Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 309 - The 1527 Sack of Rome

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys The King of Spain hires a bunch of mercenaries to go to war and refuses to pay them leading to them sacking Rome for a paycheck. Sources: https://www.historynet.com/rome-ravaged/ https://www.medievalists.net/2022/06/sack-rome-1527/ https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/en/2023/05/the-darkest-day-in-the-history-of-the-swiss-guard/ Idan Sherer. A Bloody Carnival? Charles' V Soldiers and the Sack of Rome in 1527

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always

been ad-free. Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoy the show. Hey everybody, welcome to the Lines Up by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me from London is Tom. I had no good introduction there. I kind of stumbled. What's up, buddy? Yeah, it's good.

It's going good. It's my birthday tomorrow. I am, you know, chilling out today. I'm going to see, funnily enough of a Zoo Crew fame. I'm going to a gig with Shocks in London tomorrow. You're going to go see the Cox Sparers. Yeah, yeah. So I'm going to be the with shocks in London tomorrow. You're gonna go see the Cox Sparers. Yeah, yeah. So I'm gonna be the only man in that crowd

over the age of 25 who has hair by choice or by nature. Every single person in that place, I'm assuming there's gonna be some kind of moshing going on. Everybody is gonna be in so much pain the next day through just old person fury and joints giving out. It's not even one of those gigs where it's like, like they're a punk band from the eighties. It's all like very melodic. It's going to be lots of guys and Fred Perry drinking pints of Larger who are like, you know, that meme of like the come on England score some

fucking goals meme. It's just going to be loads of dudes who look like that, who are in their sixties. It would be such an interesting show to go to. Like I sent you pictures a long time ago goals meme. It's just going to be loads of dudes who look like that, who are in their sixties. It would be such an interesting show to go to. Like I sent you pictures a long time ago when I was living in Armenia where the exploited were coming through. And I'm not like, like that's not really my scene of music. Of course I know who the exploit are, but like I almost went, I couldn't, I couldn't end up getting tickets. Um, but like I almost went just to like, what is the crowd like that goes to an exploited show in Yerevan in 2023?

What does that look like? And I'm really sad that I missed it. Probably exactly as you expect. Yeah. But like it's, it's so weird cause I'm like, I was having a conversation with someone yesterday about like they were getting take looking at tickets to a gig and they were like, Oh, tickets are like a hundred pounds each. I'm like, what for a Cox bear show? No, no, this is for like a big like arena. They're going to see Charlie XCX and it was like a big arena tour and it was like a hundred

quid and I was like, I don't think I've paid more than like 25 quid for a gig. Well, aside from when I went to see Lana Del Rey last year, but like in years. I'm not going to take shit from the only straight man on this show, so fuck you. I will say I've paid more than 25 pounds for a show only one time and I didn't end up getting to see it because as many people might remember around a year ago a Snoop Dogg was gonna perform in Yerevan. Tickets are about 20,000 rm which is you know I think at the time the exchange rate was maybe like 40 or 50 dollars I don't remember maybe a little bit more someone's gonna

yell at me I don't remember but the exchange rate fluctuates quite a lot but he was supposed to come in September and then Azerbaijan invaded and Stoopedog's concert was canceled. And he's like, you know, you can get a refund or we can, you know, hold because we plan on coming back. I was like, I'll get a refund, you know, I'm not going to tempt this fate twice. That was almost a year ago.

I'd stooped dog has yet to refund me. I mean, like, look, there's a certain irony of Snoop Dogg playing in a country where weed is extremely illegal. And also you can say this like, oh yeah, I was going to go to a Snoop Dogg concert, but then we got invaded and the show got canceled. That's a sentence I could, I could, I could say it. It's truthful. I can only imagine what that is because he had completely sold out the Harazdan Stadium, which is like the main football stadium

and You know, it's not like system of a downcoming where they played in Republic Square and they didn't even charge anybody because like the logistics Of actually everybody coming and seeing this show is going to be so fucking insane to show up. And it was a great concert. You can watch that whole thing online and it's fucking incredible. But like still the amount of people like holy shit, Snoop Dogg is coming to your van. And then like the whiplash of Snoop Dogg is coming to to Yerevan with Oh, by the way, you're still in Armenia and this man's show is cancelled due to another

war. At the same month that we had a war, the year before. I was like, god damn it. I can't wait for him to drop the line, smoke shisha every day. This kind of shit doesn't happen when 50 Cent goes on tour. Yeah, because he's bulletproof. Yeah, exactly. Actually, funny- It's going to take Yeah, exactly. Actually, funny.

It's going to take 40, 50 drones to finally kill me. Funny you brought up 50 cent because I learned the other day that of the Trouble series fame and just being a legend in another self Bernadette Devlin got shot nine times and survived. Should have got a rap career out of it. Yeah, no, exactly. No, there's a lot of people of it. Yeah. No, exactly. No. There's a lot of people who've been shot more than 50 cent. Yeah. Like, you know, there's a lot of people who've been shot less than 50 cent.

How many people have been shot eight or more times? Tom DeVere was shot significantly more times than 50 cent. And I would listen to him spit hot fire at any point, though. It'd be like a weird mix of a British and a Dutch accent, which sounds like the worst thing on earth. Oh, fuck. He's just client from Eurovision. Do we'd be saying slurs that sound like a fucking speaking to Cthulhu. They just drive you mad. He's going to be like the 1940s version of Just Kline in Eurovision singing about Friesland Jungend, and I would listen to that all day. And speaking of dudes getting shot, we have a podcast today.

Well, I was going to say, speaking of people being shot, boycott Eurovision. That's all I'm going to say. I will not be watching it. Now um Italy in the 1500s. Oh god. Speaking of unspeakable slurs. War is confusing and chaotic and war in Europe and in Italy in the 1500s was even more confusing and chaotic than that. These are commonly collectively known as the Italian Wars because it makes it easier to explain. And you know what? Oftentimes I complain when people do stuff like this when it comes to 1500s in Italy. I'm comfortable with someone just saying the Italian Wars because holy shit is there a lot of them. Yeah. yeah. These were mostly triggered in very simplistic terms in 1494 when France invaded Italy and conquered the kingdom of Naples.

It quickly turned into a never-ending murder spree between France, Spain, and others over the control of Italy, accumulating in the sack of Rome in 1527. And that is what we're talking about today is this particular sack of Rome, because Rome has been sacked quite a lot. And we do have another episode in the future about a different sack of Rome. This one is 1527. Just remember that. Famously a hundred years after the siege of Naples, where the Italians adopted trebuchets and said, what if we made a meatball really big and fired it at our enemies?

We already make the ball of meat. What if we throw it at their enemies? Hey, we strap a spaghetti do it. We pull the meatball back. We feed the soldiers, it's ammunition and you know, supply. That is a spicy siege machine. I love that we both went Russian. It's all I got. I can't do any other accent. I can't even really do a Dutch accent. Russian's all I got. Cause it's not fair. Most Dutch people speak English better than most Americans. So there's no accent to speak of. Josh, we

ran out of cannonballs and instead we loaded into our can some bitter boiling. That'd be delicious. Just a little. No, but like how big is too big of a bitter balling? I mean, how big is a bitter balling before it's no longer a bitter balling? Hmm. I will, I will, I will send an email to a research Institute of like, I don't know, Utrecht whose whole job is to figure this out is the world's biggest bitter balling. Send an email to the department of cultural affairs for the Netherlands. Excuse me. How big can a bitter ball and B before you have to call it something else? Let's get an email back like sir, you have a stroke.

Do you need to call an emergency worker? No, you have to send it to like there's a secret department of the government where you have to use a very certain stamp and it's culturally frowned upon to use that stamp. The interesting part is the Netherlands, the government agency would probably have an app for that and it works so well, it kind of upset you. Josh, if you want to pay a motor tax, you want to apply to go to the hospital or contact a secret cultural department, please use the Zvote app. Josh, if you use the Zvote app, you can build up Zvote points and you can redeem them in the person with the most Zvote points at the end of the year gets to play Zvote Pete.

You can see on the graph that we have on here, as you use the app, it fills up with a particular color over the circular area that is supposed to represent a face You know, we're not big fans of the Chinese Communist Party in the CCP, but Ji Jinping bringing in social credit was a great idea They would do it if it made them happier about people not skipping tramfares I was gonna say that I would say they were gonna do it so they can discriminate against refugees But what if I told you they could do both at the same time? I was going to say they were going to do it so they can discriminate against refugees, but... What if I told you they could do both at the same time? That is the Dutch mindset.

