“That makes them vulnerable.”
“Or more dangerous. A rabid animal, backed into a corner, and hungry on top of that, can be a formidable opponent. The only thing that keeps them going now are the fires of religious zeal—and the more earthly desire to kill the pope and loot the Vatican.”
“Can you hit them, now?”
“With what?” sighed Guicciardini. “My army is all over the place. Every captain and lieutenant has gone off in a different direction. At most, I could muster five thousand men. And they’d be in as bad shape as the hungry Lutherans. They haven’t got any arms to speak of. Instead of a battle, we’d have a fist fight. Besides which, the pope will never give the order to attack, and even if he did, the duke of Urbino wouldn’t carry it out.”
“Cazzus!” Niccolo swore.
Guicciardini sat back and said philosophically, “And you come to me for help?”
While they both considered the situation in silence, more news arrived. The duke of Ferrara, famed in all of Europe for the high quality of his cannons and guns, had agreed to intervene in the crisis. He had decided to provide all the artillery that was needed—to the Lutherans.
This time it was Niccolo who quoted Dante, “Ahi serva Italia!”
The impassive Guicciardini reflected on this new development for a moment. “I suppose there’s nothing much we can do now. Shall we have dinner?”
Never a friend of papal interests in the Romagna, the estimable duke of Ferrara thought that, once and for all, the papal stranglehold on northern Italy might be broken. If it took the armies of the barbarians to do it, well, the Lord works in mysterious ways. Within a week, the Lutherans had at their disposal some of the most powerful and advanced artillery in Italy. Within a week, they were on the march.
Like Proteus, Guicciardini’s quarreling army twisted itself into a dozen different configurations, one more ineffective than the other, none of them in the least bit threatening. Then word arrived from Rome—the pope had signed a truce with the emperor’s representative. War was averted. Terms had been concluded. They were ignominious terms and humiliating for the pope. They would require the cession of considerable territory as well as huge sums of money, but then, the pope was not in a strong bargaining position. As a sign of his good faith, the pope also dismissed over thirty thousand troops whom he had massed in Rome for his defense.
“Do you think it’s over?” asked Guicciardini, lapping at a cup of warm milk.
Niccolo laughed softly to himself. He was still laughing when, suddenly, he winced. His face was contorted, and he doubled over with pain. He wrapped both arms around his stomach and squeezed hard, and after a moment the pain passed.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Nothing. Gas. Revenge of the digestion. It must have been something I ate.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine.” Niccolo fumbled in his pocket for his pillbox. It was empty. “Damn!”
“You need one of these?” Beaming, Guicciardini extracted a handful of the blue pills as big as birds’ eggs from an intricately wrought silver box on the table, right next to the saltcellar.
“Grazie,” said Niccolo, gratefully reaching for the proffered remedy. His gullet had to work hard to swallow the big pills—he took four—and his Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively with the effort. When he was done, however, he seemed relieved and in a minute was able to resume his debate with Guicciardini on the immediate future of the vengeful legions of Martin Luther, encamped not ten miles away.
Although Pope Clement had ordered his Pontifical Army to withdraw, neither Machiavelli nor Guicciardini thought this to be the most prudent course. They were on the verge of deciding that the wisest decision, for the time being, was to put off making a decision, when a breathless messenger arrived and did not even bother to knock before bursting into the room. Piqued, Guicciardini made his displeasure felt for this breach of etiquette. He fixed the messenger with a glare that stopped him in his tracks and forced him to assume an attitude of humility. “Well?” he finally asked disdainfully of the anxious messenger.
The man was dressed in rags and badly shod. “I just came from the German camp.” His chest was still heaving.
Guicciardini was waiting patiently for the man’s report, but Niccolo was already up out of his chair.
“Von Fundesberg . . . It’s von Fundesberg! He called the men together to read them the terms of the truce. Told them they would get several hundred ducats each. . . . They grumbled. . . . He started to harangue them. . . . They grumbled louder. . . . The next thing he knew, they were thrusting the points of their halberds in his face!”
