GUICCIARDINI, Lodovico Il sacco di Roma [Italy, c.1580, 2 watermarks, one of an anchor, the other of a bird, similar to several illustrated by Briquet, in use in Italy in the early and mid sixteenth century]
This is book 2 (of 2, the first deals with the political climate in Italy immediately before the present events and the reasons for them) of Lodovico Guicciardini’s dramatic narrative describing the events in Florence and Rome between April 22 and mid May 1527. The author opens his story at Florence where the imperial forces, a collection of Spaniards, Germans and renegade Italians under the command of the Connétable de Bourbon, were besieging the city, causing a revolution which nearly swept away the Medici and almost opened the gates to the enemy. Fortunately for Florence the imperial army was sorely in need of provisions and was forced to move south to Siena before its final push to Rome where it arrived in the late afternoon or early evening (‘a hora 21’) on May 4. Guicciardini compares favourably the imperial army who had managed brilliantly to cross the swollen river Paglia (the spring of 1527 had been one of the rainiest in living memory) with Clement VII’s extraordinary preparations for the siege – he had dismissed his Swiss guards and 2,000 troops of the Bande Nere whose commander Giovanni, killed in the marshes at Mantua in the preceding year, was the father of Cosimo de’Medici, the dedicatee of the present work – and the ineptness of the League’s generals, exemplified by the Duke of Urbino. Following a rousing speech from Bourbon to his troops which Guicciardini presumably heard from an eye-witness he describes the little house built into the principal Roman outer wall through which the imperial troops burst, not concealing his contempt for the papal commanders for not having seen this weakness. Once inside, after a brief struggle in which Bourbon was killed, the invaders made themselves masters of all the city except for the Castel Sant’Angelo in which the Pope, the cardinals and anyone else who could manage to get there, shut themselves. The remainder of the manuscript is concerned with the unspeakable behaviour of the imperial troops, especially the Spaniards, and their methods of torturing the citizens to reveal the location of their hidden wealth, ‘non pochi incisi con ferro infuocato in più luoghi della persona, certi patirono estrema sete, altri insopportabil sonno, et molti per più crudele mà più secura pena furono cavati di denti megliori, a qualcuno fù dato à mangiare i proprii orecchi, ò il naso, ò suoi testicoli arrostiti…’. Many preferred to commit suicide. Guicciardini, however, refuses, out of modesty, to tell us what happened to the women in the city, save to inform us that the Germans were infinitely more humane than the Spaniards (and the renegade Italians), torturing only when necessary and respecting the Roman women who happened to live in the areas under their control. The author finishes by describing the miserable state in which Clement and his court found themselves, by day watching the indiscriminate looting and desecration of their city, and by night listening to the screams and wailing of their poor tortured subjects.Lodovico Guicciardini (1521-1589) was the nephew of the great historian (and, in this story, papal lieutenant whom he mentions twice). In his youth he rendered service to Cosimo de’Medici before settling in Antwerp in 1541. Here he was shown favour by the Duke of Alba until he tried to dedicate to him a pamphlet in which he proposed to abolish Lent. Although it is rumoured that privately the Duke was in agreement with this rather drastic measure, Guicciardini spent some time in prison for his indiscreet act. He died friendless in the same city in 1589. The first edition of Il sacco di Roma was, curiously, printed in Paris in 1664 with another three Italian editions appearing in 1758, 1802 and 1867. A German edition was published in 1767. Guicciardini is, of course, better known for his history and description of the Low Countries.
MANUSCRIPT on paper, 104pp. and 4 lines, folio (284 x 186mm.), 19-21 lines, written in black ink in an attractive cursive hand, some show-through, in modern boards.
£1800
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