And somehow you have to pay for this app using only powdered nutmeg. Yes, in internetal arts we only really care about racism and efficiency. One svarte app for everything. Now before we move on, let's talk a little bit about the Swiss Guard. And that might come out of left field here, because they will come up and I figure it'd be easier to explain them right now. You might know the Swiss Guard as those guys who dress like Italian clowns and guard the Holy See and the Pope.

If you go there today, I've never been, but you will see them. They walk around in multi-colored fucking tunics and shit. They carry halberds. fucking tunics and shit, they carry hellbirds. Now this mostly came up due to the Swiss Confederacy's close relationship with one particular Pope, Pope Julius II, because he previously worked as the Bishop of Lausanne. The Swiss were not always good boys and neutral as most people think of them now, that was a result of getting their teeth kicked in during the War of Cambrai. After then they weren't seen

as an expansionist power anymore, and the Swiss had a very good reputation for being good soldiers. And once they kind of were forced out of Italy's business, and when I say Italy in this context, I mean the Papacy, they were seen as- Hey, Pacy. I fucking said it again, didn't I?

Fuck him, whatever. Not my pope. You're one of the secession Catholics who is now claiming that Pope Francis isn't the real pope. Hey, I'm Armenian. We have our own guy with a big stupid hat who steals money. All right, it's different. He wears black, the pope wears white.

They both steal all of your money and do things that we'd rather not talk about on the show. Once again we're wading into are Armenians Turkish or not? No, we have an Orthodox Church, leave us alone. But so do you, so does Turkey. Where do you think it came from? Now the Swiss Guard were put in place because they're kind of neutral arbiters. They were more likely to be loyal to the Church than have any kind of ulterior motives like everybody else in Italy had at the time.

And they were never very big. The Swiss Guard is always under 200 men and it still is to this day. It's made up of Swiss volunteers that meet certain criteria and they're very simple, be Catholic, be unmarried, and be veterans of the Swiss military. And that is still a standard that remains in place to this day. And while you can joke about them carrying on halberds and dressing up like Italian clowns, which they still fucking do, they are actually quite capable bodyguards. Back in the day they were very highly trained soldiers and they still are. The modern version of the Swiss Guard have tactical units and guns like any other paramilitary

police force in Europe. They're effectively a gendarme. The clown costume and shit is just for aesthetics and looks. And from my understanding, they split their time where they have to be like a quarter of clown shit, a quarter of actual tactical protection, and then training and I assume hiding weird things in unregistered bank accounts. They're still Swiss. Okay. So it's just like the essential composition of the three of us on the show. Fuck.

Yeah. Also, is this the second time we've talked about Pope Clement the seventh in the past few months? I feel like it may have been. Yeah. Okay, now we talked about the Swiss Guard and the reason why we did that is because there's an arc in the story called the Last Stand of the Swiss Guard, which is kind of what makes the Swiss Guard so important that it largely remained intact, unchanged ever since.

They entered like canonical history for the Catholic Church. Canonical. Shut up. Your accent makes you say fucked up shit all the time. It's Ag and core all over again. Is it the makeup of this show? We have no Swiss people. Do we have an actual Catholic? Yeah, me. You're not practicing Catholic. Don't you try to church it up to me, boy. I'm not practicing, but fuck me. It's as good as you're gonna get. Like, Jesus Christ. I think these guys have to be like actual real like devoted Catholics. I feel like there's a vetting process in place.

Yeah, they're doing like fucking opus Dei shit. I mean, they're the personal bodyguards of the Pope I feel like they're not gonna have like like for instance, my mom is of the Pope, I feel like they're not going to have like, like, for instance, my mom is hypothetically Catholic, but she calls it being a cafeteria Catholic where you just got baptized and you ignored it for the rest of your life. I don't feel like these guys fit that these are the dudes who are really into Catholicism, which you should be naturally suspicious of. Yeah, it's the it's the dudes who are horny for Jesus. Like there is a there is a certain plane when you cross of like, you know, Catholicism where it's like, okay, we get a, you know, you're,

you're like insane doing Opus Dei or nights of Malta shit. And then you get to like this, like certain section of Spanish Catholicism where they're like super horny for Jesus. Yeah. Actually, fully enough, there was a scandal, like a while it was around Christmas funny enough, there was a scandal like a while. It was around Christmas or something where there was like some thing in Spain where essentially they got this guy to dress up like Jesus and it was some video or pictures or whatever. And it caused a cry because he was too hot. You have to make an ugly Jesus. Not ugly, like

a six out of 10 Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. Need a mid Jesus. Give me a mid Jesus. Like you'd probably skip him on one of the fuck apps, you know, it's like, he might be funny and whatever, but he's not nice to look at. Who's who's hitting mid Jesus up on Grindr at 3am? Depends on how much drinks you have, right? Like that's what it like a six out of ten Jesus. How many drinks does it get to make that Jesus a 10 out of 10? How desperate do you have to be to fuck that Jesus? That's the question. Those are the important questions

we posit on this show. Yeah. Mid Jesus is discreet. Mid Jesus. Mid Jesus has the hungriest butt. Listen, why were the 12 apostles following him around? They were doing polyamory. That's what I was like, there's got to be something. I suppose if you're mid Jesus, the thing that makes you stand out, that makes you fuckable is the miracles, right? Yeah. Mid Jesus, he doesn't have the washboard abs that we see being crucified everywhere,

but like he always brings wine to the party. So, you know, like he brings the supplies with him required to make mid Jesus hot Jesus. I mean, like Jesus's depiction, like when he's a mace, he just looks like a dude called Tyler from the Midwest. He was like a mace aided and only wears Rockstar branded clothing. That's mid Jesus. That's Midwest Jesus. Midwest, Midwest Jesus brought to by Rockstar Energy. Oh yeah, I've never been more.

No, that's Jesus like crucified with like a fucking flat build cap. And a pair of jeans instead of like the light cloth. Someone please draw Juggalo Jesus. I feel like we're all banned from the Vatican now, and that's something I'm comfortable with. Yeah, I mean, like what? I've never been more scared. I'm like, usually it takes a lot to kind of shock me. But when I saw the foot flesh light with stigmata. Hold up. What?

Yeah. It was like, so obviously flesh lights are flesh lights. Yeah. It's when you indiscreetly want a pocket pussy. So people, it doesn't look like you're fucking a pocket pussy. If someone catches you, it just looks like indiscreetly want a pocket pussy. So people, it doesn't look like you're fucking a pocket pussy. If someone catches you, it just looks like you're fucking your flashlight, which is normal. Yeah, totally normal. Everybody does that. You can also buy like something similar in the shape of a foot.

That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, people are in defeat. It's weird. Um, but yeah, I had like essentially stigmata on the heels. That's the weird part. Yep. That's if you bought the the foot flashlight, DM Tom, to let them know how it was. Please don't. Please don't.

Anyway, sign up to the Patreon and message Joe about it. Tom will answer it anyway. France, I don't know. I don't message answer any messages on Patreon, that's all Joe. Now France and Spain are beefing over turf in Italy. Arguably the main cause of this was Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, amongst other things. Charles is a guy so deeply inbred that his Habsburg jaw makes his entire face look like a fucking shovel.

And I'm not kidding, you can look it up. Though it was because of all that cousin-sister-brother-and-the-occasional-father-fucking that he congealed together and began inheriting vast swaths of Europe. This is from a medievalist article which you can find in our show notes. Charles was the lucky inheritor of a series of dynastic successions and marriages, which would leave him the ruler of a vast multinational empire. He would inherit the Spanish throne in 1516 and become the Holy Roman Emperor three years later. He was also the ruler of Austria, Burgundy, the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Naples, Sicily,

and Sardinia. So, Charles is very powerful. He's doing the genetic Megazord, except his only power is having an iron deficiency. Look, pickings were slim when it came to powers back then. Yeah, it's like, do you get wasting disease? Are you iron deficient? Do you have a jaw that makes you look like the Pelican from fucking the Flintstones? I assume he also eats like a Pelican. He just jams things in his giant under jaw. He's just sliding along the ground like an anaconda, just oh unhinging his jaw. I will say when it comes to inbred Habsburgs who become king of Spain, he's not the worst

one. We've done an episode on the worst one and it's on our Patreon. He goes. Yeah. Some say the works of David Cronenberg were inspired by the Habsburgs. Imagine what it was like being just like even like someone involved in like some regal courts or something in Europe and like encountering these monstrous looking inbred people. Just drooling on the fucking throw on their balls hanging out of a pant leg, having no idea what month they're in like, ah yes, it's nice to meet you, your

excellency. I'm blessed to be in your presence. Oh, oh, is excellently shit himself again. I, instead of like, um, you know, the thing about like, Oh, transporting yourself back in time and giving like a Victorian child at spicy Cheeto. Absolutely kills them. Yeah. No, you just, uh, you take a guy who has taken a bit too much acid, transporting back to the court of Charles the fifth and just have him stare at him for five minutes. Oh damn. Your face just kind of looks like that, huh? Charles, your jaws sliding off.