“I do hope the old Lutheran was able to talk some sense into them,” said Guicciardini.
“He was trying to, when he had some sort of a fit. His teeth clamped up tight and he went all stiff and keeled over. They carried him away. He’s not dead but . . .”
“But he might as well be,” said Guicciardini. “And the men?”
“They’re shaking their lances and shouting, ‘On to Rome!’ ‘Down with the antichrist! Hang the pope!’ It’s like the devil’s loose in that camp.”
“And they’re getting ready to march?” asked Niccolo.
“March or stumble or crawl. Anyway, they’re determined to push on to Rome.”
“Have they got anybody to lead them?”
“Charles of Bourbon. But they had the lances at his throat, too, and said that he could lead them as long as he led them to Rome. If he tried anything or attempted to make a truce, it was pretty clear what they had in mind for him.”
Guicciardini turned to Niccolo, “Isn’t that the kind of popular government you’ve always advocated? Rule by the rabble? The will of the people? All that? Our Lutheran friends seem to be ahead of us on that score.”
Niccolo ignored the jibe. “It seems our Lutherans have come this far and will not be denied.”
“Well, what shall we do with our Pontifical Army now?”
“Can you get them mobilized to retreat?”
“I’m sure that’s the only order they would follow,” said Guicciardini.
“And that’s what the pope wants, anyway. Isn’t it?”
“He has indeed issued orders to that effect.”
“Well, send for that scoundrel, Urbino, and have him sound the order to retreat, then.”
“I’m surprised at you, Machiavelli. I thought you would opt for some sort of heroic, self-sacrificing last stand.”
“It may happen yet, but not here, not to save the pope.”
“Meaning?”
“If the army withdraws, as the pope wants it to withdraw, we’d only be following orders, correct?”
“Obviously.”
“But the orders don’t specify where to withdraw to or what direction to withdraw in, do they?”
“A retreat is a retreat, as long as we get out of the way. The pope has confidence in his truce and doesn’t need us to protect him.”
“What I propose,” said Niccolo, “is that we retreat in the direction of Florence. Why not? It’s as good a direction as any other. And we can draw up the army right in front of the city. It’s as good a place to stop as any other.”
Guicciardini was nodding approval. “Yes, I see what you mean.”
Niccolo continued, “If the Lutherans are so intent on hanging the pope, do you think they’re going to stop on the way to loot Florence, especially if there’s an army there? Even such an army as it is.”
“They’d only be asking for trouble.”
“And they have more important business to attend to, don’t they?”
“Ah, yes,” said Guicciardini. “They have their religious problems to work out with His Holiness. I do hope they’re not too hard on him. Oh well, you can’t say we didn’t warn him.”
The Pontifical Army, therefore, withdrew, to the south and west. Guicciardini managed to maneuver it in the general direction of Florence. The hydra-headed Lutheran monster advanced toward Rom
e, to the south and east, the smell of blood already in its thousands of nostrils. They swept through Tuscany, stopping only long enough to pillage for food along the way, barely casting a glance in the direction of Florence.
All but leaderless now, they advanced lurching and careening. All semblance of order had long since broken down in the ranks. But as order and their physical condition deteriorated, their ardor to reach the end of their unholy pilgrimage was only inflamed. Propelled by an almost-mystical vision, their desire for an apocalyptic ending intense and all consuming, they trudged on. Snowdrifts and landslides in the mountains of central Italy did little to impede their progress. On they came. Rains and swollen, roaring mountain streams could not stop them, or even slow them down. They formed themselves into long lines, and, joining hands, they crossed the treacherous terrain, holding onto each other to avoid stumbling on rocks and plunging into the gullies and ravines that lined their dangerous, God-forsaken path.
