IN a few days the Emperor, who had been intent on crushing the Reformation, was enlisting soldiers in Germany to go to war against the pope Thus had God in a marvelous way confounded the counsel of the wicked, and given his people peace.
The army led by that old General Frundsberg, who encouraged Luther as he went into the Diet of Worms, proceeded to Rome and spite of all resistance they took the city. They waited till midnight trying to get the pope to come to terms of peace; but it was useless. As midnight drew on the soldiers grew impatient, and disbanded, and commenced the event known in history as "the sack of Rome." The soldiers dispersed all over the city, and pillaged everything they could lay hands on worth their taking. The soldiers from Germany visited the churches, and carried off the chalices, the pyxes, and silver remonstrances, and they clothed their camp-boys in the vestments they found in the churches. For ten days the "sack" continued; a large booty was collected, and from five to eight thousand victims fell by the sword.
Clement and his cardinals had taken refuge in the castle of Saint Angelo; but he was in great fear of being blown into the air by the invaders. And though he had formed an alliance with the king of France and the Venetians, and made the King of England preserver and protector, no one came to his relief. At length he capitulated; he renounced his alliance against the Emperor, and agreed to remain prisoner until Rome had paid the army four hundred thousand ducats, equal to £185,000.
This treatment of the pope made manifest the true character of the Emperor. At times he could talk of the sacred office of the pope, but in taking Rome he had treated the city in a way it had never before been treated, even by the Barbarians. This drew from the whole of Christendom a loud cry of execration upon the head of Charles, and then he declared that he did not know that his general was going to enter Rome. He and his court went into mourning, and he had prayers said for the deliverance of the pope a deliverance which he could have effected at once by an order to his generals.
On the other hand, the friends of the gospel stood in amazement to see the judgment of God. Here was a man held to be most sacred, and a city revered by all the Catholics, yet by them he was imprisoned and the city stripped. The wrath of man was to have fallen on the gospel—it fell on the papacy. The Evangelicals could but say that it was the Lord who was fighting for them against their enemies.
“Leave to God's sovereign sway
To choose and to command,
So shalt thou wondering own His way
How wise, how strong His hand;
Far, far above thy thought
His counsel shall appear,
When He the work hath fully wrought
That caused thee needless fear.
“Thou seek our weakness, Lord,
Our hearts are known to thee;
O lift thou up the sinking hand,
Confirm the feeble knee.
Let us in life, in death,
Thy steadfast truth declare;
And publish with our latest breath,
Thy love and guardian care.”