Hey, just look like that. What can I do? You know, like I am a Habsburg. Oh, don't worry. He's not actually Spanish. Yeah. At this point, the only other monarch in Europe that could really rival Charles and power was King Francis of France. The name is a hat on a hat. But both of them began to eye Italy as the perfect place for the expansion of their powers, which does make sense. Italy is made up of a collection of different little states, stateless city states and actual real international trade powers, all of whom are at one another's throat at any given time. With the papacy in the middle of all of this, trying to control them,

trying to unify them, trying to dominate them in one way or another, as well as the soft and hard power of the Catholic Church being involved. Yeah, the pope was just like a car and Karen HR manager for the entire nation of Italy. And remember what kind of Popes were in charge right before this, like they were so weird and fucked up. They made an HBO mini series out of them for multiple seasons. So like there's some shit going on. Um, and less said about the Borgias the better.

We'll have to do that. So the Borgias the better. We'll have to do the assault about the Borgias. We will, we absolutely will. And remember, Charles is the Holy Roman Emperor. He sees the Catholic Pope as something more of a proxy. He's like, no, I'm the Holy Roman Emperor. You're supposed to fucking listen to me. Learn your place. And obviously no popes are going to be cool with that.

They're used to the station of the pope being the most powerful seat in Europe. And France wanted to muscle into that pope game and Charles was having none of it. This war kicked off and tore its way through northern Italy and ended at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 with the armies of France being squarely kicked in the balls and King Francis being captured in the process and forced into negotiations. The peace process that followed was, let's just say, not the best. Charles was torn between expanding his own power and appeasing the papacy. For example, he demanded lands in northern Italy and southern France, which King Francis insisted he couldn't give up with parliamentary approval,

and they would never give that, but that wasn't actually true, because as they held him in captivity, he's finding like, all right, fine, fuck it, I'll give it to you, just let me, just let me go. Just shut the fuck up. Fuck off, leave me alone. Just let me out of this gilded cage. I'm trying to eat, like drink wine and bang peasants. Fuck off.

You're really making being king a real downer. Yeah, like I thought, you know, like everyone says, oh, you'll be king, it'll be so great. All I do is fucking sit around, sign documents, listen to fucking weird people from volume are talk about like aliens like, and now I have this fucking, you know, Pope guy who wants to take someone out just like fucking. I got these assholes are calling Lutherans back home now. Like we'll give you Belgium if you fuck off. Nobody wants Belgium.

No, not even the Belgians. That's like getting a medal for a competition that you're in but you weren't even on the podium. Like, I don't fucking want this. Effectively, Charles at the end of this stood as the most powerful man in Europe, which really pissed off one guy who wanted to see himself as the rightful most powerful man in Europe, which really pissed off one guy who wanted to see himself as the rightful most powerful man in Europe, Pope Clement VII. Charles saw the Pope as another one of his proxies, in a dominion that he only ruled because he allowed

them to, and that's also how he saw the Catholic Church, as a political tool for him and him alone. And I don't mean this is some kind of split in dogmatic belief because the Pope saw the Catholic Church as also a political tool for him and him alone. That's why they didn't like one another. That's the entire history of the Catholic Church. Like they gave up doing power craft in Europe and all just dedicated their time to hiding pedophiles. Everybody has to have passions. That's not true. They didn't to hiding pedophiles. Everybody has to have passions.

That's not true. They didn't only hide pedophiles. They also smuggled a whole lot of Nazis in Argentina. Yeah, and a whole lot of gold. Like take up crocheting or something. I don't know. Like all these like weird freaks online who are converting to Catholicism get like, I don't know, the fucking hot priest from Fleabag, make him Pope.

My personal favorite is all the like almost certainly American converts into Catholicism who hate Pope Francis so much. They're just becoming Protestants, but they don't want to admit it. Yeah. I love it. I love it so much. Like you guys are just doing the Reformation online. You're so fucking stupid. But like, listen, the most natural denomination for these people is just become a Calvinist. I mean, they're Americans, so they're already like at a base level without knowing it Calvinist. Yeah, they're like weird self. Well, the Calvinists don't believe they believe predestination

and stuff like that. But like just fucking if you want to be that contrarian, be the most contrarian version of Christianity, which is Calvinist. It's not Baptist. It's not evangelicals. It's not Presbyterians is the calvary. I'll throw another wild card into this. Become anabaptist. Oh, God. Yeah, go be a Mennonite or like fucking go move to Malta and do self-flagellation. If you're going to be about this shit, commit to it like. Now, Pope Clement saw Charles is becoming so powerful that despite himself being a Catholic, as much as anybody was a Catholic back then when they're in power, he could ignore the power of the papacy and what the pope

saw as the power that was rightfully his, but also the Catholic Church. I also, to circle back on our previous point, they're not being Calvinists. In reality, what they are is being Dutch Protestants because no one was addicted to posting as much as Dutch Protestantism. That's fair. And that you should go to some of the Bible Belt, as they they call it in the Netherlands. Tradition stays strong. I mean, like it's like they were writing theology books that were fucking thick. You could build a house out of those. Like what are you doing? You're posting like fan edits on Tik Tok and posting on Twitter. You're just a Dutch Protestant without any of the things that come with it, like windmills.

Or tulips. Or tulips. It is tulip season. It is not, however, Protestant season. I've planted so many out back and a single have grown and now I just have the police coming around asking questions about missing men. It's, you know, it's, it's important. You're becoming a Protestantism revanchist.

So virtually, before the ink was even dried on that paper, people were already looking for ways to work around behind that treaty to kill it. First, the French and the English signed a treaty saying that neither of them would ally with Charles. Then the Pope sent an envoy to the both of them trying to get him on his side against Charles despite the fact he had literally just fought the both of them for Charles. And even outside of Italy the rest of Europe pretty much knew it was only a matter of time before Emperor Charles wheeled back around with his immense power and tried to force

them into line or kneeling before him at some point. So the Pope smacked together an alliance between himself, France, England, Genoa, Venice, Milan and Florence to stand against Charles. Dubbing it the League of Cognac in 1526, just a year after the last war had ended, a new one was now starting. Once again, the League of the world's skinniest Armani jeans. The League of Fabulous Gentlemen. There's just like no helmets. There are just so much hair gel being used and arrow will just bounce off your skull. This shirt unbuttoned all the way down. There's no need for buttons, but they have them anyway. They are like,

they don't have any lancers. They just like spike the hair straight out and they're just running like Sonic the Hedgehog at people. They weaponize anime hair against the Holy Roman Empire. I wonder can the Pope go Super Saiyan? It's best we don't find out. Nobody put him in a situation where he needs to find out. It's dangerous. The only person who went Super Saiyan that we can be sure of is Jesus Christ? I don't know did he? I mean he just got wished back to life by the the Christian Dragon Balls yeah he had like they collected... Who's Shenron? Is that just God? Is God a dragon now?

we are fucking with so much theology at this point of lost track like yeah God is Shenron and Barabbas and the other guy up on the cross are like the Dragon Balls. I don't fucking know. Um, the Eucharist is like a Senzu bean that makes your soul more powerful. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to a, to a Catholic church and just nail a copy of Dragon Ball Z manga to the door. Hey, what are two things they love in Mexico? Catholicism and Goku.

It's true. That's one thing that the Vatican in Mexico have in common. Not going to I'm not going to expand upon that. Now, the Italian wars had been a resource drain, to say the least. So the opening stages of the war were largely spent trying to find money to hire soldiers. Thankfully for Emperor Charles, he had a huge fan in a man named Georg von Frunzburg. Now, Frunzburg was a German mercenary commander. Like amongst a lot of things, he is known as being the like the father of the

German mercenary movement. And every source I ever saw said that he was fucking jacked. movement. And every source I ever saw said that he was fucking jacked. Be like being jacked in the 16th century is an insane concept. Because you know, he wasn't like lifting. He got all those muscles from swinging a sword into other people's faces. He was like doing fucking training like guts from berserk. He's just like punching a horse over and over again. Alright, Georg, we lined up another six horses for you to knock out like fucking ye olde Mike Tyson. He's just like, you know, rocking and diving and everything like Mike Tyson in the nineties. I'd like to believe that Georg also had like a hype man. Like, I don't

know if you've heard this story, but there's a man named Crocodile who was paid like a hundred thousand dollars to stand at the back of the room that Mike Tyson had to be giving an interview in and just yell, guerrilla warfare! Over and over and over again, his name is Crocodile. I like to believe that Georg had a crocodile, but he's German, so it's just Hans. And German flavor flave. Guerrilla warfare! And then the fronds Franzberg just knocks out another goddamn horse. I mean like 16th century flavor flave literally has a function for carrying

a clock around his neck. That is true. That is true. We, we, we respect a practical flavor flave. Yeah. Practical flavor flave. Frunzberg was also fantastically wealthy, and he was well known in the German mercenary world as being a respectable captain to work for, meaning he always earned money. He always delivered victories. Nobody gives a shit about honor or whatever. It's just like this dude has fat sacks of loot, and if we go with him, we're always going to be paid.

