Whatever you were expecting, this ain’t it. Theresa brings us an unsettling tale about a group of scientists in the 1970s who placed Felicia, a ferret, in a particle accelerator for scientific purposes. Apparently, they needed to clean out the four miles of tubes, and what better way than a diaper-wearing ferret?
Angie struggles to find a transition to her story when she pivots to recap the 1527 Sack of Rome. She ends up naming all of the famous people alive during this time as they all enter the chat.
This episode pairs well with:
Siwash, the duck that fought in the Marines
Mehmed II
Transcript
Theresa: Hi, and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast, a podcast where two compulsive nut jobs are going to just mainline all the history stories we can get. Find the craziest little bit of nuance that really corrupt the search history. And then report back to each other with the stories we’ve only recently learned. I’m host one. I’m Teresa, and that is host two. I’m Angie.
Angie: I say that like it’s a surprise.
Theresa: Right. And Angie, I actually, at the 155, I’m going to do something brand new. I’m going to make you take your headphones off. I bet you didn’t see that coming. This is a new, she’s lying to you. They’re off.
Okay. So I’ve got another story suggested by Panda Hime 07. Panda Hime. Little did you realize this on TikTok, this was going to be the gift that kept given.
My sources are Atlas Obscura, Why Physicists Tried to Put a Fair in a Particle Accelerator, by Jen Pinkowski, and IFL Science Felicia, the diaper wearing ferret was sent into a particle accelerator for science by Rachel Finnell. Hey, she is.
Angie: I can’t look at you when you have, tell me to take my headphones off because then I can try to read your lips. Oh, you wouldn’t. They wouldn’t have made sense. Love this for me.
Theresa: Okay. So I want you to think back, February of 1971. You were just looking back in your mother’s eye. There’s physicists at the National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. I want to say Bavaria and I really know that it wasn’t. That’s why you saw me stutter and just panic. They’ve begun testing the biggest machine in the world. Okay. It is a ring-shaped 20 billion electron volt proton synchrotron particle accelerator. Accelerator. Yes. Go. So this is how you get superpowers. Now the stakes are incredibly high.
There’s a man, he is the NAL director, Bob Wilson. He’s told the Department of Energy that he could get it running within five years for just a cool $250 million. In 71. In 71. Okay.
Angie: That would be like $250 billion today.
Theresa: It feels like it. Yeah. Now they’re four years into this five-year mark. Okay. He’s been burning money like you wouldn’t believe and there is a four-mile-long stainless steel tube that was successfully pieced together on schedule. On schedule. And they’re running into a perplexing problem. The damn thing won’t start. They plug it in. You know, and here’s where you get that TikTok sound. I know what’s wrong with it.
Ain’t no gas in it. So first I’m going to tell you a little bit of background. The NAL, which is today it’s known as Fermilab. It’s named after a dude who’s a physicist named Enrico Fermi.
Now there’s a chain of accelerators. There is, I don’t know how much of this, I’m going to say all of this and it’s going to sound like I know what I’m talking about. I’ve done a ton of research. I have a BS degree, not for bullshit, but for Bachelor of Science. Yeah, I’m a much major. So recognize that I’m reading a script.
I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. Now there is a linear accelerator, a booster, a recycler ring, and a main injector ring. Now that linear accelerator or that Linux provides a proton beam. They kind of jump starts things with an initial jolt of energy.
The booster accelerates it and then the recycler batches it into groups of protons for a more intense beam and then the main injector ring zaps the beam around tens of thousands of times to nearly the speed of light. I like this. Okay. Now the particle is inset to various testing facilities where they’re smashed together against a fixed target. This is the resulting collision, right? And it’s observed by the particle detector and this reveals the interiors and sometimes it creates exotic particles. And exotic particles just sounds like a strip bar for scientists.
Angie: And if it’s not, it should be.
Theresa: You heard it here first, but we trademarked it. So we just want to drink named after us. We’re not going to take royalties.
Angie: Yeah, pretty much. I would like mine to glow. Thank you.
