On 6 May 1527, an imperial army breached the walls of Rome, triggering one of the most catastrophic episodes in the history of the city. Known as the Sack of Rome, it brought the Renaissance papacy to its knees.
The Sack of Rome did not begin as a planned military operation. It began as a mutiny. The Imperial army of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V had been left without pay after the treasury ran dry following their victory over the French at the Battle of Pavia in 1525. They comprised some 34,000 men including German Landsknechts, Spanish infantry and Italian mercenaries. Aware of the treasures that lay behind Rome’s walls, the troops demanded their commander, Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, lead them south.
They departed Arezzo in Tuscany on 20 April 1527. With Florence’s forces occupied by an internal uprising against the Medici, the army encountered little resistance on its march toward the Eternal City.
Rome’s defences were formidable in appearance but thin in reality. The city’s garrison numbered only around 8,000 men, under the command of Francesco Guicciardini. Among them were some 2,000 Swiss Guards. They had artillery positioned along the city’s perimeter. The Duke of Bourbon was killed in the opening assault, according to legend by the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. But the ferocity of the attackers overwhelmed the defenders rapidly. By sunset on 6 May, Rome had fallen.
The last stand of the Swiss Guards
Pope Clement VII’s personal protection fell to 189 Swiss Guards, who made their stand on the steps of St Peter’s Basilica. All but 42 were killed. Their sacrifice, however, bought the pope the minutes he needed. Clement fled through the Passetto di Borgo — an 800-metre elevated corridor connecting the Vatican to the fortified refuge of Castel Sant’Angelo. The pope was subsequently besieged as the pillage of the city began in earnest.
What followed lasted nine months. The Protestant Landsknechts, who harboured particular animosity toward Catholic Rome, led the systematic looting of churches, monasteries, cardinals’ palaces and private homes. Lives and properties were spared only in exchange for ransom payments. An estimated 6,000 to 12,000 people were killed. The population of Rome collapsed from approximately 55,000 to 10,000 in the years that followed. Many of the Imperial soldiers themselves died from the diseases that spread through a city littered with unburied dead.
Pope Clement VII
Clement VII surrendered in June, agreeing to pay a vast ransom and cede significant territory to Charles V. The emperor, by various accounts appalled by the conduct of his troops, nonetheless accepted the political gains the sacking delivered him.
The End of the Roman Renaissance
The Sack of Rome is widely regarded as the moment the Roman Renaissance effectively ended. The city’s wealth, its artistic institutions, and the prestige of the papacy itself were all gravely damaged.
Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, a personal enemy of Clement VII, entered the city on 8 May. Accompanying him were peasants seeking vengeance for the destruction wrought on their lands by Papal armies.
The bravery of the Swiss Guards who died on the steps of St Peter’s on 6 May 1527 is commemorated each year on this date, when new recruits to the corps are sworn in at a ceremony in the Apostolic Palace.
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