On the morning of May 6, 1527, the city of Rome awoke a beautiful spring day to an unimaginable nightmare. The walls of the Eternal City,

long seen as impregnable, were suddenly breached by an army of 20,000 men under the banner

of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Hello, my friend, and welcome to the Renaissance English

History podcast, a part of the

Agora podcast network, and the longest running Tudor history podcast, telling stories of Tudor

England since 2009. I am your host, Heather Tesco, and I'm a storyteller who makes history

accessible because I believe it's a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity.

This is episode 249. We are talking about the sack of Rome.

Something that did not happen in Tudor England, but very much affected everything that was going on in Tudor England because this

was also right at the time that Henry VIII first started to float the idea of leaving Catherine

of Aragon. So we are going to talk today about the sack of Rome, what it was, what led to it,

and how it affected Henry and people in England. First, your reminder, TudorCon is coming up.

September 20th to 22nd. You can join us online. The in-person tickets are sold out. You can come

online, learn more, Englandcast.com slash TudorCon online. Very, very excited to have three days of nerding out on Tudor history

with some of your new best friends from all over the world. And TudorCon and this podcast is sponsored

by Armour and Castings right now. We are so happy to have them as a sponsor. They make beautiful

accessories and jewelry for Tudor outfits. So I actually just did

an unboxing video on my YouTube channel. They had sent me some stuff we're going to use as gifts at

TudorConnor as prizes for people who win the costume contest and the trivia contest and stuff like that.

So they sent me some stuff and I did an unboxing video on my YouTube channel so you can check that out.

Tudor.armoringcastings.com.

Okay. So back to Rome. These soldiers who are invading Rome are a volatile mix of battle-hardened Spaniards,

...