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.