left hand, and cheering on his men with his right, he was struck to
the ground by a bullet which passed through his thigh. The credit
of that lucky shot, which cut short a career commenced in treason,
closed in sacrilege, is claimed by Benvenuto Cellini. He tells us
that on hieing to the Campo Santo with two comrades, he beheld from
the walls the enemy assaulting the spot where they stood; whereupon
they discharged their pieces in terror, he aiming at a figure
singled out in the mist from its commanding height. Having mustered
courage to peep over the wall, he saw a great confusion occasioned
by the Constable's fall, and, fleeing with his friends through the
cemetery, escaped by St. Peter's to the castle of S. Angelo.[*4]
This assertion, which has generally passed for gasconade, receives
support from the Vatican MS., wherein the shot is ascribed to some
silversmith lads who, from the Mount of the Holy Crucifix, aimed at
the general's white mantle and plume; and a monumental tablet outside
the Church of S. Spirito commemorates Bernardino Passeri, goldsmith
and jeweller to Clement and his two predecessors, who was killed on
the 6th of May, on the adjoining part of the Janicular, after slaying
many of the enemy, and capturing a standard. About five hundred paces
to the west of that reach of the modern city wall which commands the
Cavallegieri gate, there stands on the road to the Fornaci a small
oratory, called the Capella di Barbone, and pointed out by tradition
as the spot where Bourbon was wounded. No account, however, which I
have seen, countenances the idea of his having fallen so far away;
nor is it possible, even when no mist intervenes, to see either that
point, or the site of the present exterior city wall, from the old
cemetery of S. Spirito, whence the fatal shot appears to have been
aimed. But from whatever spot or hand it proceeded, the wound was
mortal, and the Constable died in his thirty-ninth year, ere he could
witness the desecration or share the booty to which he had stimulated
his followers. Yet had God's just judgment on the traitor been
withheld for a time, his influence might, perhaps, have stayed the
fury of the soldiery, and Rome might have been spared some portion of
the misery that ensued. His body was carried to Gaeta, and his armour
is still shown at the Vatican, a plain coat of immense strength. It,
however, bears an indentation on the inner side of the right thigh,
where the fatal bullet entered after grazing its steel edge.[5]
[Footnote *4: Cf. _The Life of Benvenuto Cellini_, trans. by J.A.
Symonds (Nimmo, 1896), p. 656.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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