But most importantly to our story, he's Lutheran. Here we go with him, we're always going to be paid. But most importantly to our story, he's Lutheran. Ah, here we go. As were the vast majority of German mercenaries at the time. Frunzberg saw the Pope's betrayal of Charles, just another example of the corruption within the Catholic Church. So when Frunzberg heard that Charles was planning on going to war against the Pope, he was like, fuck yeah, bro, sign me up. I'll bring me and 12000 of my boys free of charge.

I mean, like, listen, before the opening of Burgheim, the only thing that Germans were as dedicated to was Protestantism. You know, things come in, things come in cycles. It'll come back that way. The guy will eventually emerge from the Burg guy like piss pool and be like, maybe I should go to church. All these dudes just dancing around for like three days straight to the sick as a lute beats. Hell, yeah.

Another part of Charles Army was five thousand Spaniards under the command of Charles the third. Now, that's going to get confusing. There's a Charles the third and there's a Charles the fifth. Charles the fifth is the emperor. Charles the third is the constable of Bourbon. Now judging from his title you'd expect him to be serving in, you know, like France, and which would be partially correct. He had served the French throne for 20 years but had all of his titles and lands revoked by King Francis over a case of, let's call it, slight treason. He planned to partition

France into pieces with the help of the King of England after King Francis insulted Charles III's family. Now, out on his ass, he joined up with Emperor Charles V. But these were not the only two men joining the Imperial Alliance based on petty grievances. It was actually petty grievances all the way down. I kind of expected that, like, you know, the entire composition of European power politics at this time is one, are you related to someone? Or two, did someone like spill a tankard of wine on you once? Yeah, I mean, everything back then is, you know, intensely personal because the body politic is not of concern.

Yeah, the most like intense, um, not transgression you could do to someone was you married my sister before I could. If anybody's gonna fuck my cousin, it's going to be me. Now, there is one guy who was on Charles's side in the pope's own house, Pompeo Colona, a cardinal in the Catholic church. Now, he hated Pope Clement because he had nearly been elected pope himself, but Clement managed to politically outmaneuver him and take it when Colona believed the seat was comfortably his. And when he saw this alliance forming against the Pope and the Pope's forming his own alliance, like

now's my chance if I slide in next to the Holy Roman Emperor he's gonna come in and kick Clement out and I'm gonna be the fucking Pope. So now he has a Catholic Cardinal on his side as well. And from the very outset things are going pretty badly for the Pope's alliance. Outside of a very few early victories the League of Cognac was getting its teeth kicked in down the boot of Italy. The previous wars had all but bankrupted the Catholic Church and it caused him to dismiss his mercenary armies to try to save money and then he in turn raised taxes on Romans and he raised them so much that Romans fucking hated him and nobody would even volunteer

to fight for the Pope in Rome. The Pope gave himself Henny dick. Henny thing is not possible. I hate when that happens. He was just, you know, I swear I'm almost there. Just give me a few more seconds. Here's 450 years too early to mixing Henny and hypnotic together. The Incredible Hulk, the Incredible Hulk dick.

Now, so the forces that the pope could could could get at that time were not exactly top of the line. The paltry forces that the League was able to muster at this point were so weak that their main plan was to just not engage the Imperial Alliance in open combat, running from them whenever they could and leaving the Alliance to do functionally whatever they wanted to. The Pope and the rest of his Italian allies were waiting for the French and the English to send help, which would really never arrive. This meant even when a faction of them, those led by Colonna, showed up at the gates of Rome, they wouldn't fight. Colonna and his 3,000 or so men just walked right in and effectively

took over the city. Though Colonna wasn't looking for a military victory. He didn't want any of this shit to happen. He just wanted to be pope. And he walked into the Vatican and was looking to get Pope Clement to sit down with him and be like, okay, fine, I quit. It'll save me from almost certainly being murdered and Rome from burning to the ground. You have yourself a deal. But when he walked into the Vatican, the Pope was gone. The Pope had run and hidden inside of his very secret hiding place, the Castile St. Angelo. So when Clona and his men got pissed off, they sacked the Vatican. I mean, they're kind of... he's kind of doing a version of Russians retreating from Napoleon.

Except he didn't set fire to the Vatican. Exactly. Should've, but didn't. When the Pope summoned Kelona and one of his commanders, again named Hugo of Moncada, to a meeting to talk this whole thing over, Colonna refused. He's like, I'm not going into a meeting with this guy. I got his back against the wall. Why am I going to negotiate with him? But then Moncada did go.

And operating under the idea that he had the same authority as Colonna, Moncada agreed with the Pope with up for a months long truce with the Emperor. Mind you, he did not have the authority to negotiate on behalf of Emperor Charles, as well as a full withdrawal of Colonna's forces from Rome to escape to Naples, and then a part of the agreement was the Pope was to remove his forces from multiple different cities in Italy, effectively giving them to Emperor Charles. Colonna did not like this deal and he was fucking pissed that he was now bound by it.

So kicking and screaming and yelling at Mancada, he and his men marched out of Rome towards Naples, only for the Pope to immediately pull back on their deal and say it was null and void because it was made under duress and he didn't mean it. Then he stripped Colona of all of his church titles. However, that didn't mean things were going great for the other alliance either. Emperor Charles may have been vastly powerful, but he was not exactly a military mastermind. Fruensburg and Charles III may have also recruited their armies out of their own pocket, but it was with the understanding that once in the field they would be paid and supplied by their employer,

that being the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles. This was generally how arrangements worked with mercenaries back then. And then, Fruensburg had a fucking stroke, leaving the entire thing under the command of Charles III. So the mercenaries are quite literally doing Charlie work. Yeah, and that's not something you really want mercenaries to do. They're not really in the, in the realm of pro bono mercenary work. That's just being a regular soldier. Yeah. Mercenaries not really well known for their loyalty in lieu of payments, you know? This is where I get to say, Tom, hold that thought. Oh fuck. It's been a while

since I got one of those. See, Emperor Charles didn't give them shit. Not only not a single ducat and not a single penny, not a single piece of bread. He did not supply them at all. So now there's tens of thousands of men in the field. Nobody is being paid or fed, but Emperor Charles can see he can win this war. The Pope was weak. He can barely field an army. He had to think, but like the Charles is having a problem. How the fuck do I keep these people in the field?

I'm not giving them anything. I mean, there's, there's two big problems that come when mercenaries get pissed off. They either just go home or worse turn against you and kill you. Charles is getting, you know, political henny dick, political henny dick, as many people are saying this is a new term. We're adding it to the show's lexicon. Political henny dick. Now, Charles III, the actual on the ground commander of this mass armed,

hungarian, pissed off mercenary army was left to appease the mob. He's like, alright, what can I do here? Florence. We will take Florence. Y'all can loot the fucking piss out of it and that will be your payday. Then we'll be good to go. Everybody was like, perfect.

We love this idea. We're all aboard the loot train. Then it didn't work. Now this plan didn't work because the Duke of Urbino, a papal ally, got to the city first, and then locked the gates behind him with his army. Florence is a very easily defendable city, and Charles III knew, if we get bogged down in a siege right now, these fucking mercenaries are going to kill me. They also lacked heavy weapons like cannons and stuff so it would be a long bloody siege and most likely the

mercenaries would off him in the meantime so the siege of Florence, the sacking of Florence is called off. Their forces then made their way to Bologna where the army demanded supplies from the city. They had been living off of the countryside up until now and due to their numbers they had pretty much picked the Italian countryside clean. There's nothing left numbers, they had pretty much picked the Italian countryside clean. There's nothing left. The fields of noodles are picked, there's nothing. All the marinara wells drank dry.

