On this day 1527 Spanish and German mutinous troops sack Rome, an event considered by many historians to signify the end of the Renaissance.

12 comments

  1. The Sack of Rome, then part of the Papal States, followed the capture of the city on 6 May 1527 by the mutinous troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor during the War of the League of Cognac.

    Despite not being ordered to storm the city, with Charles V intending to only use the threat of military action to make Pope Clement VII come to his terms, a largely unpaid Imperial army formed by 14,000 Germans (the so called Landsknecht) many of Lutheran faith, 6,000 Spaniards and some Italian contingents occupied the scarcely defended Rome and began looting, slaying and holding citizens for ransom in excess without any restraint.

    The Swiss Guards fought bravely to defend St. Peter’s Basilica and created enough delay to allow Pope Clement to escape down a tunnel into the fortress of Castel Sant’Angelo. There he was besieged while the city was laid waste

    Benvenuto Cellini, eyewitness to the events, described the sack in his works. It was not until February 1528 that the spread of a plague and the approach of the League forces under Odet de Foix forced the army to withdraw towards Naples from the city.

    Rome’s population had dropped from 55,000 to 10,000 due to the atrocities, famine, an outbreak of plague and flight from the city.

  2. If there are Italians here… I’m a bit curious. What do your people think about Charles V, or his grandfather Maximilian I and Georg von Frundsberg who found the Landsknechte? Are there legends about the brutality of the Landsknechte?

    Or have you gotten too used to barbaric/Germanic hordes, so that nobody ever bothers to care and differentiate between this group and others anymore?

    It seems later all horrible (and good) memories about German(ic) rulers became accumulated and resulted partly in the legends about the Hohenstaufen (Barbarossa-Heinrich VI/Costanza-Friedrich II), and partly about the destroyers of the Roman Empire during the Risorgimento.

    Barbarossa might have done some harsh stuffs and Heinrich VI’s reputation as a tyrant might be partly justified, but how could their medieval darkness compare to the early modern era’s brutality (when military brutality became “mass” and “industrialized”), that resulted in the Sack of Rome and the destruction of the High Renaissance?

    How on earth, it seems, could Charles V be remembered as a relatively respectable figure, while Maximilian seemed to be just this pathetic prince who always lacked money? Is that because the Hohenstaufen rulers personally applied brutal treatment to some elite people, who usually had the means to record their grievances, while the Habsburg rulers did not and generally felt more distant?

  3. 147 of the 189 Guards, including their commander Caspar Röist, died fighting the invading troops in the last stand of the Swiss Guard in order to allow Clement VII to escape through the Passetto di Borgo, escorted by the remaining 42 guards.

  4. Well, the world has changed but dogs haven’t – still making acquaintances through butt-sniffing century after century

  6. >147 of the 189 Guards, including their commander Caspar Röist, died fighting the invading troops in the last stand of the Swiss Guard

    well that’s why the Swiss Guard is employed to this day to protect the Pope

  7. The _end_ of the Renaissance?

    I always thought the Renaissance went well into the 18th century?

    If not, what is the period called?

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