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the treaty of Madrid.

CHAP. II.

But neither Henry nor Francis performed any part of their agreement, and Clement was reduced to the necessity of again soliciting peace. Before Moncada, the imperial ambassador at Rome, granted his request, he instigated the Colonnesi, a great Italian family, who were the hereditary enemies of the Medici (the Pope's family), to take advantage of the absence of the papal army, and advance secretly upon Rome; besiege the Pontiff in the castle of St. Angelo, and plunder his palace of the Vatican, and other places (September 20th, 1526).

Attacks

29. Sack of Rome. The Pope a prisoner in the hands of the Imperialists. This was only the beginning of Clement's troubles. Freundsberg, a German condottiere, whose reputation in the Italian wars had made him a noted leader among the imperialists, gathered round him a body of 14,000 adventurers, and was joined at FiorenBourbon suola by Bourbon, with 10,000 other adventurers, partly Rome. Spaniards and partly Italians. This formidable army had neither pay nor provisions, for the Emperor's revenues were exhausted, and he was entirely unable to send any supplies to the generals who had raised the troops in his name. To restrain the fierce murmurs of the soldiers, therefore, Bourbon was compelled to plunder the citizens of Milan, and rifle the churches of all their plate and ornaments. These supplies, however, fell far short of the arrears which were due to the troops, and there was no choice left for the constable but either to disband the army, or to march for subsistence into the enemy's country, into Florence, or else the States of the Church.

No

The conduct of Clement after his late treaty with Moncada was such as merited the severest vengeance of the Emperor. sooner had the papal army returned to Rome than he excommunicated the Colonnesi, and devastated their lands, and then turned his arms against the kingdom of Naples.

These proceedings, therefore, seemed to justify the measures which Bourbon meditated against the eternal city. The disadvantages under which he laboured were such as none but a great general like himself would have attempted to overcome. Without money, or any of those munitions of war which are essential even to a small army, he set out from Milan, in the middle of winter (January 30), with an army composed of nations differing from each other in language and manners. His route lay through a country cut by rivers and mountains, in which the roads were impracticable; all his movements were carefully watched by the enemy, who improved every advantage; and first from Placentia, then from Bologna, and again from Florence, were his hungry

1527

which en

followers driven off, until, seeing no prospect of relief, and their patience tried to the uttermost, they broke out into open mutiny. It was only by the promise of the plunder of Rome that discipline was restored. Clement, trembling at the approaching storm, submitted to articles dictated by Lannoy, Viceroy of Naples ; but Bourbon's troops despised the viceroy's authority, whose orders to withdraw were disobeyed, and his life threatened when he ventured to approach their camp. On the evening of the 5th of May, 1527, the adventurers encamped on the plains of Rome, and the next day Bourbon led them to the assault, but as he was mounting a scaling ladder near the Janiculum, he was shot dead by a musket ball. More exasperated than dispirited by the fall of their chief, the soldiers rushed into the city with cries of revenge. The misery and horror of the scenes which The horrors followed surpass description. The licentious and infuri- sued upon ate soldiery had permission to pillage for five days, of the city. "which includes impunity, for the time, of every form of human criminality which men greedy of plunder, smarting with wounds, intoxicated by liquor, or tempted by other lures, can imagine or perpetrate."* 5,000 men are said to have perished; no age, or character, or sex, was exempt from injury; cardinals, nobles, priests, matrons, virgins, were all the prey of soldiers: while the Spaniards and Italians plundered the houses and palaces; and the Germans, who probably had imbibed in the first fervour of the Reformation the spirit as well as the principles of Luther,+ ransacked the churches and convents; and Rome suffered more from the ravages of a Christian army than it had ever done from the hostility of pagan barbarians.

the capture

During these terrible proceedings, the Pope, together with some of his cardinals, and persons of distinction, were shut up in the castle of St. Angelo; but after a siege of six months they were compelled to surrender, and Clement remained a prisoner in the hands of the imperialists.

30. The Negotiations with Francis concerning the Marriage of the Princess Mary. In the meantime, the Kings of England and France were idly negotiating leagues and matrimonial alliances. It was proposed that Francis, or his second son, the Duke of Orleans, should espouse the Princess Mary; but during the conferences, which were held at Greenwich, the French ambassador inquired whether the legitimacy of the Princess was unimpeachable. Why this question was put we are not informed; but it

* Mackintosh, II., 129. + Gibbon's Decline and Fall, III., 448. Robertson's Chas. V., II., 214; Mack., II., 129-130; Sismondi's Italian Republics, 334-5.

CHAP. II.

seems to have been suggested by Wolsey, who thus sought to supply the King with a pretext for opening the project of divorce. It was at this stage of the proceedings that news arrived of the sack of Rome, and the captivity of the Pope. Henry at once perceived the advantages which he might derive from those events. His league with Francis would have the sanction of religion, and the war which they waged against the Emperor would appear as if for the release of the Pope; the captivity of Clement would supply the cardinal with a pretext for deciding the question of the divorce in his legative court, without the papal interference. Thus new prospects were opened, and new treaties were to be negotiated.

