Sack of Rome (1527)

On 6 May 1527 an unpaid and mutinous imperial army stormed Rome, the capital of the Papal States, and subjected the city to months of killing, looting and extortion. The attack, an episode of the War of the League of Cognac within the wider Italian Wars, left Pope Clement VII a prisoner and Rome's population drastically reduced. It is often taken to mark the end of the High Renaissance in Rome and it shifted the balance of power from the papacy towards the Emperor Charles V.

After the French defeat at Pavia in 1525, Clement VII grew alarmed at the Emperor's power and in 1526 joined France, Venice, Florence and Milan in the League of Cognac. Charles's forces in northern Italy, however, had gone unpaid for months. Around 14,000 German landsknechts under Georg Frundsberg, some 6,000 Spanish troops and a number of Italian soldiers forced their commander, Charles, Duke of Bourbon, to lead them south in search of plunder. Bourbon left Arezzo on 20 April, claiming in a message to the pope that he was more a captive of his army than its leader, a claim many contemporaries doubted. The troops sacked several towns on the way and reached the walls of Rome on 5 May.

The city had strong walls and artillery but only about 5,000 militiamen and 189 Swiss Guards to defend it. On 6 May the attackers climbed the walls near the Vatican and the Janiculum. Bourbon was shot dead early in the assault; the artist Benvenuto Cellini later claimed to have fired the shot. With their commander gone, the soldiers stormed the city the same day. Most of the Swiss Guard died in a last stand inside the Vatican, but a small group covered the pope's flight along the raised passage to the fortress of Castel Sant'Angelo.

Churches, monasteries and the palaces of cardinals were plundered, and citizens of every kind were murdered, raped or held for ransom, including supporters of the Emperor. Some of the German soldiers were Lutherans, and religious targets were singled out: relics were desecrated, clergy attacked and Catholic ceremonies mocked. Most of the violence, however, was driven by the soldiers' wish to pay themselves through plunder and ransoms. The Vatican Library survived because Philibert of Châlon, Prince of Orange, who took over command, made it his headquarters. His order to stop the pillage after three days was largely ignored.

On 6 June Clement surrendered, agreeing to pay 400,000 ducats and to give up several cities. The occupation continued for months, and the troops only left in February 1528, when food had run out and plague had broken out. Estimates suggest that 6,000 to 12,000 people were killed, and the population fell from more than 55,000 to about 10,000 through death and flight. The city did not regain its former numbers until around 1560.

Charles V professed embarrassment that his army had imprisoned the pope, and he later returned many of the spoils. Clement was reconciled with him through the Treaty of Barcelona in 1529 and crowned him in Bologna in 1530. Never again daring to oppose the Emperor, the pope refused to annul the marriage of Charles's aunt Catherine of Aragon to Henry VIII of England, a decision that helped bring about the English break with Rome. Clement also agreed in principle to the church council that eventually met as the Council of Trent. New recruits to the Swiss Guard are still sworn in every year on 6 May in memory of the defenders.

Our 1530 map shows Italy just after the sack, with the Papal States surrounded by territory under the influence of Charles V and Spain.