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Addressing this greedy horde of soldiers of fortune, he told them that he was now but a poor gentleman, like themselves, and promised that if they would follow him he would make them rich or die in the attempt. Finishing his remarks, which were greeted with enthusiastic cheers, he distributed among them all his money and jewels, keeping little more than his clothes and armor for himself.

“We will follow you everywhere, to the devil himself!” shouted the wild horde of adventurers. “No more of Julius Caesar, Hannibal, and Scipio! Hurrah for the fame of Bourbon!”

Putting himself at the head of this tumultuous array, the duke led them southward through Italy, halting before Bologna, Florence, and other towns, with a half-formed purpose to besiege them, but in the end pushing on without an assault until, on the 5th of May, 1527, his horde of land pirates came in sight of Rome itself.

The imperial city, after being sacked by the Goths, Vandals, and other barbarians, had remained without serious damage for a thousand years, but now another army was encamped under its walls, and one equally bent on havoc and ruin with those of the past.

“Now is the time to show courage, manliness, and the strength of your bodies,” said Bourbon to his followers. “If in this bout you are victorious, you will be rich lords and well off for the rest of your lives. Yonder is the city whereof, in times past, a wise astrologer prophesied concerning me, telling me that I should die there; but I swear to you that I care but little for dying there if, when I die, my corpse be left with endless glory and renown throughout the world.”

He then bade them to retire for the night, ordering them to be ready betimes in the morning for the assault, which would take place at an early hour on that day. Hardly, indeed, had the stars faded before the sunrise of May 6, when the soldiers were afoot and making ready for the assault. Bourbon placed himself at their head, clad all in white that he might be better seen and known. To the walls they advanced, bearing scaling ladders, which they hastened to place. On the first raised of these Bourbon set foot, with the soldier’s desire to be the earliest in the assault. But hardly had he taken two steps up the ladder than his grasp loosened and he fell backward, with blood gushing from his side. He had been hit with an arquebuse-shot in the left side and mortally wounded.

He had but voice enough left to bid those near him to cover his body with a cloak and take it away, that his followers might not know of his death. Those were the last words recorded of the Duke of Bourbon. He died as he had lived, a valiant soldier and a born adventurer, hurling havoc with his last words on the great city of the Church; for his followers, not knowing of his death, attacked so furiously that the walls were soon carried and the town theirs. Then, as news came to them that their leader had fallen, they burst into the fury of slaughter, shouting, “Slay, slay! blood, blood! Bourbon! Bourbon!” and cutting down remorselessly all whom they met.

The celebrated artist, Benvenuto Cellini, tells us in his autobiography that it was he who shot Bourbon, aiming his arquebuse from the wall of the Campo Santo at one of the besiegers who was mounted higher than the rest, and who, as he afterwards learned, was the leader of the assailing army.

Whoever it was that fired the fatal shot, the slain man was frightfully avenged, Rome being plundered, ravaged, and devastated by his brutal followers to a degree not surpassed by the work of the Vandals of old. For several months the famous city remained in the hands of this licentious soldiery, and its inhabitants were subjected to every outrage and barbarity which brutal desire and ungoverned license could incite, while in none of its former periods of ravage were so many of the precious relics of antiquity destroyed as in this period of occupation by men who called themselves the soldiers of civilized and Christian lands.