Such was the character of the nobles of Rome at the period in which their city was taken possession of by Alaric. As soon as the barbarian had got possession of the Roman port, he summoned the city to surrender at discretion; and his demands were enforced by the positive declaration, that a refusal, or even a delay, should be instantly followed by the destruction of the magazines, on which the life of the Roman people depended. The clamours of that people, and the terror of famine, subdued the pride of the senate. They listened without reluctance to the proposing of a new emperor on the throne of Honorius; and the suffrage of the Gothic conqueror bestowed the purple on Attalus, the præfect of the city. Attalus was created emperor by the Goths and Romans; he was, however, soon degraded by Alaric, and Rome subjected to a general sack. The conqueror no longer dissembled his appetite for plunder. The trembling senate, without any hopes of relief, prepared, by a desperate resistance, to delay the ruin of their country. But they were unable to guard against the secret conspiracy of their slaves and domestics. At the hour of midnight, the Salarian gate was opened, and the inhabitants were awakened by the tremendous sound of the Gothic trumpet. Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the imperial city, which had subdued and civilised so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Scythia and Germany. A cruel slaughter was made of the Romans; the streets of the city were filled with dead bodies, which, during the consternation, remained unburied. The despair of the inhabitants was sometimes converted into fury; and whenever the barbarians were provoked by opposition, they extended the promiscuous massacre to the feeble, the innocent, and the helpless. The private revenge of 40,000 slaves was exercised without pity or remorse; and the ignominious lashes, which they had formerly received, were washed away in the blood of the guilty, or obnoxious families. The matrons and virgins of Rome were exposed to injuries more dreadful, in the apprehension of chastity, than death itself.
When the portable riches had been seized, the palaces were rudely stripped of their splendid and costly furniture; the side-boards of massy plate, and the variegated wardrobes of silk and purple, were irregularly piled in the wagons, that always followed the march of a Gothic army. The most exquisite works of art were roughly handled, or wantonly destroyed; many a statue was melted for the sake of the precious materials; and many a vase, in the division of the spoil, was shivered into fragments by the stroke of the battle-axe. The sack lasted six days.
The edifices, too, of Rome received no small injury from the violence of the Goths; but those injuries appear to have been somewhat exaggerated. At their entrance they fired a multitude of houses; and the ruins of the palace of Sallust remained, in the age of Justinian, a stately monument of the Gothic conflagration. Procopius confines the fire to one peculiar quarter; but adds, that the Goths ravaged the whole city. Cassiodorus says, that many of the “wonders of Rome,” were burned; and Olympiodorus speaks of the infinite quantity of wealth, which Alaric carried away. We collect, also, how great the disaster was, when he tells us, that, on the retreat of the Goths, 14,000 returned in one day.
The injury done by Genseric (A. D. 455), is said to have been not so great as that, perpetrated by the Goths; yet most writers record that the Vandals and Moors emptied Rome of most of her wealth. They revenged the injuries of Carthage. The pillage lasted fourteen days and nights; and all that yet remained of public or private wealth, of sacred or profane treasure, were transported to the vessels of Genseric. Among the spoils, the splendid relics of two temples, or rather of two religions, exhibited the remarkable example of the vicissitude of human things. Since the abolition of Paganism, the capital had been violated and abandoned; yet the statues of the gods and heroes were still respected, and the curious roof of gilt bronze was reserved for the rapacious hands of Genseric. The holy instruments of the Jewish worship had been ostentatiously displayed to the Roman people, in the triumph of Titus. They were afterwards deposited in the temple of Peace; and, at the end of four hundred years, the spoils of Jerusalem were transferred to Carthage, by a barbarian who derived his origin from the shores of the Baltic. It was difficult either to escape or to satisfy the avarice of a conqueror, who possessed leisure to collect, and ships to transport, the wealth of the capital. The imperial ornaments of the palace, the magnificent furniture and wardrobe, the sideboards of massy plate, were accumulated with disorderly rapine; the gold and silver amounted to several thousand talents; yet even the brass and copper were laboriously removed. The empress was rudely stripped of her jewels, and, with her two daughters, the only surviving remains of the great Theodosius, was compelled, as a captive, to follow the haughty Vandal; who immediately hoisted sail, and returned, with a prosperous navigation, to the port of Carthage. Many thousand Romans of both sexes, chosen for some useful or agreeable qualifications, reluctantly embarked on board the fleet of Genseric; and their distress was aggravated by the unfeeling barbarian, who, in the division of the booty, separated the wives from their husbands, and the children from their parents.