At a considered distance, after reflection, thoughtful historians have designated the sack of Rome in 1527 by the armies of the new barbarians as the event that marked the end of that great outpouring of artistic and intellectual achievement known as the Italian Renaissance. For those Romans caught up in that cataclysmic event, and perhaps less concerned about the formalized beginnings and ends of historical periods, it seemed more like the end of the world.
The Lutherans descended on the Holy City like the proverbial swarm of locusts, and, like that biblical plague of locusts, they left nothing but devastation in their wake. Ragged and hungry, they reached the walls of Rome on the fifth of May. The irresolute Pope Clement, realizing too late that the Lutheran hordes did not intend to abide by the terms of the agreement he had reached with their nominal overlords, shut himself up, along with a dozen or so cardinals and three thousand other fugitives in the Castel Sant’Angelo. The castle, built in the days of the Roman emperors as a mausoleum and frequently and heavily fortified thereafter, was a walled fortress within a walled city. When the pope and his retainers had obtained the relative safety of those ancient and impregnable walls, they drew up the drawbridge behind them, effectively turning their backs on the rest of the city. The Vicar of Christ, the Good Shepherd, had abandoned his flock to the wolves.
Left to fend for themselves by the pontiff who had virtually handed them over to the enemy and assured their destruction, if not actually invited it, the Romans made what scanty arrangements they could for the coming storm. Those with any foresight fled, abandoning wealth and property. Those who were unable or unwilling to do so had the doors and windows of their houses walled shut and retreated to the upper stories with what weapons they could muster, hoping to wait things out. In the final days before the onslaught, the price of poison rose astronomically. Supply could not keep up with demand.
On the morning of the sixth of May, when the first assault came, the Tiber valley was shrouded in a fog so thick that defenders and attackers were not even aware of each other’s movements. By the time it lifted, the Lutherans, using good Italian cannon, had blasted two holes in the city walls, and the rout was on. The first civilian casualties were reported in the Santo Spirito quarter, where a hospital was ransacked and all the patients slain, while across the street, an orphanage suffered the same fate. The unholy work of destruction now begun would last for a week. It would be the seventh day before the invaders, sated with booty and blood, finally rested.
The final, desperate, feeble measures taken by the citizens of Rome to protect themselves, their families, and their property proved to be miserably inadequate, and torture soon yielded up the hiding places of their valuables, their daughters, and their wives. In their impatience, the greedy soldiers thought nothing of dismemberment to obtain the prizes and baubles they sought—they chopped off fingers for rings, arms for bracelets, ears for earrings. Many a young woman—and many an old one, for that matter—was given the choice of an invading Lutheran penis or a sword in the vagina. Many chose the latter. Suicide by defenestration was almost epidemic.
If this bloodlust and common lust raged unabated for a week, and the general population was forced to submit to its depravity, it was nothing compared to the horrors inflicted upon the clergy, for they were the particular target of this wrathful act of Lutheran retribution. Monks, priests, bishops, and nuns were rounded up and subjected to depredations of every sort, most too gruesome even to describe. For the cardinals, those princes of the church, especially atrocious treatment was reserved. The churches were turned into slaughterhouses, the convents and monasteries into brothels. The altars became tables where bloody and outrageous feasts were held and afterward were transformed into gaming tables, where the prize was the chastity of young nuns and monks. Lurid travesties of the mass were represented, and naked priests were forced to participate in these degrading spectacles. One of the most abiding delights of the merry barbarians was to see the Eucharist administered to pigs and asses that were dragged squealing to the communion rail. Sacred vestments were thrown on the backs of murderers and thieves. Sacred vessels were lifted in drunken, blasphemous toasts. Never had sacrilege been practiced on such a programmatic and all-out basis.
Scarcely a corner of Roman life escaped the pikestaffs, the short swords, the daggers, and the torches of the furious Landsknechte. Tombs were even ripped open and the dead despoiled. Houses to which the rabid barbarians could not gain admittance were burned, and much sport was made as the sorry inhabitants hurled themselves in flames from the windows. Artists were tortured for having painted the Madonna or the saints. A professor at the university was forced to sit and watch while his recently completed manuscript—a commentary on a commentary on Pliny, a life’s work!—was mercilessly burned before his eyes.