They're not picking meatballs from trees anymore. Not a single string of garlic remain nailed to a single peasant's door. They have picked the Italian, I don't know what else that Italy grows. Basil, they ate all, fuck it, I don't know. Did all the cocaine. I don't know what else that Italy grows basil. They ate all fuck. I don't know did all the cocaine Sexpests ate all them too

Albanians and So they they show up at Bologna like hey you have to feed us and Bologna takes one look at them like no No, I'm not gonna do that if you want to get food You have to come in these fucking walls and take it. And so once again, like, fuck, we can't be Siege of City. We're really, we're really banking on scaring them into giving us cartoonishly long pieces of bread and spaghetti noodles up by the fistful. So like they're fucked, right? So now things are getting dire. They had just started ignoring anything that Charles

the third said any orders whatsoever. They devolved to little more than a mob of starving but heavily armed men. Now the Spanish and German mercenaries revolted, nearly murdering Charles III until he stopped giving them orders. They go, do whatever you want, I don't care. And that seemed to appease them for a moment. And this is when the Pope swooped back in. A swooping bird, buddy, is a Pope hat. You see, at this point, Emperor Charles was finally like, okay, I probably need to

get out of this war. My mercenary army is threatened to kill their commander every couple hours. I can't pay them. You know, maybe a deal to get Colona reestablished in the Vatican with his previous authority and he could work behind the scenes to undermine the Pope just as good. Well, things will work themselves out. And not to mention this would weaken the papacy further. So this is all like, ah, it's still a victory. I'll take it. So Charles sent people for negotiations telling the Pope that he would end the war if the papacy handed over several cities, restored Kelowna to his previous rank and title, and paid him 200,000 ducats which he could then use to pay the mercenaries so he didn't have

a giant fucking revolt on his hands. At this point, the Pope probably would have agreed. He saw the writing on the wall as well, he was like, I cannot win. But at the same time this happened the Papal forces fought a very small battle against Imperial Alliance. It's often described as a slight skirmish at best. However his officers told the Pope that it was like a crushing victory and clearly they had the Imperials on the ropes so there's no need to agree to any treaty. The pope was like, sure, okay, I agree. And that is when he realized he had really ran out of money.

The mercenaries that he used to win that small battle then went home because he couldn't pay them anymore. So he had even less. They're like, he's looking for gold in the couch. Looking for a spare Ducat in his coat pockets. He's checking all the papal clothes. He's like, he's like bringing like papal shit down to like the pawn shop. He's like, I'll come back next week and buy it off.

Just give it to me. Give me the cash now. I have some copper wires upstairs. Do you pay per length of Pope hat? I have a lot of really tall ones. Just some haberdasher's best day ever. I have a whole collection of I don't know who's going to buy these fucking hats, but I own them. I'd probably hit that haberdasher's

descendant is like on Twitter posting that like, oh, I have this huge collection of hats, a lot, there's a lot of Pope hats. There's also some Nazi ones, but I'm just really into World War Two. Don't ask what his Italian haberdasher family was doing between the years of mid 1930s, the 1945. Do you have anything from the allied side? No, it doesn't really interest me. So now we have an imperial army that is completely out of control and looking for a payday, not to mention, you know, food. And we have Rome, which is virtually undefended due the Pope not being able to pay his bills Hoping beyond hope to get his men back in the line and win the war for the Emperor

Charles the third came up with an idea He looked at his mercenaries pointed off towards the city of Rome and said if you want a fucking payday There it is. It's in Rome. So off they went storming south. Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo war effort rather than any kind of command ability. In his letters back, he stated that his army was working between their own national and mercenary cliques. The Spanish mercenaries ran themselves, the Germans ran themselves, the Italians ran themselves, and they all kind of negotiated back and forth what their next move would be.

Charles III is not telling them what to do. He is along for the ride. The Imperial Army had, in effect, turned into a tens of thousands of man strong gang of land pirates moving very quickly towards Rome. This is not good. Then the Pope began to panic. He needed troops to defend Rome, but he needed money to find some, and also he knew that asking people to volunteer wasn't going to work because everybody fucking hated him so he needed to raise money and he did it in the way

that you imagine a good corrupt pope would he simply created five more cardinal ships out of thin air and sold them to the highest bidder to raise money you know what he's he's employing people Vatican jobs program Vatican jobs program he's creating employment. You know, he's boosting certain regions by assigning them a cardinal. You know, he's building the esteem of the local people. They can look up to their cardinal. You know, like this is, this is unequivocally a good thing. Nothing bad will come from it all. And also he is just like ripping Roman men off the streets like, congratulations, you're in the army now.

It's like a US recruitment during the search. Congratulations. You're now a lieutenant. Wait, I don't have a hand. It's fine. Don't worry about it. Don't need it. You just need one to swing a sword. And he was hiring the Swiss mercenaries, but most of the army was made up of local Romans who had no real training. They were just chasing the paycheck, which you know what, glass houses and all that, I'm not going to judge someone for doing effectively the same exact thing that I did, you know?

Fair enough. How many priors did these Romans have? Oh, they weren't asking too many questions. Uh, like one of the, one of the, uh, the most well-known, uh, witnesses to this whole event is, um, an Italian Roman soldier who was just like a goldsmith that someone ran up to him and gave him a musket and be like, get to the wall. And he was like, all right, sure. Just a US army recruiter building a time machine to go back to this time and offer a Roman an iPod for enlistment.

I have this thing. It's going to blow your fucking mind. Now here. Oh, what's it? What's it? Dodge Challenger. Wait until you hear about interest rates. And then how would you like to be divorced three times by the time you're 30? Oh, yeah. Now, in the middle of all of this, they only managed to get about 5000 men and 187 of them are members of the Swiss Guard, who we already talked about.

They're the best soldiers they have to offer. There's not even 200 of them. And most of the Swiss mercenaries who are different from the Swiss Guard are mostly manning cannons because that requires skill. Everybody else is just like, get on the wall and shoot at whatever comes up. It's fine. Stab it in the face. Here, have a pitchfork. We've ran out of muskets. All of this would fall under the command of Renzo de Ceri.

He was a seasoned veteran of the mercenary world and had previously fought both against and for the Pope. Not the most trustworthy guy on earth, I will say. Yeah. Somewhat hilariously at this point though, Colonna got word to that the Charles the third's plan was he's like oh wait Jesus Christ all these mercenaries are heading towards Rome that's probably not good and another thing that worried Colonna is they aren't even Catholic most of them are Lutheran that's a problem. So Colonna told them guys what you don't need to do that I have a plan there's people loyal to me inside Rome.

And on May 9th, they're going to stage in like a revolt, a coup. They're going to simply open the gates and we can just walk in and take over. There doesn't need to be this fucking battle, this I'm going to all loot Rome thing. Once we take over Rome, you guys will get paid. It's fine. You don't have to do that. Charles the third knew two things. For one, they were moving really fast.

They were gonna get to Rome way before May 9th. And there's no way his mercenaries were gonna let him live at this point if he told them, you know what? The looting rampage in Rome is now canceled. And then they would probably kill him and then do it anyway. And if he told them to stop, they wouldn't listen to him and they would also kill him. So like, he knew his only available option

that was open to him was just would also kill him. So like he knew his only available option that was open to him was just let them attack the city and either succeed and they'd be paid or they would die in the attempt and he wouldn't have to worry about paying them anymore. Like there's no way that he was able to stop them. And just to tell you how fast they were going, Kelona told them that the uprising was happening on the 9th. They got there on the 5th because they've been marching for 50km a day. Jesus Christ. Which is impressive for any era, but especially this one when you remember most of them are eating maybe one scant meal a day and fueled only by Lutheran's spite.

Yeah, they're doing like fucking intermittent fast and David Goggins type shit. The new energy drink idea, Lutheran's spite. Yeah, they're doing like fucking intermittent fast and David Goggins type shit. The new energy drink idea, Lutheran's spite. Who's gonna sack Rome? Despite the mercs being hungry and pissed, they were still professionals and they did a very good job reconning the city's walls. They found the defenses of Rome had been largely ignored for quite some time and like at some point only a few of the walls had been reinforced or been manned in some time. And like at some point, only a few of the walls had been reinforced or been manned. In some situations, portions of the wall had just been kind of grafted

into people's buildings and homes, like gun ports have just been turned into windows. There's no preparation happening here. It's just like one scape walker is like, guys, there's a big hole over here that can fit maybe 300 people at a time. Let's get in the hole. So when the attacks start on the morning of the 6th, the mercenaries made sure to target these vulnerable areas. Even this shouldn't have gone so well due to the Romans' heavy cannons that could fire clear over their walls.

They were very, very good defensive weapons, especially when the mercenaries had none of their own. However, that morning a heavy fog blanketed the city, meaning they couldn't see a fucking thing, so the gunners were forced to just fire wildly into the distance hoping to hit something. The fog also benefited the attackers in other ways, namely the defenders wouldn't be able to see where the mercenaries were moving, what they were attacking next. It also meant defenders couldn't see one another. It meant fighting could only begin when they were pretty much in each other's faces.