The consequences of this Vandal invasion, to the public and private buildings, are thus regarded by the same authority (Gibbon): – “The spectator, who casts a mournful view over the ruins of ancient Rome, is tempted to accuse the memory of the Goths and Vandals, for the mischief which they had neither the leisure, nor power, nor perhaps the inclination, to perpetrate. The tempests of war might strike some lofty turrets to the ground; but the destruction which undermined the foundations of those massy fabrics, was prosecuted, slowly and silently, during a period of ten centuries. The decay of the city had gradually impaired the value of the public works. The circus and theatres might still excite, but they seldom gratified, the desires of the people; the temples, which had escaped the zeal of the Christians, were no longer inhabited, either by gods or men; the diminished crowds of the Romans were lost in the immense space of their baths and porticoes; and the stately libraries and halls of justice became useless to an indolent generation, whose repose was seldom disturbed, either by study or business. The monuments of consular or imperial greatness were no longer revered as the immortal glory of the capital; they were only esteemed as an inexhaustible mine of materials, cheaper and more convenient than the distant quarry. Specious petitions were addressed to the easy magistrates of Rome, which stated the want of bricks or stones for some necessary service; the fairest forms of architecture were rudely defaced for the sake of some paltry or pretended repairs; and the degenerate Romans, who converted the spoil to their own emolument, demolished, with sacrilegious hands, the labours of their ancestors.”
In 472 the city was sacked by Ricimer, who enjoyed power under cover of the name of the Emperor Libius Severus. His victorious troops, breaking down every barrier, rushed with irresistible violence into the heart of the city, and Rome was subverted. The unfortunate emperor (Anthemius) was dragged from his concealment, and inhumanly massacred by the command of Ricimer his son-in-law; who thus added a third, or perhaps a fourth, emperor to the number of his victims. The soldiers, who united the rage of factious citizens with the savage manners of barbarians, were indulged, without control, in the licence of rapine and murder; the crowd of slaves and plebeians, who were unconcerned in the event, could only gain by the indiscriminate pillage; and the face of the city exhibited the strange contrast of stern cruelty and dissolute intemperance. The sack of Rome by Ricimer is generally overlooked by the apologists of the early invaders; but it must not be forgotten, that they were indulged in the plunder of all but two regions of the city.
To Vitiges (about A. D. 540) must be ascribed the destruction of the aqueducts, which rendered the thermæ useless; and as these appear never to have been frequented afterwards, their dilapidation must be partially, but only partially, ascribed to the Goths.
Vitiges burned every thing without the walls, and commenced the desolation of the Campagna.
The last emperor of Rome was Augustulus. Odoacer, king of the Heruli, entered Italy with a vast multitude of barbarians, and having ravaged it, at length approached Rome itself. The city made no resistance; he therefore deposed Augustulus, and took the dignity of empire on himself. From this period the Romans lost all command in Italy.
A. D. 479. Five centuries elapsed from the age of Trajan and the Antonines, to the total extinction of the Roman empire in the west. At that unhappy period, the Saxons fiercely struggled with the natives for the possession of Britain. Gaul and Spain were divided between the powerful monarchies of the Franks and Visigoths; and the dependent kingdoms of the Suevi and Burgundians in Africa were exposed to the cruel persecution of the Vandals, and the savage insults of the Moors. Rome and Italy, as far as the banks of the Danube, were afflicted by an army of barbarian mercenaries, whose lawless tyranny was succeeded by the reign of Theodoric, the Ostrogoth. All the subjects of the empire, who, by the use of the Latin language, more particularly deserved the name and privileges of Romans, were oppressed by the disgrace and calamities of foreign conquest; and the victorious nations of Germany established a new system of manners and government in the western countries of Europe.
