n came the strangely heterogeneous rout of lawless
soldiery, leaving behind them a trail of burned and ruined cities,
devastated fields, and populations plague-stricken from the
contamination engendered by the multitude of their unburied dead.

On May 5th Bourbon arrived beneath the walls of Rome. During the last
few days the unhappy Pope had endeavored to arm what men he could get
together under Renzo di Ceri and one Horatius--not Cocles,
unhappily--but Baglioni. "Rome contained within her walls," says Ranke,
"some thirty thousand inhabitants capable of bearing arms. Many of these
men had seen service. They wore swords by their sides, which they had
used freely in their broils among each other, and then boasted of their
exploits. But to oppose the enemy, who brought with him certain
destruction, five hundred men were the utmost that could be mustered
within the city. At the first onset the Pope and his forces were
overthrown." On the evening of May 6th the city was stormed and given
over to the unbridled cupidity and brutality of the soldiers, who during
many a long day of want and hardship had been looking forward to the
hour that was to repay them amply for all past sufferings by the
boundless gratification of every sense, and every caprice of lawless
passion. Bourbon himself had fallen in the first moments of the attack,
as he was leading his men to scale the walls, and any small influence
that he might have exerted in moderating the excesses of the conquerors
was thus at an end.

It does not fall within the scope of the present narrative to attempt
any detailed account of the days and scenes that followed. They have
been described by many writers; and the reader who bears in mind what
Rome was--her vileness, her cowardice, her imbecility, her wealth, her
arts, her monuments, her memories, her helpless population of religious
communities of both sexes, and the sacred character of her high places
and splendors, which served to give an additional zest to the violence
of triumphant heretics--he that bears in mind all these things may
safely give the reign to his imagination without any fear of
overcharging the picture. Frundsberg had been wont to boast that if ever
he reached Rome he would hang the Pope. He never did reach it, having
been carried off by a fit of apoplexy while striving to quell a mutiny
among his troops shortly after leaving Bologna on his southward march.
But the threat is sufficiently indicative of