g success and all possible cruelty on
both sides.

Meanwhile Charles, Duke of Bourbon, known as the Constable, and more or
less in the pay of the Emperor, had gathered an army in Lombardy. His
force consisted of the most atrocious ruffians of the time,--Lutheran
Germans, superstitious Spaniards, revolutionary Italians, and such other
nondescripts as would join his standard,--all fellows who had in reality
neither country nor conscience, and were ready to serve any soldier of
fortune who promised them plunder and license. The predominating element
was Spanish, but there was not much to choose among them all so far as
their instincts were concerned. Charles was penniless, as usual; he
offered his horde of cutthroats the rich spoils of Tuscany and Rome,
they swore to follow him to death and perdition, and he began his
southward march. The Emperor looked on with an approving eye, and the
Pope was overcome by abject terror. In the vain hope of saving himself
and the city he concluded a truce with the Viceroy of Naples, agreeing
to pay sixty thousand ducats, to give back everything taken from the
Colonna, and to restore Pompeo to the honours of the cardinalate. The
conditions of the armistice were forthwith carried out, by the
disbanding of the Pope's hired soldiers and the payment of the
indemnity, and Clement the Seventh enjoyed during a few weeks the
pleasant illusion of fancied safety.

He awoke from the dream, in horror and fear, to find that the Constable
considered himself in no way bound by a peace concluded with the
Emperor's Viceroy, and was advancing rapidly upon Rome, ravaging and
burning everything in his way. Hasty preparations for defence were made;
a certain Renzo da Ceri armed such men as he could enlist with such
weapons as he could find, and sent out a little force of grooms and
artificers to face the Constable's ruthless Spaniards and the fierce
Germans of his companion freebooter, George of Fransperg, or Franzberg,
who carried about a silken cord by which he swore to strangle the Pope
with his own hands. The enemy reached the walls of Rome on the night of
the fifth of May; devastation and famine lay behind them in their track,
the plunder of the Church was behind the walls, and far from northward
came rumours of the army of the League on its way to cut off their
retreat. They resolved to win the spoil or die, and at dawn the
Constable, clad in a white cloak, led the assault and set up the first
scaling