That Rome, however, did not always suffer from the Goths, is evident from a passage in one of the letters written by Cassiodorus, at one time minister to Theodoric: – “The care of the Roman city is a subject to which our thoughts are ever awake. For what is there which it behoves us to provide for, more worthy than the keeping up the repair of a city which, it is evident, contains the ornaments of our republic? therefore, let your illustrious highness know, that we have appointed a notable person, on account of its splendid Cloacæ, which are productive of so much astonishment to beholders, that they may well be said to surpass the wonders of other cities. There thou mayest see flowing rivers, inclosed, as it were, in hollow mountains. There thou mayest see the rapid waters navigated by vessels, not without some anxiety lest they should suffer shipwreck in the precipitate torrent. Hence, O matchless Rome! it may be inferred what greatness is in thee. For what city may dare to contend with thy lofty superstructures, when even thy lowest recesses can find no parallel?”
In 546, Rome was besieged by Totila the Goth. Having reduced, by force or treaty, the towns of inferior note in the midland provinces of Italy, Totila proceeded to besiege Rome. He took it December 17th of the same year. On the loss of the city, several persons, – some say five hundred, – took, refuge in the church of St. Peter. As soon as the daylight had displayed the victory of the Goths, their monarch visited the tomb of the prince of the apostles; but while he prayed at the altar, twenty-five soldiers and sixty citizens were put to the sword in the vestibule of the temple. The arch-deacon Pelagius stood before him with the gospels in his hand. – “O Lord, be merciful to your servant.” “Pelagius,” said Totila, with an insulting smile, “your pride now condescends to become a suppliant.” “I am a suppliant,” replied the prudent arch-deacon; “God has now made us your subjects, and, as your subjects, we are entitled to your clemency.” At his humble prayer, the lives of the Romans were spared; and the chastity of the maids and matrons was preserved inviolate from the passions of the hungry soldiers. But they were rewarded by the freedom of pillage. The houses of the senators were plentifully stored with gold and silver. The sons and daughters of Roman consuls tasted the misery which they had spurned or relieved, wandered in tattered garments through the streets of the city, and begged their bread before the gates of their hereditary mansions.
Against the city he appeared inexorable. One third of the walls was demolished by his command; fire and engines prepared to consume or subvert the most stately works of antiquity; and the world was astonished by the fatal decree, that Rome should be changed into “a pasture for cattle!” Belisarius, hearing of this, wrote him a letter, in which he observed, “That if Totila conquered, he ought, for his own sake, to preserve a city, which would then be his own by right of conquest, and would, at the same time, be the most beautiful city in his dominions. That it would be his own loss, if he destroyed it, and redound to his utter dishonour. For Rome, having been raised to so great a grandeur and majesty by the virtue and industry of former ages, posterity would consider him as a common enemy of mankind, in depriving them of an example and living representation of their ancestors.”
In consequence of this letter, Totila permitting his resolution to be diverted, signified to the ambassadors of Belisarius, that he should spare the city; and he stationed his army at the distance of one hundred and twenty furlongs, to observe the motions of the Roman general. With the remainder of his forces, he occupied, on the summit of Gargarus, one of the camps of Hannibal. The senators were dragged in his train, and afterwards confined in the fortresses of Campagna. The citizens, with their wives and children, were dispersed in exile; and, during forty days, Rome was abandoned to desolate and dreary solitude.
Totila is known to have destroyed a third part of the walls; and although he desisted from his meditated destruction of every monument, the extent of the injury inflicted by that conqueror may have been greater than is usually supposed. Procopius affirms, that he did burn “not a small portion of the city,” especially beyond the Tiber. One of the authors of the Chronicles records a fire, and the total abandonment of the city for more than forty days; and it must be mentioned, that there is no certain trace of the palace of the Cæsars having survived the irruption of Totila.
With Totila, the dilapidation of Rome by the barbarians is generally allowed to terminate.
The incursion of the Lombards in 578 and 593 completed the desolation of the Campagna; but did not affect the city itself.
Their king Luitprand (in 741) has been absolved from a supposed violence; but Astolphus (in 754) did assault the city violently; and whatever structures were near the walls must be supposed to have suffered from the attack.
From that period, Rome was not forcibly entered, that is not after a siege, until the fall of the Carlovingian race, when it was defended in the name of the emperor Lambert; and assaulted and taken by barbarians, commanded by Arnulphus, son of Carloman of Bavaria (A. D. 896).