So like when the mercenaries were scaling the walls, they were already on the walls already, that's when they could bring actual directed accurate fire on them. And Roman defenders dumped boiling oil on their heads of the attackers and poured musket and cannon fire down into them at point-blank range, but still that didn't really slow the mercenaries down. The mercenaries... No, like the whole like boiling oil era of warfare must have really sucked. Yeah I would much rather just get my face split open with an axe. There's like crispy bits of meatballs still floating in it.

It's like, there's so many awful ways to die in war, of course. But if I was to die, which I haven't so far, I'd much rather just like, hey, this is going great and then I'm just embraced by immediate sun blackness because my skull got canoed by a bullet or something. Poor boiling oil on me. Fucking Christ, what kind of minor or major deity did I piss off to die in such a horrific way? It's like coming face to face with a guy armed with a flamethrower.

It's like, fuck me, this is going to suck real bad. Yeah, but what if you did die? And this is the afterlife? Then I've gone to hell. Because my back and knees still hurt, you know, and you're forced to podcast forever. I love my job, but I feel like there's certain things like, you know, hell is always like, you know, depicted as like you're tortured forever and blah, blah. What if hell?

What what what if real hell is just like minor inconveniences forever? But this is my favorite thing to like. That's a real hell for me. Getting pain doesn't really bother me. What really bothers me is like my train is late. Make hell me just standing at the Denhark central station forever waiting for my train. No, no, no. Even even worse you're standing there forever

for the train but the train is always two minutes away. Oh that's the worst yeah who knew that my new country's train system would just suddenly be taken over by Amtrak. That's my own personal hell that or being stuck on said train with flanked on either side by a legion of people only talking on speakerphone Mmm, mine is having to work out in a gym for eternity. That is slightly too busy. Oh, yeah See the getting set on fire or like being you know, I think my dick and balls ripped off by the devil forever I'm like whatever you could probably get used to that like that like getting your liver pecked out forever by a crow or whatever. Like, we're going, we're going Prometheus with it.

Like you can get used to anything over time, but like minor inconveniences forever is my own hell. Someone's eating crisps next to you on like public transport, but they're eating them a slightly too loud. Your train comes on time. Nobody's on speakerphone, but there's someone in there who stopped by the fish shop on their way home and that shit just fucking reeks of herring. Shit like that. Yeah. Or even like a, like an itchy tag on the inside of your t-shirt. Minor inconvenience. Hell. I think that's just purgatory. I don't fucking know.

Once again, we're bringing it back to Catholicism. Now, despite all their flaws, and they were being very, very hungry, the mercenaries were professionals and well-drilled in the art of murder. They didn't just commit everyone to a battle. Instead they would send in a unit to fight for a short amount of time, then they would pull them back and replace them. They were effectively doing quick hockey-type line changes to make sure nobody got too tired. And that meant for the defenders who remember couldn't rest at all but also couldn't see

the whole army, it seemed like they were fighting a never ending stream of well rested, untiring killing machines. Then in the middle of all this, Charles III was fighting like any common soldier would, it's not like he had any command ability left. He was pushing a ladder into place so more men could scale it and continue the attack up the wall. And that is when a musket ball blew his dick and balls off and he bled to death on the ground.

He got the Napoleon's horse treatment. In any other army, the death of a commander would be a mortal blow to their morale. But in this army, nobody really cared. Mercenary commanders were in command of everything, and when they saw, you know, Charles III get his dick and balls blown off in a gust of wind, they're like, well, that dumbass is gone.

Steal his watch. The mercenaries are just like taking off his boots. Under fire, robbing his corpse. He's like, I'm not even fucking dead yet. Pulling out his gold teeth. You won't need this where you're going. Shut up. Could you get me some water? Maybe put some like dirty shirts over my bleeding groin wound.

No. Fuck off. And you know what? Get his teeth. Get his teeth, get his teeth. That blown off Dick and Balls is like, definitely some like a relic of worship for some weird sect of Catholicism.

Hell yeah. Shout out to the Dick and Ball Church. Now, the attack was going well, but it wasn't flawless. In some areas, the Roman defenders were able to push the attackers back. Then they got word that Charles III had been killed. These localized victories in the news of the death of their leader led some Roman soldiers to believe that they had won. So they abandoned their positions, running through the city chanting, victory, victory! Because remember,

they can't see any other position outside of their own because of the fog. So then like other commanders or whatever after room like what the fuck are you idiots doing get back to the goddamn wall? But before that could happen they break through the Roman defenses fail in three different points Thousands of mercenaries pour through the city walls while the Roman commander renzo de seri Abandons his men telling telling them, save yourself, all is lost. And remember, this is a guy who's fought both for and against the pope. He's a mercenary, he believes in nothing. He's not dying for shit.

He's out of there. And because so little had been done to defend the city beyond the walls, the mercenaries were able to simply march right towards the city center. Fleeing Roman soldiers and civilians created a crush as they tried to cross the bridge of the river Tiber. It was only now that the pope learned that the city was well and truly fucked, and he demanded the army continue defending Rome, like stop them, before they get to St. Peter's Basilica.

And that's when one of his assistants, his aides, whatever, were able to like, we don't know where Renzo de Ceri is, or who's in command down there anymore. The Imperial army was already at the gates of St. Peter's Basilica when the Pope realized, it's time for me to get the fuck out of here. He ordered the Swiss Guard to hold the mercenaries off and he ran for it using a secret passage that would carry him back towards the Castile, St San Angelo, the same place he hid last time, and he took 42 Swiss Guardsmen with him. The Guard, under the command of Casper Reusse, marched forward to take their positions at the stairs of the Basilica, and this is where

they made their last stand, famously known as the last stand of the Swiss Guard. Once again, you know, Pope doesn't fight wars anymore and those tunnels are just being used to transport pedophiles. Yeah. It's reusing of a previous space. It's an open concept, popery. Yeah, it's reduce, reuse, recycle. We are, you know, creating a circular economy for the nonce tunnels under the Vatican ecology of the papacy is very important. Yeah. You know, like, you know, Kim Jong Il was using those tunnels for ecstasy and Hennessy and fucking Michael Jordan tape just painting the walls and saying it was coal. I like to believe I'd like to believe that the pope did the same thing like, no, these are nuts, my bed, the file tunnels, you see,

they are cold tunnels, I have painted them black. They were built by the dodge. The last thing that the Swiss guard is oftentimes portrayed as this heroic, long lasting last stand, right? And they are often says that they held off thousands of mercenaries so the Pope could get away. That part is true. They did hold them off. However, it was not for very long. Ryoast only had about 140 men under his command and he was literally outnumbered by the thousands. He got bulldozed in what was probably only a few minutes and Ryoast himself was badly wounded

and tried to crawl away back to his own home, which was nearby. You know, kind of like a stray cat crawls under some stairs to die. But he got hunted down and murdered before he even got that far. But they did give the Pope just enough time to get a head start. He was almost to the Castile, but still the enemy mercenaries were so close that they opened fire on the Pope as he was running. Someone covered the Pope's white vestments with a black robe to try to hide who he is. I assume he's still wearing the really tall Pope hat though. Maybe the Pope hat got shot by a musket and it spun around and fell off like an ACME cartoon.

Now the Castile San Angelo was the only like Pope controlled place in the entire city and soon anybody who could ran for its walls. And then the Pope realized, wow, this place had not been prepared at all for a siege. There's no food or water in here. So in the middle of all this chaos, he ordered someone to go out into the town and find him food. Me hungry, Pope hungry. Pope hungry. Pope need his tendies.

Then he also realized another important point. A lot of other people in Rome are realizing that this Castile is the only safe place. Thousands of people are just piling inside of it before they finally close the doors behind them. But the doors are also old and badly maintained, so they rust and broken in place. They cannot be reopened. So the pope orders the 42 or so Swiss guards and with him, he's like, get rid of everybody who's not important.

So they're like, well, how can we get rid of them? The doors are closed. They start throwing people out the windows. Remember, they're surrounded by enemy mercenaries who just had like boiling oil and shit thrown on their head They're like, ah, fuck the throwing Luigi at us now like it's raining fucking people Human artillery gray idea now at this point the majority of the mercenaries had abandoned what you would know is a battle and Simply took to looting robbing and murdering their way across the city. They burst into any homes that they saw and began stealing.

Still others plundered churches and convents, knowing it'd be full of gold and other riches that'd be worth money. One group of mercenaries attacked the convent, assuming it'd be an easy target, only to find themselves getting shot by nuns. And then they dumped boiling buckets of water on their heads and still other like broke their way inside and got caught meat cleavers to the face being wielded by angry nuns. Yeah. The nuns are doing gone. Cata are doing like wire. Kung Fu, like, oh yeah. Non-cata.

