The celebrated artist-in-gold, Benvenuto Cellini, says, in his Life written by himself, that it was he who, from the top of the wall of the Campo Santo at Rome, aiming his arquebuse at the midst of a group of besiegers, amongst whom he saw one man mounted higher than the rest, hit him, and that he then saw an extraordinary commotion around this man, who was Bourbon, as he found out afterwards. [Vita di Benvenuto Cellini, ch. xvii. pp. 157-159.] “I have heard say at Rome,” says Brantome on the contrary, “that it was held that he who fired that wretched arquebuse-shot was a priest.” [Brantome, t. ii. p. 268.]

Whatever hand it was that shot down Bourbon, Rome, after his death, was plundered, devastated and ravaged by a brutal, greedy, licentious, and fanatical soldiery.  Europe was moved at the story of the sack of Rome and the position of the pope, who had taken refuge in the castle of St. Angelo.  Francis I. and Henry VIII. renewed their alliance; and a French army under the command of Lautrec advanced into Italy.  Charles V., fearing lest it should make a rapid march to Rome and get possession of the pope whilst delivering him from captivity, entered into negotiations with him; and, in consideration of certain concessions to the emperor, it was arranged that the pope should be set at liberty without delay.  Clement VII. was so anxious to get out of his position, lately so perilous and even now so precarious, that he slank out of the castle of St. Angelo in the disguise of a tradesman the very night before the day fixed by the emperor for his liberation; and he retired to Orvieto, on the territory occupied by the French army.  During this confusion of things in Italy, Charles V. gave orders for arresting in Spain the ambassadors of Francis I. and of Henry VIII., who were in alliance against him, and who, on their side, sent him two heralds-at-arms to declare war against him.  Charles V. received them in open audience at Burgos, on the 22d of January, 1528.  “I am very much astonished,” said he to the French envoy, “to find the King of France declaring against me a war which he has been carrying on for seven years; he is not in a position to address to me such a declaration; he is my prisoner.  Why has he taken no notice of what I said to his ambassador immediately after his refusal to execute the treaty of Madrid?” Charles V. now repeated, in the very terms addressed to the French ambassador, the communication to which he alluded:  “The king your master acted like a Bastard and a scoundrel in not keeping his word that he gave me touching the treaty of Madrid; if he likes to say to the contrary, I will maintain it against him with my body to his.”  When these words were reported to Francis I., he summoned, on the 27th of March, 1528, the princes of the blood, the cardinals, the prelates, the grandees of the kingdom, and the ministers from foreign courts, and, after having given a vivid account of his relations