It would exceed our limits were we to enter into a detail of the various causes, which were so long at work in effecting the ruin of the ancient monuments of Rome. If we except the Pantheon, the ancient remains have been so mutilated and destroyed, that even the name is, in many cases, doubtful. If a person, says Dr. Burton, expects to find at Rome such magnificent remains, as he has read of in Athens, he will be grievously disappointed. It is highly necessary to know, that whatever exists at Rome as a monument of ancient times has suffered from various calamities.
Gibbon states four causes of decay: – The injuries of time and nature; the hostile attacks of the barbarians and christians; the use and abuse of the materials; and the domestic quarrels of the Romans. There is great truth in Pope’s remark —
Some felt the silent strokes of mouldering age;
Some hostile fury; some religious rage;
Barbarian blindness, Christian zeal conspire,
And Papal piety, and Gothic fire.
The injuries done by the Christian clergy to the architectural beauty of Rome, may be divided into two kinds: those, which were commanded, or connived at, by the Romans, for useful repairs or constructions; and those, which were encouraged or permitted from motives of fanaticism.
In the year 426, during the reign of Theodosius the Younger, there was a great destruction of the temples and fanes. “The destruction of the idolatrous fanes,” says an ecclesiastical writer, “was from the foundation; and so complete, that we cannot perceive a vestige of the former superstition. Their temples are so destroyed, that the appearance of their form no longer remains; nor can those of our times recognise the shape of their altars. As for their materials, they are dedicated to the fanes of the martyrs. Temples are not found among the wonders admired by Theodoric, except the half-stripped Capitoline fane is to be enumerated; and Procopius confines his notices to the Temple of Peace, and to the Temple of Janus. In the reign of Justinian, the temples were partly in private hands, and, therefore, not universally protected as public edifices. Pagan structures would naturally suffer more at the first triumph of Christianity than afterwards, when the rage and the merit of destruction must have diminished. It is not then rash to believe, that many temples were destroyed or despoiled, and the materials employed to the honour of the new religion. Du Barga asserts that there were marks on the obelisks of their having been all overthrown, with the exception of one, which was not dedicated to any of the false gods of antiquity.”
The destruction of the baths are attributed to the same piety, and those of Diocletian and Caracalla showed, in the eighth century, evident marks of human violence. Pope Gregory III. employed nine columns of some ancient building for the church of St. Peter. The rebuilding of the city walls by four popes, in the same century, was a useful but a destructive operation. Pope Hadrian I. threw down an immense structure of Tiburtine stone to enlarge the church of St. Maria in Cosmedin. Donus I. had before (A. D. 676) stripped the marble from a large pyramid, generally known by the name of Scipio’s Tomb. Paul II. employed the stones of the Coliseum to build a palace. Sixtus IV. took down the Temple of Hercules, and destroyed the remains of an ancient bridge to make four hundred cannon-balls for the castle of St. Angelo. Paul III. and his nephews laboured incessantly at the quarry of the Coliseum. He devastated, also, many other buildings. Sixtus V. threw down several statues still remaining in the capital. Urban VIII. took off the bronze from the portico of the Pantheon, and some of the base of the sepulchre of Cecilia Metella; and Paul V. removed the entablature and pediment of a structure in the Forum of Nerva, and also the remaining column of the Temple of Peace. Lastly, Alexander VII. took down the arch called “di Portogallo,” in order to widen the Corso. The inferior clergy, too, were great depredators; insomuch that a volume of no inconsiderable size has been composed by one of their own order to enumerate the Pagan materials applied to the use of the church.
It is difficult to say where this system of depredation would have stopped, had not Benedict XIV. erected a cross in the centre of the arena, and declared the place sacred, out of respect to the blood of the many martyrs who had been butchered there during the persecution. This declaration, if issued two or three centuries before, would have preserved the Coliseum entire; it can now only protect its remains, and transmit them in their present state to posterity.
Conflagrations, also, contributed to the destruction of the city. In 312 the temple of Fortuna was burned down. The palaces of Symmachus and Lampadius, with the baths of Constantine, suffered by the same cause.
Nor must the destruction be confined to one element. The Tiber rose, not unfrequently, to the walls, and many inundations are recorded. Indeed, even so early as the second siege of the city by Totila, there was so much uncultivated land within the walls, that Diogenes, the governor, thought the corn, he had sown, would be sufficient to supply the garrison and citizens in a protracted defence.
