Knocking Rome about a bit ...... the sack of the City in 1527 ... on the wireless today

 Now this is one I found fascinating.

It is the story of The Sack of Rome in 1527 from the series In Our Time.

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the infamous assault of an army of the Holy Roman Emperor on the city of Rome in 1527. 

The troops soon broke through the walls of this holy city and, with their leader shot dead early on, they brought death and destruction to the city on an epic scale. 

Later writers compared it to the fall of Carthage or Jerusalem and soon the mass murder, torture, rape and looting were followed by disease which was worsened by starvation and opened graves. 

It has been called the end of the High Renaissance, a conflict between north and south, between Lutherans and Catholics, and a fulfilment of prophecy of divine vengeance and, perhaps more persuasively, a consequence of military leaders not feeding or paying their soldiers other than by looting.

With Stephen Bowd, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Edinburgh, Jessica Goethals, Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Alabama and Catherine Fletcher, Professor of History at Manchester Metropolitan University

Producer: Simon Tillotson"

Pictures; Rome, 2009 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Sack of Rome 1527, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001whfr