Massacres, rapes, the plague. An essay reconstructs the Sack of Rome in 1527

“Giovanni da Urbina, meanwhile, rides forward with extraordinary martial fury, urging the soldiers on to slaughter, and shouts that rallying cry which remained etched in the minds of the poor besieged – the cry that pierced the brain before the sword pierced the heart: ‘Flesh! Flesh! Victory! Victory!’”. The streets of Rome run red with a river of blood and mangled bodies, whilst the Spanish army and the Landsknechts swarm through the narrow streets, down the alleyways and then house by house. It is no longer war, nor a siege, but a descent into the abyss of the purest and most perverse massacre. Soldiers, intoxicated and driven mad—very often drunk on the red wine they had gulped down—vented an atavistic hatred upon the population; a hatred that was religious in the case of the Landsknechts. There were robberies, thefts, rapes, cold-blooded murders—often ingeniously twisted and sadistic—the destruction of sacred artefacts and the devastation of palaces and churches. Nothing seemed to halt the invaders’ fury. The Hospital of Santo Spirito, where the sick and wounded—including many elderly people and children—were housed, became the horrific scene of an unparalleled bloodbath: children were slaughtered and cut to pieces, their heads and limbs subsequently thrown into the Tiber. These are among the most harrowing scenes from the terrible Sack of Rome in 1527, recounted with historical and philological rigour by Antonio Forcellino in his fine essay “Roma. Il Sacco del 1527” (HarperCollins).

Forcellino retraces the events and sources, the political and historical background, right up to the military crescendo of an apocalypse that erupted in the heart of the Eternal City and which would leave such deep scars as to defy any possibility of artistic representation: on reflection, as the author writes, there are no pictorial or sculptural representations of those dramatic months, endured first-hand by the citizens of Rome, barricaded in the few remaining fragments of the city not yet conquered by the Landsknecht hordes and Spanish rabble. While the sequence of events that would eventually lead to the siege and brutal conquest of the city is well known – as are some of the key figures, from Charles of Bourbon, Constable of France, to Pope Clement VII, including Pompeo Colonna, Isabella d’Este, Cesare Fieramosca and Benvenuto Cellini – the months following the invaders’ entry into the city and the hellish scenario that ensued are far less well known. It is precisely the lack of directly visible artistic depictions that has consigned the cruelty of those interminable months to oblivion – months further marred by the outbreak of disease and an atmosphere reminiscent of the end of days. For the invaders themselves, now quartered in the city, having run out of provisions, with no more women to rape or churches to plunder, and decimated by the plague caused by the appalling conditions in which Rome found itself, began to eye one another with suspicion.

Conflicts also arose for political and religious reasons: the Spaniards themselves, horrified by the senseless and ongoing carnage wrought by the Landsknechts, by the thefts from churches and the desecrations carried out by the mercenaries out of religious hatred, saw such behaviour as blasphemy for which they would ultimately pay a heavy price. As Forcellino writes, “what could have been a simple strategic and military settling of scores became, unfortunately, due to a series of circumstances, an apocalyptic tragedy”. The book aims precisely to examine the breakdown in judgement of a series of political figures for whom matters spiralled out of control, in a manner so incomprehensible that even the most discerning historians of the time, from Guicciardini to Paolo Giovio, had to admit defeat in their attempts to truly understand it. What seems plausible, as Forcellino notes, is that the events were not determined solely by the Renaissance cynicism of maintaining power, but by something far more profound: a seething web of personal, religious and political grudges and hatreds, the result of which was the tragedy of the Sack of Rome.