They're like using like crucifixes as like, caudules. Like, imagine you're like, a German mercenary, like you're considered the best mercenary, like you're a Frunzburg mercenary, bros, you're at the top of the line, you break into a house in Rome, and you are face to face with like, Sister Marguerite, and you lose in one on one combat. I was gonna say, using a crucifix as a billy club is either these nuns or Boston cops in the 60s or Boston cops today. Yeah. Now these nuns held the mercenaries off for a very long time before they were finally overwhelmed but they did buy enough time for other nearby convents to run to safety.

So these nuns had a more successful last stand than the Swiss Guard. They should be the ones remembered. However, just because the city had fallen did not mean the looting would go on without a fight. Up in the San Angelo, papal gunners kept at their job because the St. Angelo has cannons, pretty big ones, that are very accurate for their day. They also have very well-tra trained Swiss gun crews at them. They would wait for large numbers of mercenaries to gather before

slapping them with like the Pope's holy hellfire from the cannons, whether it be in the open or maybe like too many of them attacked one building. They just start shooting at the building and collapsing on top of them. And no large group of mercenaries would be able to gather without a cannonball flying in and rendering them into paste with deadly accuracy. Virtually throughout the entire downtown area. And of course, in the middle of all of this, the two sides of the mercenaries got into an argument. For example, the Spanish wanted to kidnap people and force them at gunpoint to show where all the wealth was hidden.

Then they would steal it. The German mercenaries were like, that seems too complicated. Just fucking kill people and then we'll rob whatever's left. They had two polar opposites at the same ideology. These groups- I mean, two tactics that held true for the next 400 years of each nation's history. These groups would be so busy bickering with how to steal shit,

they never even attempted to really assault the Castille and silence the Pope's canons, which continued to rain death upon them for days. The two sides agreed, okay, we won't slaughter everybody, we'll kidnap them for a ransom, and then once they pay the ransom, they can show us where their money and other riches are held and people who don't have enough money for

ransom we can kill those ones or put them to use also looking for riches like throwing them in Rome's open shitters to sift around through thousands of gallons of accumulated human waste for anything that might be worth something yeah for example also remember a lot of the mercenaries are Lutheran so they thousands of gallons of accumulated human waste for anything that might be worth something. For example. Also, remember, a lot of the mercenaries are Lutheran, so they took sweet time and pleasure mocking the Catholic Church and its clergy, for example, forcing a priest to give the sacraments to a donkey and then killing him when he refused. This I mean, look, that's kind of funny. It's kind of funny. They also dress the donkey

up in vestments. That's like some Nelson Mons type shit. And this pissed off the Catholic mercenaries, namely the Spanish and the Italians, who while you know they were murdering and raping and looting their way through Rome, that was fine, but they saw what the Lutheran's doing is just a step too far. Like whoa whoa whoa all this other shit fine. You don't do that one. That's a step too far. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, all this other shit. Fine. You don't do that one. That's a step too far. Even we have our standards. I mean, like, look, you know, ripping out gold fillings from someone's teeth. Like, have you no shame, sir. I mean, like, look, you know, it is the, um, the perennial theological divide between Catholicism and Christianity or Catholicism and Protestantism is that like Catholicism loves indulging in

the kind of the carnal sins of the world where Protestants are like, no, we're going to like make a priest give the sacrament to a donkey. That's enough for us. It's like spiritually mocking enough. Yeah. And you might be wondering just what is it that they're doing to these people to get ransoms or money? Well, this is another quote from that medievalist article. Quote, indeed their hopes of becoming rich made them torture such people more violently than others. Many were suspended by their arms for hours at a time.

Others were led around by ropes tied to their testicles. Many were suspended by one foot above the streets or over the water with the threat that the cords suspending them would be cut. Many were beaten and wounded severely. Many were branded with hot irons in various parts of their bodies, some endured extreme thirst, others were prevented from sleeping. A very cruel and effective torture was to pull out the back of their teeth. Some were made to eat their own ears, nose, or testicles, roasted, and others were subjected to bizarre and unheard torments that affected me too strongly to even think of them, let alone describe them in detail.

And it's not like there's like some system in place to decide who had paid ransom and who hadn't. Remember, this is the roving gang of assholes at this point. They'd be snatching people at random off the streets and forcing them to pay something to be freed. So in many cases, I'm like,'m like alright fine you fucking got me, Hans and his merry gang of dickheads. Here I have some gold on me or whatever, I have some ducats, this is my ransom. They're like okay go on your way, get the fuck out of here. Only to run into another gang of mercenaries who would capture them and then ransom them again and if they couldn't pay it they'd be killed. So it's like, how many times can you go through this chain before some dude finally just hacks your head off with a sword?

That sounds like predatory financing. Ye olde payday loans. Except the debt collect. Well, actually, it's got to say except the debt collector rips out your teeth, but there's probably some that will do that today. And of course, I'm sure that you guessed these roving gangs of mercenaries also attacked one another over who would get the best loot. Sometimes into like this, this turned into full scale battles in the middle of Rome,

even though they're supposed to be on the same side. And remember the Pope's cannons are still shooting at them. The Pope finally managed to get word out what was going on inside of Rome to his only field commander that saw an army attack, the Duke of Urbino, the guy who saved Florence from, you know, what is exactly happening here. He took one look at the letter, probably skimmed over that part where he heard about dudes having their dick and balls roasted and being fed to them, and decided, you know what, boys, Rome's a lost cause. Though eventually a small group of his officers kind of bullied him until like, look, it's Rome, we have to do something.

So began a very slow advance in Rome's direction. An advance that was halted due to one of his senior commanders breaking his leg after falling off of his horse. He never went more than 20 kilometers close to the city before deciding this isn't really worth it We really don't want to go into that place. It seems to be swirling with literal demons right now. We're good I made 10th the worst of the looting and the murdering was coming to an end Mostly because they had run out of shit to steal and people to kill but also because Kelowna showed back up and it was like Holy sweet mother of God what is happening in here? showed back up and it was like, holy sweet mother of god what is happening in here? Like this looks like something out of like fucking the end times.

Why are you forcing people to eat their own balls? What is happening here? And you know, he slowly began to restore order, he'd be open negotiation with the Pope who was still in St. Angelo, and then a famine hit. I mean of course a famine hit. Look what just happened to the city. The mercenaries are destroying everything, stealing food, britches, everything is being

transported straight out of the city. And you know, things were already not great within the city before then. People, there's literally tens of thousands of corpses laying in the street, so you know what happens next. Horrific plague! Ah yeah, forgot that this is the plague times. Imagine like the Roman, like one Roman guy

sitting in a basement somewhere. He's managed to escape with all of his appendages intact. He doesn't have to eat his ears or anything. He's like, man, this could not get worse. And then he vomits blood. He's like, god damn it! He just notices this Slowly growing boil at the back of his knee. I mean you can't kill

40,000 people and leave their bodies rotting in the streets that unleashing some terrible diseases So the mercenary groups like okay We have to get rid of some of this stuff to make things better So they begin shoveling piles of dead bodies into the Tiber River, which happens to be where everybody gets their drinking water from, causing another outbreak of disease. Once again, like how often on this show do we have to bring up don't poison your water source, don't go into the desert with no water.

Yeah, don't leave dead bodies out in the sun for a very long time. Like it all goes back to the golden rule. It's never a good time to go camping with 10,000 of your homies. It's never gonna end well. I mean, I heard a different golden rule was, golden rule, always wrap your tool. Also that, that'll also stop a different kind of outbreak.

Especially if you happen to be in Rome in the 1500s. Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. be in Rome in the 1500s. Eventually by June, the Pope surrendered. He signed a treaty that he again would not fulfill because it was made under duress, he bribed some guards, and he got the fuck out of there. The Imperial army finally marched out of Rome on February 15, 1528, leaving a shell of a city behind him.

Around 55,000 people, give or take, lived in Rome before the sacking. Afterwards, less than 10,000 remained. Jesus. Yeah, the city was picked clean. Sacked, you would say? Double-sacked. Tea-bagged. Thoroughly tea-bagged. The most thorough tea-bagging of Rome.