One difficulty, however, was in the way; to remove which Wolsey was sent, much against his will, upon a special mission to France. How could Henry, it was asked, propose his daughter in marriage to Francis at the same time that he was intending to bastardize her, by repudiating her mother. The cardinal was therefore sent to the French King to persuade him to relinquish his part of the marriage treaty in favour of his son. He prevailed; and a treaty was concluded, in which it was stated that the alliance between the two countries should continue whether the marriage took place or not; and in order that Wolsey might decide the divorce, it was further declared, that so long as the Pope remained in captivity, the concerns of the national churches of the two countries should be conducted by their own bishops respectively, and that the judgments of the cardinal in his legatine court should be executed, in defiance of any papal prohibition, whatever might be the rank of the party condemned. The real object of this clause, however, was a secret to the French court, although Henry's desire of obtaining a divorce from Catherine was known then even at Madrid.*

31. The Perplexities of Wolsey's position. During the cardinal's absence, his political enemies, the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, and Viscount Rochford, improved their opportunity, by undermining his credit with the King, and persuading Henry that he was opposed to the divorce. When he wrote to the King from France, detailing the difficulties that would have to be overcome, the objections which would have to be answered, the delays which would arise from the observance of judicial forms, the opposition which any judgment not pronounced by the Pope would excite, Henry's distrust was increased; Wolsey's suggestions and expedients were rejected with displeasure; his agents were not * Lingard, VI., 123.

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received; he was recalled from France, and the King sent an envoy of his own (his secretary Knight) to negotiate with the Pope. There is no doubt that Wolsey was playing a perilous game, and that in this, as in all other transactions, he was endeavouring to make the King's cause subservient to his own interests and aggrandisement. He was certainly in favour of the divorce, but only that his master might wed a French princess, and thus forward his own designs on the papacy. Besides this, the divorce was justly unpopular, and he sought to cover the odium of it by the popularity which would result from so valuable and illustrious an alliance. He was, moreover, apprehensive of losing his power through the influence which the Boleyns and their connections would acquire by the King's marriage with Anne.* When, however, the King told him on his return from France, of his fixed determination to marry Anne, and he perceived that further opposition would only tend to his ruin, such was the pliancy of his temper, that he became a sudden convert to the measure he could not avert, and so redoubled his activity and apparent zeal to promote the marriage, as to draw from Anne a letter to him overflowing with gratitude.†

32. The Pope authorises a Commission of Inquiry. The Pope was still in the hands of Charles, who exacted from him a promise to do nothing in the divorce without first consulting him. But Clement escaped to Arvieto while the negotiations were going on for his release, and the first persons who waited upon him were the English envoys. When the matter was first proposed to him, during his imprisonment in the castle of St. Angelo, by Secretary Knight, he expressed the warmest inclination to gratify Henry, because his hopes of recovering liberty depended upon that monarch and his ally of France.

But now that he was free he

discovered other sentiments. His capital and states were still in the possession of the imperialists, and he, therefore, dreaded the Emperor's resentment. On the other hand, Charles had promised to re-establish the dominion of his family in Florence, and to restore all the territories belonging to the church, and he, therefore, sought to obtain his favour. Still, with his characteristic indecision, he was unwilling to disoblige Henry, and when Knight and the English envoys presented to him two instruments, the first empowering Wolsey to hear and decide the cause of the divorce; the second granting Henry a dispensation to marry again; he signed the latter without any alteration, and the former after it had been somewhat. modified. These documents, however, were

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CHAP. II.

to be kept secret, and not to be acted upon until the papal states were evacuated by the imperialists; but hardly had Knight left Orvieto, when Cassali, Henry's Italian agent at Rome, requested that a papal legate should be sent to England, and joined in the commission with Wolsey. This proceeding, which was probably instigated by the cardinal, only tended to delay the matter, and give the Pope more time to consider the expedients he should adopt, to deliver himself from the painful responsibilities of his position.

In the following year the secretary, Dr. Gardiner, and the King's almoner, Dr. Fox, were sent on a second embassy to the Pope, and they prevailed upon him to appoint a commission to examine the validity of the marriage, and the dispensation granted by Julius; to grant the King a provisional dispensation for his marriage with any other person, and to promise that he would issue a decretal bull annulling the marriage with Catherine. But he enjoined them to keep the papers secret, and the bull was entrusted to Cardinal Campeggio, who was appointed legate in conjunction with Wolsey.*

The Pope was encouraged to proceed thus far, by the hopes he entertained of the French again obtaining the ascendant in Italy; but his hopes were disappointed; the French, who had invaded Naples, and laid siege to the capital, were compelled to raise the siege, and the miserable remnant of their army which was not destroyed by famine and disease, was compelled to surrender to the imperialists.

Thus Italy again lay prostrate at the feet of Charles, and Clement accordingly resolved to provide for his own safety by instant submission. He therefore determined to prolong the controversy, and for that purpose commanded Campeggio, who was a weak old man, subject to gout, to travel by slow journeys to England; to try to reconcile the parties; to persuade Catherine to enter a convent; in brief, he was to act with the utmost caution, and to abstain from giving a decision till he had received special instructions from Rome.t

33. Brief statement of the points in dispute. Before we proceed further, it may be as well to give here a brief statement of the points in dispute.

The advocates of Henry contended that by a passage in Leviticus (xviii., 16-21) no dispensation could authorise a marriage

*See Froude (I., 127) for the dilemma in which Gardiner placed the Pope on this occasion. If the Pope would not decide, where was his justice? If he could not decide, where was his infallibility? + Lingard, VI., 132-136.

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