It is impossible to assign a precise date to the total destruction of the greater portion of the ancient site; but the calamities of the seventh and eighth centuries must have contributed to, if they did not complete, the change. A scarcity in the year 604, a violent earthquake a few years afterwards, a pestilence in or about the year 678, five great inundations of the Tiber from 680 to 797, a second famine in the pontificate of Pope Constantine, which lasted thirty-six months, a pestilence in the last year of the seventh century, and the assault of the Lombards for three months in 755; – these are the events which compose the Roman history of this unhappy period.
Added to all this, the importance of the new city accelerated the ruin of the old; and great was the destruction during the periods in which separate parties fought their battles in the public streets, after the restoration of the empire of the West; in which we must record the ruin, caused by Robert Guiscard, which proved more injurious to the remains of Rome, from 1082 to 1084, than all the preceding barbarians of every age: for the Normans and Saracens of his army, with the papal faction, burned the town from the Flaminian gate to the Antonine column, and laid waste the sides of the Esquiline to the Lateran; thence he set fire to the region from that church to the Coliseum and the Capitol. He attacked the Coliseum for several days, and finished the ruin of the Capitol.
A cotemporary writer says, that all the regions of the city were ruined; and another spectator, who was in Rome twelve years afterwards, laments that although what remained could not be equalled – what was ruined, could never be repaired.
Thou stranger which for Rome in Rome here seekest,
And nought of Rome in Rome perceiv’st at all,
These same old walls, old arches, which thou seest,
Old palaces, is that which Rome men call.
Behold what wreck, what ruin, and what waste,
And how that she which with her mighty power
Tamed all the world, hath tamed herself at last,
The prey of Time, which all things doth devour.
Rome now of Rome is the only funeral,
And only Rome, of Rome hath victory;
Ne ought save Tyber, hastening to his fall
Remains of all: O World’s inconstancy!
That which is firm, doth flit and fall away;
And that is flitting, doth abide and stay.
Spenser’s Ruins of Rome.
In the annals for 1167, we find that the German Barbarossa assaulted the Vatican for a week, and that the Pope saved himself in the Capitol. The Colonna were driven from the mausoleum of Augustus. After the Popes had begun to yield in the unequal contest with the senators and people, and had ceased to be constantly in the capital, the field was left open for the wars of the senators; that is, of the nobles themselves. The Colonna and Ursini then appear among the destroyers of the city. In 1291, a civil war occurred, which lasted six months; the issue of which was, according to a spectator, that Rome was reduced to the condition of a town “besieged, bombarded and burned.”
At the period in which Henry VII. was crowned Emperor, battles were fought in every quarter of the city. The fall of houses, indeed, the fire, the slaughter, the ringing of the bells from the churches, the shouts of the combatants, and the clanging of arms, the Roman people rushing from all quarters towards the Capitol; this universal uproar attended the coronation of the new Cæsar, and the Cardinals apprehended the total destruction of the city.
The absence of the Popes, also, from the year 1360 to 1376, has been esteemed peculiarly calamitous to the ancient fabrics. Petrarch was overwhelmed with regret. He complained that the ruins were in danger of perishing; that the nobles were the rivals of time and the ancient Barbarians; and that the columns and precious marbles of Rome were devoted to the decoration of the slothful metropolis of their Neapolitan rivals. Yet, it appears that these columns and marbles were taken from palaces comparatively modern, from the thresholds of churches, from the shrines of sepulchres, from structures to which they had been conveyed from their original state, and finally, from ruins actually fallen. The solid masses of antiquity are not said to have suffered from this spoliation; and the edifices, whose impending ruin affected Petrarch, were the sacred basilicas, then converted into fortresses.
The great earthquake of 1349 operated, also, in a very destructive manner; several ancient ornaments being thrown down; and an inundation of the Tiber is recorded among the afflictions of the times. The summits of the hills alone were above the water; and the lower grounds were for eight days converted into a lake.
The return of the Popes was the signal of renewed violence. The Colonna and Ursini, the people and the church, fought for the Capitol and towers; and the forces of the Popes repeatedly bombarded the town.
During the great schism of the West, the hostile entries of Ladislaus of Naples, and the tumultuous government of the famous Perugian, Braccio Montone, despoiled the tomb of Hadrian, and doubtless other monuments. Yet that violence is supposed to have been less pernicious than the peaceful spoliation which succeeded the extinction of the schism of Martin V, in 1417; and the suppression of the last revolt of the Romans by his successor Eugenius IV, in 1434: for from that epoch is dated the consumption of such marble or travertine, as might either be stripped with facility from the stone monuments, or be found in isolated fragments.