Theresa: Oh, I like what you’re doing. I mean, by glow it could have been served in the radium glass. Okay. It’ll glow. Right? I mean, I’m just trying to help out. Now back in 71, the design a little bit different for one thing because you and I both know how these things are designed. We’ve got the models on our desks. We’ve built them since we were children. At a LEGOs.
Why not? Now, the design apparently back in the day was a bit different. The injector and recycling rings, they didn’t exist. What it did, what basically what did exist was there was a four mile stretch of the accelerator.
Like this thing just went on and on and on. And that was called the main ring and it was outfitted with magnets, which would guide the beam through the accelerator. So there’s 774 dipole magnets, which would steer the beam, which I didn’t know you could, but people smarter than I. And then there’s 240 quadruple magnets, magnets, not magnets. And that would focus the beam.
Angie: It was like, wait, this is an added feature.
Theresa: And suddenly we’re at a body farm. And now we’re getting into a true crime, which is where I shine. It’s the story I was not expecting today. You’re welcome. I promise you it’s going to go a very weird direction here shortly. Now the magnets that I’m talking about, these suckers aren’t the ones you hold your groceries list up on the fridge. Each magnet is 20 feet long and weighs nearly 13 tons. Okay. So a bit industrial. Now.
Angie: Yeah, you can buy them on eBay, not Amazon.
Theresa: At first, two of the magnets failed when fiberglass insulation around their coils broke. And that soon just became two in one day. And over the next several months, the team replaced 350 magnets. That feels like a lot.
This is a bit unfortunate, if you will. So they did this thing where, you know, like basically every time they do it, they would send this beam out. And as it would go to accelerate, the magnets would short out. And then that’s when Luigi Yamada, he is apparently a physicist there. He realized the cause, that there’s metal slivers that were left behind when they cut it into vacuum tubes.
Okay. So like speed bumps. But just little tiny slivers. It just wasn’t fully cleaned up.
There’s just some crumbs on the counter. Yeah. Okay. And so when the magnets are excited to a higher field, he writes this, not me thinking about it, they’re pulled inside the magnet gap. So they stand up and stop the beam. Okay. Because they’re just magnetic. That sort of makes sense, yeah. But how do they get the slivers out? A big ass vacuum. That’s four miles long.
Angie: No, but unfortunately. It’s a very long extension cord. Here’s where Bob enters the picture.
Theresa: Okay. Bob Sheldon, he’s the laboratory worker. He lives near Oxford in the UK. He’s famous, apparently for his entrepreneurial skills. He’s hired by a manager at NAL to be something of a miracle worker. Basically, if something goes awry, if things are too expensive, he just fixes it. He just finds a solution. He’s the fixer. He’s the Olivia Pope of the accelerator. And so he sits down. He goes, you know what?
I got an idea. And something he’s snowed about Bob. Because he’s from Yorkshire, he’s very aware of hunting. He’s very familiar with hunting. He’s familiar with using ferrets to flush out rabbits by just sending them into burrows.
Okay. And he’s thinking, you know, a ferret would fit nicely into this hole that’s roughly the size of a tennis ball. And I bet it would have no problem just disappearing into this manmade burrow.
Angie: Maybe I don’t know what ferrets look like. Long weasels. Super cute. Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Theresa: I don’t know what ferrets look like then. I am questioning if you’re sending the ferret in. What is his fur going to pick up the magnet shards?
Theresa: Well, that’s a good question. Because he’s thinking they could probably, I mean, there’s like, you could get it to tow a rope and then you could run something through. Like you could do all kinds of stuff, right? But you initially got to get in there.
Angie: Okay. So four mile carrot on the string.
Theresa: Basically, yeah. So they get a ferret that arrived by special delivery from the Wild Game and Fur Farm in Gaylord, Minnesota. Of course, 15 inches long. She’s the smallest ferret they had. She’s got brown fur. She’s brown and black, I should say, except for she’s got some white patches on her face. Okay, I love this. Yep. And they call her Felicia.
