688 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 τὸ 1530.
His quarrel with the Pope was the occasion of a fearful calamity to the Eternal City. The Spanish and German troops of the Emperor, under the lead of Constable Charles de Bourbon, and the old warrior Frundsberg (both enemies of the Pope), marched to Rome with an army of twenty thousand men, and captured the city, May 6, 1527. Bourbon, the ablest general of Charles, but a traitor to his native France, was struck by a musket-ball in climbing a ladder, and fell dead in the moment of victory. The pope fled to the castle St. Angelo. The soldiers, especially the Spaniards, deprived of their captain, surpassed the barbarians of old in beastly and refined cruelty, rage and lust. For eight days they plundered the papal treasury, the churches, libraries,
and palaces, to the extent of ten millions of gold; they did.
not spare even the tomb of St. Peter and the corpse of Julius IT.,and committed nameless outrages upon defenseless priests, monks, and nuns. German soldiers marched through the streets in episcopal and cardinal’s robes, dressed a donkey like a priest, and by a grim joke proclaimed Luther as pope of Rome.
Never before had Rome suffered such indignities and loss. The sacking was a crime against civilization, humanity, and religion ; but, at the same time, a fearful judgment of God upon the worldliness of the papacy, and a loud eall to repentance.!
When the news reached Germany, many rejoiced “at the fall of Babylon.” But Melanchthon, rising above bigotry, said in one of his finest addresses to the students of Wittenberg: “Why should we not lament the fall of Rome, which
1 Reumont (1. c. III. 201) says: “γι δέον und andauernder ist keine Stadt gepliindert, sind keine Einwohner misshandelt worden als Rom und die Romer. Spanier wie Teutsche haben bei diesem grausen Werke gewettei- Fert, jene mit erfinderischer Unmenschlichkeit, diese mit wilder Barbaret. Kirchen, Kloster, Pallaste, Wohnhduser, Hutten wurden mit gleicher Beutelust ausgeleert und verwiistet, Manner, Frauen, Kinder mit gleicher Grausamkeit misshandelt.”’
ὃ 14. A WAR PANIC, 1528. 689
is the common mother-city of all nations? I indeed feel this calamity no less than if it were my own native place. The robber hordes were not restrained by considerations of the dignity of the city, nor the remembrance of her services for the laws, sciences, and arts of the world. This is what we grieve over. Whatever be the sins of the Pope, Rome should not be made to suffer.” He acquitted the Emperor of all blame, and held the army alone responsible.!
§ 114. A War Panic, 1528.
On the “‘ Packische Handel,” see WALCH (XVI. 444), GIESELER (III. 1, 229), RANKE (III. 26), JANSSEN (III. 109), RoMMEL’s, and WILLE’s monographs on Philip of Hesse; and St. EHSES: Geschichte der Packschen Handel, Freiburg i. B. 1881.
The action of the Diet of 1526, and the quarrel between the Emperor and the Pope, were highly favorable to the progress of the Reformation. But the good effect was in great part neutralized by a stupendous fraud which brought Germany to the brink of a civil war.
Philip of Hesse, an ardent, passionate, impulsive, ambitious prince, and patron of Protestantism, was deceived by an unprincipled and avaricious politician, Otto von Pack, provisional chancellor of the Duchy of Saxony, into the belief that Ferdinand of Austria, the Electors of Mainz and Brandenburg, the Dukes of Saxony and Bavaria, and other Roman Catholic rulers had concluded a league at Breslau, May 15, 1527, for the extermination of Protestantism. He procured at Dresden a sealed copy of the forged document, for which he paid Pack four thousand guilders. He persuaded the Elector John of Saxony of its genuineness, and concluded with him, in all haste, a counter-league, March 9, 1528. They secured aid from other princes, and made expensive military preparations, to anticipate by a masterstroke an attack of the enemy.
1 “Corp. Ref.,’? XI. 130; C. Schmidt, Phil. Melanchthon, p. 135 sq.