After the crushing victory of the Spanish-Imperial forces over the French army at Pavia in the morning of 24 February 1525 and the capturing of the French king Francis I, the Spaniards and Imperialists achieved domination in central and north-eastern Italy. The Italian rulers of the time, the Roman Pope Clement of the Medici clan, the Milanese Duke Francesco Sforza, the Republics of Venice, Florence and Siena, and the minor states bent under the Spanish and Imperial hegemony, however, they secretly negotiated to challenge it as soon as France’s military might recovers.
The conspiracy went wrong when the Papal representative, Gerolamo Morone approached the Imperial general, Marquise de Pescara, alluring him into the plot by the Papal proposal of the Neapolitan Crown. Pescara was the key planner of the battle of Pavia, he was credited for the effective deployment of the Spanish infantry with the firearms that destroyed the French heavy horse. Pescara accepted the Papal advances but immediately reported to the Emperor and Spanish king Charles V. The play of Pescara revealed the arrangement of the conspiracy in detail and afforded to Charles V the arguments to move decisively against its participants. Sforza just secured his Milanese dukedom by paying to the emperor the tremendous ransom of 700.000 ducats in July of 1525, and the emperor was especially surprised to find him between the plotters.
The French king was released from prison in Madrid after he signed in February of 1526 the treaty with the emperor ceasing him the duchy of Burgundy and giving up the French ambitions in Milan, Genova and Naples. However, Francis I immediately revoked his signature under the treaty after he was released. On his return to France, he put the League against the Emperor into motion. In June of 1526, the allied forces attacked the Spanish and Italian garrisons over Italy, however, in July the Imperial troops successfully suppressed the resistance of Francesco Sforza in Milan, which coincided with the locals’ appraisal against the imperial troops.
Charles V abolished the independence of the duchy of Milan, Sforza was deprived of his dukedom and exiled to the town of Como. Meanwhile, the coalition’s forces advanced on the imperial garrisons in central and northern Italy, the papal troops led the advance. The Medici Pope Clement dragged the Republic of Florence into the coalition, pumping the Florentine richness into the building and maintenance of the mercenary army operating against the emperor. The Pope demanded the Spanish and Imperial withdrawal from Italy and Charles V’s concession to alleged Holy See’s prerogative to dispose of the Crown of Naples.
However, Clement had the opposition inside. The town of Sienna, traditionally in a quarrel with Florence, opposed the Pope’s dictate and defeated the papal and Florentine forces that came to siege it. In Rome, the clan of Colonna mobilized their private army and joined the Spanish and Neapolitan troops marched on Rome in September. The Pope did not have the troops to repel them and they looted the borgo, Rome’s quarter where the Holy See’s officials lived, while Clement ran from his palace to the fortified castle of Saint Angelo at the river Tiber. It was the first sack of Rome, it demonstrated that kind of sacrilege possible.
By November of 1526, the troops of the League were retreating as at kingdom of Naples as in northern Italy. 16,000 of the fresh imperial landsknechts arrived, most of them were Lutherans, fired by the anti-papal zeal. Giovanni Medici, the best general of the League, leader of much-feared Black Bands was killed in skirmish unsuccessfully opposing their crossing of the river Po. The landsknechts joined the Spanish and Imperial troops to consolidate the imperial control in Northern Italy, the army of the League did not dare to challenge them. The Pope left the League openly but continued to support it secretly.
Meanwhile, soon the commanders of the imperial army lost effective control over it as it mutinied complaining about the huge rear of its wages. Pescara with his image of the victor at Pavia could suppress the mutiny but he had died in December of 1525 unable to recover from the wound he got at Pavia. The image of the leader of the imperial army became critical for managing it and it was a bad moment for the personality of the commander who came after Pescara. It was a general with the reputation not of straightforward warrior like Pescara but a mercenary, turncoat and intriguer. He was the former Constable of France, Charles de Bourbon.
Bourbon was an effective commander, it was him who turned the tide in the battle of Marignano in September of 1515, initially dominated by the Swiss pikemen columns, into the victory of the French combination of the artillery, missile foot and heavy cavalry. Bourbon authored the tactic of the repeated heavy horse’s shocks on the enemy’s foot softened by the fire that revived the French fighting capability and morale, deeply depressed after the defeats it had suffered in the hands of the Spaniards at the beginning of the Italian Wars. Bourbon was rewarded with the offices of the Milanese governor and constable of France.
Nevertheless, he was alienated by the French court in 1521 when his wife and cousin, Susan, died, and the dispute erupted between him and the king’s mother over the succession of the enormous landholdings of the senior Bourbon line. Bourbon conspired against the queen mother and the king together with the emperor Charles V and the English king Henry VIII. The plot had been revealed and Bourbon flew away to avoid capital punishment. He ran to Italy and entered the imperial service. He was charged to lead the Spanish-Imperial army after the death of Pescara.
Bourbon had the reputation of the great general but also of a person to whom you can’t trust. The mercenaries of the imperial army relied on him as the fighting leader, but they did not believe his promises of money coming soon and decided to squeeze them with their own hands. Bourbon directed their greed to the emperor’s enemies, especially to the two fat cats between then, Florence and the Pope.
The imperial army marched to Florence, to racket the city for ransom, and when the League forces blocked their way, turned to the ultimate objective, Rome. Approaching Rome, the imperial army did not turn into the crowd of marauders, it remained the disciplined fighting force and the League’s army dragged after it hesitating to engage it. Rome, with the garrison of a few hundred papal soldiers and inexperienced town militia seemingly was doomed.
Not all citizens of Rome were downhearted and between them the young artist, sculptor and goldsmith, Benvenuto Cellini. Cellini was the master of the small decorative forms, not the genius of wall painting, oil canvas, architecture and sculpture. He also was not of a softer artistic nature to kneel in face of the crude force. He killed a lot of people during his youth in drunken brawls, blood revenge and craft disputes.
Many of his masterpieces of jewellery and small sculptures are devoted to violence, although often under a mask of some antique legend like his most notorious wrestle of Hercules with Nemean Lion and Perseus demonstrating the severed head of Medusa while tramping her decapitated nakedness.
Cellini was skilled not only in the tools of jewellery but cold steel and firearms as well. When the imperial army approached Rome, he volunteered for the duty of a sentinel on the city walls. It was vigilant Cellini who detected the German and Spanish infantry scaling the walls of the borgo, Rome’s centre, at the night of 6 May 1527.
Cellini did not panic as his militia fellows in face of the enemy odds. He repeatedly fired at the storming columns. It is the main gift of the genius to be accurate in time and place. Between a few shots available for Cellini, until the first attackers climbed on the wall, two were superficially accurate. One of his bullets wounded the prince Philibert of Orange, one of the imperial commanders, and the other one killed Bourbon out of hand.
Cellini successfully escaped the imperial soldiers to Florence and Paris. The gift to survive was another of the Lord’s blessings on him.
The fury of the imperial army fell on the Roman dwellers. The sack of Rome became of the scale and gravity not lesser than its devastation by the barbarians at the end of the Roman empire. Nobody was spared of looting, rape, killing and no mercy was paid to the churches and palaces.
The sack became a shock for the cultural and religious Europe. And behind the curtain of atrocities, nobody paid special attention to the duel of the high treason, ultimate violence and fine art, demonstrated by the personal clash of Cellini and Bourbon. Only King Francis I, learning it, became the main collector of Cellini’s masterpieces.
Cellini authored the memoirs of an artist and assassin that are still a bestseller.The BBC radio series is the performance alive of Cellini’s rush to create and killhttps-//www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tfdw
Vladimir Shirogorov 