Just dragging your ball sack across the entirety of Rome. I will say it's kind of impressive when you're a mercenary group in the 1500s that largely shares a religion and a culture with Rome and you do more damage than say like the Visigoths did. Yeah. The war would go on for another few years, ending in 1530 with a solid victory for Emperor Charles V, establishing Spanish control over Veth's swats of Italy and an iron grip over the church. Though Charles did have to spend the rest of his life and time in power, kind of explaining whoa whoa whoa, yeah, I had nothing to do with the sack of Rome, it was those fucking Lutherans. Speaking of which, the sacking of Rome had a lot of secondary effects down the line. For instance, the end of the high renaissance period, but also a hard goddamn split between

Catholics and Protestants. Even if Martin Luther, who was alive when this happened, was horrified about this, the damage was very much done. And that is the Sack of Rome of 1527. And you know what? Pope Clement was still in power until 1534. Yeah, he sure was. All this for pretty much nothing. The man is a survivor. I believe that is what the Destiny's Child song, Survivor, is actually about Pope Clement the 7th. Many people don't know that.

Pope Clement the 7th, the big Kelly Rowland fan. Yeah. He's an old head. Now, Tom, we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion. If you'd like to ask us a question from Legion, donate to the show. You can ask us on our Discord. There's an ongoing thread there for questions. You can ask us on Patreon. You can attach it to a German Lutheran marching into Rome. We will read it on air

Did you have a favorite book series as a kid and is there a book series you're reading now that you think others should read? So I kind of touched on this before on a series that I read as a kid that got me into reading Was the Harry Potter series? What a common what a more kind and gentler time that was to know who the author was. Written by a mysterious author that no one knows who it is. Yeah, and you don't read that because you can't do death of the author on a concept if the author is still alive and profiting from it, in my opinion. And there's loads of problematic shit in the books as well.

I would go on to say there's loads of problematic shit in any book series, especially young adult series such as Harry Potter or even like the series that I really, really enjoy. Like like goes into the next part of the question. The first law and the age of madness series by Joe Abercrombie. They're both fucking incredible. I'm reading he has a series of standalone novels as well in the same world. I'm reading those now incredible I don't think having problematic things within books makes his books untouchable That means you just have to delete science fiction in general Isaac Asimov is like rising releasing like a fantasy about those words.

I mean, because, you know, it all has to do with if you reject everything that has some iffy shit in it, you're left with like literally zero media. I well, those books will always have a warm place in my heart for getting them getting me into reading, which then of course got me into writing and I, you know, and my job. But, you know, I haven't read them since I've been an adult because they're a book series for children. And that's where they should stay is in the past. And the author should stay in a place where I cannot say on the air. But Joe Abercrombie's books are fucking incredible. I cannot recommend them enough.

I have the only thing that I'm sad about is I've blown through his first two trilogies and I'm working my way through the third. And when I'm done with that, I am out of Joe Abercrombie books, which is unfortunate. Back to reading Warhammer books. Back to reading Murakami and being very sad. The flip side of the spectrum of Japanese guy that's a pervert and a great writer.

Yeah, yeah, like I have quite a few Murakami books. He's one of my favorite authors. And again, a deeply problematic style of writing, even though he is a person seems okay. No, the real spectrum is Japanese writer. That's weird about women. There's two ends of the spectrum. One of them is Mishima. One of them is Murakami. Murakami is as normal as they get. Yeah. Yeah. I, like, I kind of had like a, I used to read a lot. I read a lot now again. Um, but like for a

good few years, all I did was really listen to music. Like I would like listen to music like all day. Um, I would like spend my free time listening to music, like reading about music. Um, when I was a kid, there was a series of books about, so it was dinosaurs that were also astronauts. Oh, fuck yeah. That is like an AI generated idea of what would best interest a young kid because like everybody has an astronaut phase and a dinosaur phase, put the motherfuckers together. See, I'm going to have to write like dinosaur samurai because that's like the next two niches slam together.

Yeah. Or dinosaur ninjas. Exactly. And then I have this memory as a kid and I feel like anyone who's kind of around the same age as me and Irish will like, this will like unlock something in their brain. So when I was a kid, obviously there's the actually give me a second. I'll show you. So the general cycles of like Irish mythology, there's like four, yeah, four cycles. This book here, Over the Nine Waves by Marie Heaney, Seamus Heaney's wife is incredible. If you're an adult and you want to learn about like Irish myths and legends, this is the thing to get. But when I was a kid, one of the national newspapers included

a free CD over the course of a couple of weeks, uh, with stories like who Colin, um, um, uh, fucking like other stories from the town, uh, read by Ronnie Drew, the lead singer of the Dubliners. And I listened to that CD so much as a kid. That's awesome. Yeah. Um, and like I suppose like series I'm reading now, like I'm regrettably reading the Rama series. Like I don't know why I'm still continuing to read them after the first two. Um, and other than that, like I'm, you're, I feel like people are going to feel weird about this. I am trying to read all of Hunter S. Thompson's books. I think they're worth reading. I mean, there's this, I, I've, I haven't read all

of them, but the ones I've read are very good. I mean, you have to put yourself in the, like the authoritarial conceptitarial context of when they're being written and who they're being written by. It's like reading Mishima. You can respect the quality of the writing and still enjoy it knowing that the concepts that he's using, the voice he's using, and the person he is are deeply fucked up.

Those two things can coexist. Like I'm, cause I'm currently reading his book on the Hells Angels and I'm kind of like at points I'm just like, okay, stop talking about yourself. I get it. This is your whole thing. That is a valid criticism of Hunter S. Thompson. I mean, it is also his brand. It's like telling, it's like reading blood Meridian and be like,

why isn't there any punctuation? Actually all the Cormac McCarthy books, the incredible, like if you could call it a series of books, um, just brilliant. Blood Meridian is one of the best books ever written. I enjoyed the road. I enjoyed the road much more. We've talked about this. Well, I finally sat down and read Blood Meridian a couple months ago. And it's good.

I'm not going to say I didn't enjoy it. I'm just saying in my McCarthy rankings, I'm putting the road first. Maybe it's because I read it first. It's the first McCarthy book I've ever read. I mean, like, I two like extremely opposing forces of like three of my favorite books that I've read slash re-read in the past couple of years. Confessions of a Mask by Yuki Yomishima, the White Album by Joan Didion and Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Gayle-Gwinn.

If I was to rank the books that I have read, not this year, because it's, you know, 2024 is kind of still beginning, but from 2023 until now, I think if I was to rank the books that I have read for the first time, um, I still think confessions of a mask is number one. Um, and then everything else is Joe Abercrombie. Um, I mean, I did really, really enjoy blood Meridian and just don't think it hit like it should have. Maybe it was built up a bit too much.

I am a McCarthy fan, but like, Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima is one of the most interesting reads that I've ever done. Maybe it's because we did an episode forever ago about him and I made that episode before I ever read any of his books with no intention of doing so And nate has read quite a few of them And he was telling me about it and I still never thought I was gonna read it

But then I picked it up because I found it in a bookstore in in Amsterdam And uh, I was like, it's really fucking short. I I literally read it in one train ride back home and uh, It's honestly incredible. It's deeply fucked up, but it's absolutely incredible. The man is an amazing writer. He is just, the world is better off with him being gone. Yeah. But like, like, you know, reading Confessions of a Mask is kind of like reading Blood Meridian in that, like, there is nothing else like it. Like, and you, it's like the effect of, you know, when you see loads of gangster movies and then you watch like it. Like and you it's like the effect of, you know, when you see loads of gangster movies and then you watch like The Godfather and Goodfellas, you realize, okay, this is what everything else is trying to do. I have read like so many books before and after reading Mieschmidt that are just trying to do him. Yeah. And I will say it's not my favorite

book of all time. I don't think I have one of those. I think that I don't think I could limit myself to that. I have several and depending on what my what my mood is. But Conventions of a Mask is definitely one of the most interesting books I've ever read and it did make me go out and snack several more copies of Mishima's other stuff which I haven't gotten to. I'm going to give it some time because I feel like Conventions of a Mask started so high, I don't want to be let down. But we'll see.

I will report back. Oh, they get so much better. That's so much more fully believe that Tom, that's a podcast, but you do another podcast. Plug that podcast. I do beneath the skin another history show. that tries to connect the history of tattooing to the history of everything. We have a cool episode that came out recently about Maori tattooing, Tamoko in Aotearoa or New Zealand. We have like Russian prison tattoos. You've heard me talk about it. And I also am the producer of Glue Factory, a comedy podcast with literally no

theme, just riffs from some of the lovely people over Trashfuture. So listen to that show and thank you for listening to ours. If you think what we do is worth your time and money, subscribe to us on Patreon and just for $5 a month, you can get over six years of bonus content. You get discord access every episode early, you get ebooks, you get slow rolling audiobooks, you get bonus series that we're working on, which include video, and all sorts of other projects we have in the pipeline will all be available to you. And until next time, dress up that donkey.