Amin Maalouf - Leo Africanus

In fact the Pope was obliged to accept all Colonna’s demands. He signed an agreement promising to withdraw from the Holy League against the emperor, and refrain from taking any sanctions against the guilty cardinal. Of course, as soon as the attackers had gone he made it known to all that there was no question of him respecting a treaty imposed under conditions of duress, terror and sacrilege.

The day after this violent incident, while Clement was still fulminating against the emperor and his allies, news arrived in Rome of the victory of Sultan Sulaiman at Mohàcs, and of the death of the King of Hungary, the emperor’s brother-in-law. The Pope summoned me to ask me whether, in my opinion, the Turks were going to launch an assault on Vienna, whether they would soon push on into Germany, or move towards Venice. I had to say that I did not have the slightest idea. The Holy Father seemed extremely concerned. Guicciardini judged that the responsibility for this defeat lay entirely with the emperor, who was waging war in Italy and attacking the King of France instead of defending the lands of Christendom against the Turks, instead of fighting the heresy which was devastating Germany. He added:

‘Why should one expect the Germans to go to the aid of Hungary if Luther tells them morning and night: “The Turks are the chastisement which God has sent us. To oppose them is to oppose the wish of the Creator!” ’

Clement VII nodded in approval. Guicciardini waited until we were outside to let me share in his extreme satisfaction:

‘The victory of the Ottoman will change the course of history. Perhaps this is the miracle which we were waiting for.’

That year I put the final touches to my Description of Africa . Then, without taking a single day’s rest, I decided to set to work on the chronicle of my own life and the events in which I had been involved. Maddalena thought that the sight of me working with such frenzy was a bad omen.

‘It’s as if our time was running out,’ she would say.

I would have liked to reassure her, but my mind was beset by the same obsessive apprehensions: Rome was fading away, my Italian existence was coming to an end, and I did not know when I would have the time to write again.

933 A.H.

8 October 1526 — 26 September 1527

Thus came my fortieth year, that of my last hope, of my final desertion.

Giovanni of the Black Bands was sending the most reassuring news from the front, confirming the Pope, the Curia and the whole of Rome in the false impression that the war was very far away and would remain there. The Imperial forces are north of the Po and will never cross it , the condottiere promised. And from Trastevere to the Trevi quarter people delighted to boast of the gallantry of the Medici and his men. Romans longstanding or of passage vied with each other in their contempt for ‘those barbarian Germans’, who, as everyone knows, have always looked at the Eternal City with envy, greed and a relentless lack of understanding.

I could not join in this mad euphoria, so deeply were tales of the last days of Granada engraved upon my memory, when my father, my mother, Sarah and the whole crowd of those soon to be exiled were persuaded that deliverance was certain, when they affected unanimous contempt for a triumphant Castile, when they cast deep suspicion upon anyone who dared to question the imminent arrival of assistance. Having learned from the misfortune of my own family, I had come to be distrustful of appearances. When everyone persists in the same opinion, I turn away from it; the truth is surely elsewhere.

Guicciardini reacted in the same way. Appointed lieutenant-general of the papal troops, he was in the north of Italy, together with Giovanni, whom he observed with a mixture of admiration and fury: He is a man of great courage, but he risks his life in the merest skirmish. But if anything should happen to him, it would be impossible to contain the flood of the imperial troops . Written in a letter to the Pope, these complaints only came to light in Rome when they already had become meaningless; struck down by a falconer’s ball, the chief of the Black Bands had his leg shattered. An amputation was necessary. It was dark, and Giovanni insisted on holding the torch himself while the doctor cut off the limb with a saw. Pointless suffering, because the wounded man expired shortly after the operation.

Of all the men I have known, Tumanbay the Circassian and Giovanni of the Black Bands were certainly the most courageous. The first had been killed by the Sultan of the East, the second by the Emperor of the West. The first had been unable to save Cairo; the second could not spare Rome from the suffering which awaited her.

In the city, there was immediate panic once the news of his death became known. The enemy had only advanced a few miles, but it was as if they were already at the gates of the city, as if the disappearance of Giovanni had torn down the fortresses, dried up the rivers and flattened the mountains.

In fact, nothing seemed able to halt the advancing tide. Before his death, the chief of the Black Bands was desperately attempting to prevent two powerful imperial armies joining forces in northern Italy; the one, composed principally of Castilians, was in the vicinity of Milan, while the other, by far the more dangerous, consisted of German lansquenets, almost all of whom were Lutherans from Bavaria, Saxony and Franconia. They had crossed the Alps and invaded the Trentino with the conviction that they had been entrusted with some divine mission, to chastise the Pope, who was guilty of having corrupted Christianity. Ten thousand uncontrollable heretics, marching against the Pope under the banner of a Catholic emperor; such was the calamity which engulfed Italy that year.

The death of Giovanni, followed by the hurried retreat of the Black Bands, had enabled all the imperial troops to join forces and to cross the Po, determined to go as far as the palace of St Peter. There must have been about thirty thousand soldiers, badly dressed, badly fed and badly paid, who reckoned on living off the country and exploiting it. They came first to Bologna, which put up a considerable ransom in order to be spared; then it was the turn of Florence, where the plague had just broken out, and which also paid a heavy tribute to prevent itself being pillaged. Guicciardini, who had played a part in these negotiations, strongly advised the Pope to make a similar agreement.

Once more, there was a sense of euphoria; peace was within reach, people said. On 25 March 1527 the Viceroy of Naples, Charles de Lannoy, the special envoy of the emperor, arrived at Rome to conclude an agreement. I was in the middle of the crowd in St Peter’s Square, to be present at this moment of deliverance. The weather was fine, a marvellous spring day, when the notable arrived, surrounded by his bodyguard. But at the very moment when he entered the gate of the Vatican, there was a flash of lightning, followed by a torrential outburst of rain which poured down on us with a noise which seemed to herald the end of the world. When the first shock had passed I ran to take shelter in a doorway, which was soon surrounded by a sea of mud.

At my side, a woman was soon wailing loudly, lamenting this evil portent. Hearing her, I remembered the flood at Granada, which I had experienced through the eyes of my mother, may God surround her with His mercy! Was this, once again, a sign from Heaven, a harbinger of disaster? However, that day there was no overflowing of the Tiber, nor ruinous floods, nor great slaughter. In fact the peace agreement was signed at the end of the afternoon. To ensure that the city should be spared, it stipulated that the Pope should hand over a substantial sum of money.