cardinals and lords, who kept blessing me and giving me the heartiest
encouragement. In my enthusiasm I strove to achieve the impossible; let
it suffice that it was I who saved the castle that morning, and brought
the other bombardiers back to their duty. [8] I worked hard the whole of
that day; and when the evening came, while the army was marching into
Rome through the Trastevere, Pope Clement appointed a great Roman
nobleman named Antonio Santacroce to be captain of all the gunners. The
first thing this man did was to come to me, and having greeted me with
the utmost kindness, he stationed me with five fine pieces of artillery
on the highest point of the castle, to which the name of the Angel
specially belongs. This circular eminence goes round the castle, and
surveys both Prati and the town of Rome. The captain put under my orders
enough men to help in managing my guns, and having seen me paid in
advance, he gave me rations of bread and a little wine, and begged me to
go forward as I had begun. I was perhaps more inclined by nature to the
profession of arms than to the one I had adopted, and I took such
pleasure in its duties that I discharged them better than those of my
own art. Night came, the enemy had entered Rome, and we who were in the
castle (especially myself, who have always taken pleasure in
extraordinary sights) stayed gazing on the indescribable scene of tumult
and conflagration in the streets below. People who were anywhere else
but where we were, could not have formed the least imagination of what
it was. I will not, however, set myself to describe that tragedy, but
will content myself with continuing the history of my own life and the
circumstances which properly belong to it.

Note 1. War had broken out in 1521 between Charles V and Francis I,
which disturbed all Europe and involved the States of Italy in serious
complications. At the moment when this chapter opens, the Imperialist
army under the Constable of Bourbon was marching upon Rome in 1527.