We now give place to a description of what remained in the time of Poggio Bracciolini. Besides a bridge, an arch, a sepulchre, and the pyramid of Cestius, he could discern, of the age of the republic, 1, a double row of vaults, in the salt-office of the Capitol, which were inscribed with the name and munificence of Catullus. 2, Eleven temples were visible, in some degree, from the perfect form of the Pantheon to the three arches and a marble column of the temple of Peace, which Vespasian erected after the civil wars and the Jewish triumph. 3, Of the public baths, none were sufficiently entire to represent the use and distribution of the several parts; but those of Diocletian and Caracalla still retained the titles of the founders, and astonished the curious spectator; who, in observing their solidity and extent, the variety of marbles, the size and multitude of the columns, compared the labour and expense with the use and the importance. Of the baths of Constantine, of Alexander, of Domitian, or rather of Titus, some vestige might yet be found. 4, The triumphal arches of Titus, Severus, and Constantine were entire, both the structures and the inscriptions; a falling fragment was honoured with the name of Trajan; and two arches were still extant in the Flaminian way. 5, After the wonder, of the Coliseum, Poggio might have overlooked a small amphitheatre of brick, most probably for the use of the Prætorian camp: the theatres of Marcellus and Pompey were occupied, in a great measure, by public and private buildings; and in the Circus Agonalis and Maximus, little more than the situation and the form could be investigated. 6, The columns of Trajan and Antonine were still erect; but the Egyptian obelisks were broken or buried. A people of gods and heroes, the workmanship of art, was reduced to one equestrian figure of gilt brass, and to five marble statues, of which the most conspicuous were the two horses of Phidias and Praxiteles. 7, The two mausoleums or sepulchres of Augustus and Hadrian could not totally be lost; but the former was visible only as a mound of earth; and the latter, the castle of St. Angelo, had acquired the name and appearance of a modern fortress. With the addition of some separate and nameless columns, such were the remains of the ancient city.
In the intervals between the two visits of Poggio to Rome, the cell, and part of the Temple of Concord, and the base of the tomb of Metella, were ground to lime; also a portico near the Minerva. Poggio’s description of the ruins, it may be observed, is not sufficiently minute or correct to supply the deficiency of his contemporary Blondus; but we may distinctly mark, that the site of ancient Rome had arrived at the desolation in which it is seen at the present day. The Rome of the lower and middle ages was a mass of irregular lanes, built upon or amongst ruins, and surmounted by brick towers, many of them on ancient basements. The streets were so narrow, that two horsemen could ride abreast. Two hundred houses, three towers, and three churches, choked up the forum of Trajan. The reformation of Sixtus IV., and the embellishments of his successors, have obliterated this town, and that which is now seen is a capital, which can only date from the end of the fifteenth century.
Not long before the imperialists carried Rome, the Colonnas, in 1526, sacked it, as it were; and that was followed by that of the Abate di Farfa, and the peasantry of the Orsini family151.
Rome was assaulted by the Bourbon, May 5, 1527; and the imperialists left it February 17, 1528.
No sooner was the Bourbon in sight of Rome, than he harangued his troops, and pointed to the end of all their sufferings. Being destitute of artillery, with which he might batter the walls, he instantly made his dispositions for an assault; and having discovered a breach, he planted, with his own hands, a ladder against the rampart, and prepared to mount it, followed by his German bands. But, at that instant, a shot, discharged from the first arquebuse which was fired, terminated at once his life and his misfortunes. Much fruitless inquiry has been made to ascertain the author of his death, which is commonly attributed to a priest; but Benvenuto Cellini, so well known by his extraordinary adventures and writings, lays claim to the merit of killing this hero. By whatever hand he fell he preserved, even in the act of expiring, all his presence as well as greatness of mind. He no sooner felt himself wounded, than he ordered a Gascon captain, named Jonas, to cover him with a cloak, in order to conceal his death, lest it should damp the courage of his soldiers. Jonas executed his commands with punctuality. The Constable still continued to breathe when the city was taken. He was, therefore, carried thither, and there expired, May 5, 1527, at thirty-eight years of age.