Imperial Troops Sack Rome
Unpaid mutinying soldiers devastate the capital of the High Renaissance
Quick facts
- Date
- 6 May 1527
- Attacking force
- Troops loyal to Charles V
- Pope besieged
- Clement VII, in Castel Sant'Angelo
- Estimated toll
- About half of Rome's population
What happened
On 6 May 1527, mutinous troops loyal to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, including German Landsknecht mercenaries, many recently converted to Lutheranism, and Spanish infantry, stormed Rome's poorly defended walls. The soldiers, unpaid for months and marching without orders from Charles himself, sacked the city under the command of the renegade French nobleman the Duke of Bourbon, who was killed in the initial assault, reportedly by the goldsmith and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini firing from the walls of Castel Sant'Angelo. Pope Clement VII escaped through a fortified passage into the Castel Sant'Angelo, where he was besieged for weeks before surrendering and agreeing to pay a large ransom.
Why it matters
Roughly half of Rome's population is estimated to have died from violence, famine, or disease in the sack's aftermath, and the destruction of the city's wealth and institutions is often treated as marking the effective end of the High Renaissance's confident, papally funded flowering of art in Rome.
How we know
Contemporary eyewitness accounts, including the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, describe the assault, and Encyclopedia Britannica's entry on the Sack of Rome dates the attack to 6 May 1527 from that documentary record, corroborated by the World History Encyclopedia's biographical entry on Cellini.
Sources
- Swiss National Museum, history blog. The darkest day in the history of the Swiss Guard · General sourceblog.nationalmuseum.ch · Cited as a "reference" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Benvenuto Cellini · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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