars that these foreign nations brought to Italy, the sack of Rome of 1527 being the height of the disaster.
It is certainly inconsistent to believe that the Italians needed outside help to learn the horrors of war. The Renaissance was painting, sculpture, architecture and a thousand cultural wonders, but it was also the time of gunpowder, the first modern armies, the great entrepreneurs of human beings and modern warfare. In a matter of a few decades, the old continent went from very limited conflicts with the capacity to mobilize few troops to conflicts that crossed oceans and where the ancient walls had little to do against new generation guns.
For Italians, the old small-scale warfare would remain in the collective memory as an elegant and courteous form of fighting, as opposed to the bitter “French-style” or “Spanish-style” warfare, a crude and pragmatic form that came with the advances of modernity. It was no longer a question of foisting defeat on the enemy, but of crushing him so that he could never strike back again. However, this way of fighting was also used by the Italian city states and it can even be said that it was the Terrible Pope, July II, Italian on all four sides, who contributed the most to spreading the flames throughout the country. The Republic of Venice was not left behind either.
Although the Italians wanted to hold outsiders responsible for taking the war to new levels, the truth is that they were as involved as anyone else in their own downfall. Neither the Renaissance knew the war by hearsay, nor could the Italians be attacked in their innocence by foreign powers. Purity rarely exists in history.
The Pope helps the Turk
Francisco I of France seemed the man destined to conquer the Italian boot, but it was finally the Emperor Carlos V who took the game on almost all fronts. In the early 1490s, France held Milan, part of Naples, Savoy in its orbit, and was friendly with the rulers of Genoa and Florence, as well as aspirations for Sicily. Half a century later and many battles in between, Carlos controlled Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, Milan (from 1535) and would maintain firm alliances with the Duke of Savoy, with the Florentine Medici, with the Farnese of Parma and with the Doria and the Genoese Spinolas.
In 1526, the conflict between the Habsburg and Valois dynasties, where the Pope and the Republic of Venice were the only ones allowed to intervene independently, was at a standstill at the expense of Francis I of France, who had been captured in battle. of Pavía and had spent a season in Madrid curing himself of humility, finally decided to break the Madrid Treatywhich forced him not to intervene in Italy.
Engraving of the imperial troops in Rome.
Finally, they were the words of Pope Clement VII, protected by the Florentine Medici, which encouraged the French King to breach the treaty. Advocating in writing that treaties that are signed “under the pressure of fear are worthless and do not bind the observance of it,” the Pope convinced Francis I to join the so-called League of Cognac (or Clementine League), made up of the Pope, France, Venice, Florence and Milan, with the aim of expelling the Spanish from Italy.
While the pontiff was concerned about leading alliances against other Christian kings, the Ottoman armies of Suleiman I ‘the Magnificent’ advanced on the kingdom of Hungary, which desperately cried for help. On August 29, 1526, the battle of Mohács took place, where King Louis II of Hungary died and the Christian armies were swept away by the Ottomans. Until the last moment, the Emperor Charles and his brother Ferdinand of Habsburg, Archduke of Austria, tried unsuccessfully to convince the Pope to put aside the differences in Italy for the moment and help stop the Muslim onslaught. The attitude of these Christian states towards the Hungarian disaster convinced Charles to attack the weakest member of the alliance, at least militarily: Pope Clement VII.
The Emperor’s first hostile action against the Pope consisted in supporting Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, who since January 1526 had been in open confrontation with Clement VII. Financed by Carlos, Colonna’s troops they occupied Rome in September of that year. The city was partially sacked and the Pope was forced to take refuge in the Sant’Angelo, where he was locked up with the Swiss Guard. This first occupation by forces linked to Carlos should have served as a warning to Clement VII, who originally accepted the harsh conditions of the Spanish ambassador. Hugo de Moncadabut it did not achieve more than spur him on.
What Carlos had not foreseen was the difficulty of subduing an army to which many payments were owed.