By the time the fury began to subside, ten thousand were dead and lay unburied. The streets were like open sewers running with blood and clogged with corpses. Dogs and other scavengers could be seen tugging carcasses and pieces of carcasses through the desolate, wasted ruins of the Eternal City.
Whatever else this most unchristian event signaled, it signaled the definitive end of the unity of the Christian church in Europe. It paved the way for centuries of warfare and bloody persecution both within and between the emerging nation-states and empires, wars and persecutions that could now be carried on, blithely, confidently, under the banner of religious zealotry. In mute testimony to this dissolution, there stood a painting by Raphael in the Stanze in the Vatican. It was titled, The School of Athens, and it represented the highest Renaissance ideals of harmony and reconciliation. In it, through the use of allegorical figures, the artist depicts the two great schools of pagan philosophy joined together and reconciled with Christian teaching. Across that spacious scene of consummate harmony, of philosophical synthesis and peace, someone had cut with a lance the name of Martin Luther.
The Pontifical Army, summoned frantically, hysterically, and too late by the pope, had also marched south, always keeping a respectful distance between itself and the infuriated Lutherans. With the danger of fighting definitively past, the duke of Urbino had boldly assumed command and brought the army to a standstill halfway between Rome and Florence. Guicciardini accompanied the shameful march, as did Niccolo, and listened to the idle boasts of the duke, who was loudly waiting for the right moment to strike. Grim bulletins from the front arrived daily. Rome was taken and destroyed. The pope was being held prisoner in the Castel Sant’Angelo. All was lost.
In time, the pope would escape and go into hiding, and, eventually, after the payment of an enormous ransom and the total subjection of himself, the church, and all of Italy to the will of a foreign emperor, he would be allowed to return to the chair of Saint Peter and resume his ignominious pontificate. The ravages of the Lutherans in Rome would eventually abate when summer came on, with its malarial and pestilential heat. The very end product of their depredations—the streets piled high with corpses—would prove to be the source of their own undoing, as a fierce outbreak of the plague would driv
e them from the city and disperse them. Laden down with their ill-gotten gains, they would go scampering and straggling back over their mountains, back across the Alps, back to Germany.
But in the days following the sack of Rome, none of these things was yet clear, and apprehension was in the air. The most commonly expressed fear was that the Lutheran army, gorged on Roman blood but not sated, would turn its hungry wrath on the other fat cities of central Italy. Few were prepared to resist them, least of all, as we have seen, Florence, which led to a not entirely unforeseen but still quite surprising and momentous circumstance. Niccolo first got wind of the events while still in the camp of the Pontifical Army at Civitavecchia. Since news from Rome, which had gone from grim to unutterable, required a strong stomach, he had all but given up on even trying to keep track of the situation there. When messengers rode into camp from the south, not only were they no longer besieged for news, they were avoided like the plague. Nobody wanted to know. Nobody wanted the details. Then, one day, a messenger rode in from the north. He came on wildly, not plodding and dispirited. He was waving his hat and shouting.
Niccolo was sulking, carving idly at a piece of wood with a small knife, and meditating once more on the vanity of earthly treasures. The news went through him like a bolt of lightning. He ran after the flagging messenger and pulled him down off his horse. He pressed him for details, and when he was satisfied, he dragged the messenger bodily into Guicciardini’s headquarters. Flushed with excitement and exertion, Niccolo stood the man in front of the obviously pained Guicciardini: “Tell him! Go on! Tell him what you told me!”
“There was a riot. In Florence,” he said haltingly. “The people were demanding arms to defend themselves. Things got worse. They besieged the Signoria. Passerini panicked and fled with the two Medici bastards.”
Guicciardini now abandoned all pretense of passivity and stood up. “And . . .” he demanded excitedly.
Machiavelli: The Novel Page 80
