th warfare, so accustomed to the
anarchy of aimless revolutions and to the trampling to and fro of
stranger squadrons on her shores, that the news of a Lutheran troop,
levied with the express object of pillaging Rome, and reinforced with
Spanish ruffians and the scum of every nation, scarcely roused her
apathy. The so-called army of Frundsberg--a horde of robbers held
together by the hope of plunder--marched without difficulty to the gates
of Rome. So low had the honor of Italian princes fallen that the Duke of
Ferrara, by direct aid given, and the Duke of Urbino, by counter-force
withheld, opened the passes of the Po and of the Apennines to these
marauders. They lost their general in Lombardy. The Constable Bourbon,
who succeeded him, died in the assault of the city. Then Rome for nine
months was abandoned to the lust, rapacity, and cruelty of some 30,000
brigands without a leader. It was then discovered to what lengths of
insult, violence, and bestiality the brutal barbarism of Germans and the
avarice of Spaniards could be carried. Clement, beleaguered in the
Castle of S. Angelo, saw day and night the smoke ascend from desolated
palaces and desecrated temples, heard the wailing of women and the
groans of tortured men mingle with the jests of Lutheran drunkards and
the curses of Castilian bandits. Roaming its galleries and leaning from
its windows he exclaimed with Job:[3] '_Quare de vulva eduxisti me? qui
utinam consumptus essem, ne oculus me videret_.' What the Romans,
emasculated by luxury and priest rule, what the Cardinals and prelates,
lapped in sensuality and sloth, were made to suffer during this long
agony, can scarcely be described. It is too horrible. When at last the
barbarians, sated with blood, surfeited with lechery, glutted with gold,
and decimated by pestilence, withdrew, Rome raised her head a widow.
From the shame and torment of that sack she never recovered, never
became again the gay licentious lovely capital of arts and letters, the
glittering gilded Rome of Leo. But the kings of the earth took pity on
her desolation. The treaty of Amiens (August 18, 1527), concluded
between Francis I. and Henry VIII. against Charles V., in whose name
this insult had been offered to the Holy City of Christendom, together
with Charles's own tardy willingness to make amends, restored the Papacy
to the respect of Europe.

[1] See, for instance, Berni's sonnets. In one of these, Berni
very powerfully describes