As Francisco I did when the Pope demanded it precisely, Clement VII breached the agreement with the Emperor a few months later. He not only refused to leave the League of Cognac, but he reinforced Rome’s defenses so that an incursion like that of Colonna would not occur again and ordered an offensive in the area near Naples against the troops of the Spanish viceroy, Charles de Lannoy. Tired of broken promises, Carlos ordered at the beginning of 1527 that an army made up of some 25,000 Spanish, Italian and German soldiers headed in front of Carlos de Borbón and the German nobleman Jorge de Frundsberg towards Rome.
The imperial troops left from the Milanese and ended up in Florence, where the aldermen agreed to the payment stipulated by Carlos de Borbón to avoid the looting of the city, before resuming the road to Rome. Not surprisingly, the Emperor’s instructions to Carlos de Bourbon –former commander-in-chief of the French armies until he fell out with Francis I– they asked to limit themselves to putting pressure on the Pope but without occupying the Eternal City. What no one had foreseen was the difficulty of holding an army to which numerous pays were owed against a prize as lucrative as the ancient capital of the Roman Empire.
Castel Sant’Angelo: the last refuge
The imperial army, which consisted of 12,000 lansquenets (mostly Protestant German mercenaries), kept the coffers empty and the tension began to rise. An attempted mutiny was put down in March with money from the Florentines, but it only bought time. When the troops stood in front of the old Roman walls and realized that the Pope had not intended to pay the compensation that the Emperor was demanding, everything was set for tragedy.
With hardly any infantry, the Pope resorted to artillery, located in the Castle of Sant’Angelo, as the last defense against the imperial troops. On May 6, soldiers launched a charge from the Torrione gate, while the lansquenets rushed to the Santo Spirito gate. Precisely there Carlos de Borbón fell dead when shot by an arquebus, which, according to his own biography, was made by and the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. Without the main head of the army, the troops unleashed their fury on the Eternal City, razing monuments and works of art for days.
On the Sack of Rome, by Francisco Javier Amérigo.
Rapes, murders and robberies took place in the Roman streets, where not even the ecclesiastical authorities sympathetic to the Spanish were spared from the outrage. The abundance of Lutherans among the landsknechts—the force that bore the brunt of the looting—gave an anti-Catholic significance to the looting. “The imperials seized the head of Saint John, that of Saint Peter and that of Saint Paul; they stole the gold and silver that covered them and threw them into the street to play ball”, describe the chronicles of the period about the unleashed terror.
When the looting began, Clement VII was praying in his chapel and barely had time to be evacuated before the looters reached St. Peter’s Basilica. Most of the Swiss Guard soldiers were massacred by imperial troops on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica. The sacrifice of 147 of the 189 members of the Guard ensured that Clement VII escaped with his life that day, through the Passetto, a secret corridor that still links Vatican City to Castel Sant’Angelo.
Covered in a purple cloak to avoid being recognized by the characteristic white habit of the successors of Saint Peter, Clement VII spent a month confined in the castle along with 3,000 people of all classes and conditions who arrived fleeing from an army that was completely out of control. control.
Carlos was quickly aware of the serious consequences that the event would have for his image as a champion of Catholicism.
After three days of havoc, Filiberto of Chalons, the Prince of Orange, rose as the new head of the imperial army to replace the late Bourbon and ordered the looting to cease. The damage to the artistic patrimony was gigantic and it remained in the collective memory as the most terrible episode of the wars that plagued Italy since 1492. Not in vain, the decision of the new commander to locate his residence in the Vatican Library saved the place and its valuable texts from looting. Little by little, the army regained its discipline and the cries of despair in Rome ceased.
The Emperor was quickly aware of the serious consequences that the event would have for his image as champion of Catholicism. On June 5, Carlos V –who was seen for a few months in mourning clothes for what happened in Rome– signed with the Holy thirst a treaty that put an end to the conflict momentarily. Although one of the conditions of the treaty was violated soon after when Clement VII escaped from imperial custody to take refuge in Orvieto, the truth is that the Pope’s attitude changed radically after the dark event.
As proof of this, on February 24, 1530 (the date of the anniversary of the birth of the Monarch) the Pope agreed to impose the crown of the empire on Carlos V in a pompous ceremony held in Bologna. Furthermore, after much hesitation and hesitation, he refused a divorce from Henry VIII of England, who wished to marry Anne Boleyn, and declared his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the Emperor’s aunt, valid.