Angie: Yeah. The episode is going to be called Bath Felicia.
Theresa: I don’t, I agree to your term. Now, remember how I told you how this guy, like he’s just the fixer? His solution for these magnets that I’m sure aren’t cheap. His solution, Felicia, costs $35.
Okay. Basically, our boy just rolled up to PetSmart and was like, I’ll take her. Put her in the box.
Thank you so much. And, you know, he’s thinking we’ll just push her into the hole and she’s going to find the source of the blockage. But then everybody goes, but she poops, right? Don’t you notice those little black things in the box? Like, what are we going to do with those? She can’t poop in there.
And so they’re going through all kinds of things. Apparently, there’s a report on the website that talked about the idea of using laxatives on this poor thing before they send her in the tube. You’ve got to make sure she’s squeaky clean. We put her in there. Clear her out.
Okay. And then they ended up solving the problem in a bit different of a way. They went with diapers. That was going to be my suggestion. Was it really? Yeah. Well, where were you in 71? You could have solved my doctor.
Angie: I was still just the diamond speck in my dad’s eye. I wasn’t even around for another 13 years. I look. I’m just trying to help you.
Theresa: Now, they ended up putting a custom collar around Felicia’s neck and the diaper around her rear. And then they just popped her in the thing and they attached a string to her collar.
I should say that. So the goal is that she’s going to run the string from one end of the tube to the other. Okay. So, and then they would just attach a cleansing dip swab on the string and just pull it right on through.
Okay. I mean, I say pull it right on through. But if it’s four miles long, that’s quite a bit of a problem.
I’m just pulling it through the pulley system. Yeah. We’ll see Felicia at the end of the day. Yeah.
Small problem. Felicia refused to enter the main ring of the vacuum tube. Because, I mean, she gets there. It’s narrow. It’s, there is no light. It is four miles of darkness.
Angie: Yeah. Maybe we add on, oh, shine a flashlight through it.
Theresa: I mean, you can’t, it’s going to take a while. It’s been not light, right? Four miles long.
Angie: It’s true. It’s a circle. Okay. Never mind.
Theresa: But, you know, at the end of the day, she, she pops up. She’s tired. She’s perfectly healthy though. So this results in her recon mission really not turning up any of these blockages. So it’s back to the drawing board for these mathematicians. Okay. So they, they take her, they teach her, they teach Felicia our little ferret Felicia to scamper through some progressively longer and longer tunnels.
And they get her built up to the point where she’s able to tackle a 300 foot section that’s going to be joined together to make the mason lab tubes. Okay. And this comes from Time Magazine. I love this. So this was quite the endeavor. Everyone. It’s a sensation, if you will. Everyone is focused on Felicia.
Angie: Is this going to be look at Felicia while we do something over here?
Theresa: And, you know, look, look, look over here, look over here. We wipe out all this orphanage. Yes. The smoldering ruins of the nunnery. Yeah. Yeah. Thankfully, no, thankfully, no, this is, this is a surprising, this is, this is probably the last positive story I’m going to tell for the next six weeks. Cool.
Angie: So the next six weeks, there will be a guest host.
Theresa: Yeah. I just wanted to do something lighthearted. But why? I’ll be like, but I gave you the ferret. You got Felicia.
Angie: Okay. You got the ferret. Okay. I hope you have something positive in seven weeks.
Theresa: Possibly. Now, so after her first run, she emerges. She’s a little tired, a little bemused, but she’s quite healthy. Right. And nope, that was actually from the other thing. Okay.
Angie: But when she, you actually set the notes going on right there. I, you know what?
Theresa: That mentioned, I am so, so tired. I got you, babe. I got you. Like I went to bed hours later and my body said, you know what you need? You need to wake up an hour earlier.
That’ll solve everything. Always does. And the coffee just laughed and says you put too much trust into me. Your faith is misplaced. My daughter.
No. So when Felicia first came out of the tubes, this is, this is the one thing they’ve noticed that she had sparks of dust and steel. So like, they’re like, oh my God, we were right. Kind of deal. Right. I think that’s ultimately where I’m going to go. I’m not even going to edit that out because I think that that was the key point I was trying to get to when I got lost.
Angie: She’s well, but she’s covered in sparks and dust.
Theresa: Or a specks of dust and steel. Yeah. Okay. Not exudust. Yeah. She wasn’t necessarily sparking herself.
Angie: Oh, you know, I’m just going to take it that way. I took it as like she was like sparkling. Like it was the metallic.
Theresa: Like, oh, I like that. She’s just glitter.
Angie: Just like how I took it. Okay. Great.
Theresa: So she ends up becoming a kind of laboratory pet and mascot. Good for her because she basically did her job. Right. Now they do go on to say that the media catches wind of her escapades. And that, you know, even though she would end up doing a total of seven successful runs, Time Magazine wonders if she’s ever, or if she should be rewarded with a mate.
Angie: And the other girl had a job. She was single. She was happy. Time stay out of it.
Theresa: An unnamed official responded. If Felicia became pregnant, she might not fit through the tubes. Which I’m just like, all right, sure. Which means we can’t think about maternity care even for a ferret.
Angie: I was just going to say, so we are fat shaming a ferret now.
Theresa: And we just, we’re not going to hold their job. She can come back after she deals with the litter. Give her her maternity leave. But hey, it was 71 and we haven’t kind of held a long way since. So this check.
Angie: I think ferrets should be the new mascot for feminine empowerment. Yes.
Theresa: Don’t put me in that tube. Now, there is a Fermilab archivist named Valerie Higgins. She’s also a historian. She goes on to say that Felicia was probably never likely in any danger during her runs that the section she ran through were basically under construction and they didn’t have any power running through them. So it’s not like there were radiation issues.
Okay. Now, apparently as far as getting stuck or suffocation goes that they were just hoping and relying on her instinct to explore the tunnels. So they didn’t think that she’d go down a tunnel that was a little too small.
Angie: Is it even possible for her to go down a tunnel that’s a little bit too small?
Theresa: Given the fact that I did get stuck in a child’s play tube at Burger King at one point in my life. I don’t know. I would hope that I’m smarter than a ferret. But perhaps.
Angie: I’m not going to ask you to elaborate, but I really want you to elaborate.
Theresa: Yeah, I sure do.
Theresa: Anyhow, moving right along. Okay. The NAL staff, they end up loving Felicia. Again, she’s the mascot, right? Reports say that she was fed chicken, liver, fish heads, raw hamburger. Just a ferret delight. A smorgasbord of treats.
Okay. Love this for her. And that some employees would take her home for a night when the mink farm that she would routinely bunk out if they didn’t have room for her. She would come home like the class pet.
Angie: I would assume they made room for her there at the lab. I love this class pet traveling home, though.
Theresa: I mean, I’m assuming it was like, look, we want to make sure she’s got 24-hour care. The weekend’s a bit rough, so she’s got to go home with somebody. Bad checks.
Okay. Meanwhile, there is an engineer named Hans Katspy, and he created what he called a magnetic ferret, and that would be to get the debris out of the ring. So he creates a bunch of mylar discs and connects them to a stainless steel rod and then puts that on a cable. This is the equivalent of the string that she had tied around her collar. And then they put a metal… They put a magnet on the end of that, right, so that they could push it through with compressing air and kind of clean everything out. Apparently, just by over-engineering it, once they figured out what was breaking all the magnets, then they knew how to fix it.
So with just 12 tries, they could make it through the entire ring. And that this would clean the whole vacuum pipe. It didn’t do it perfectly, but it did a good enough job.
Okay. Maybe Felicia could have done better if they had enticed her to, but they didn’t, right? And this ended up kind of working because over the next several months, the team was able to amp up the energy levels without shorting out the system.
And on March 1st, 1972, they got the accelerator to reach the target energy of 200 BEVs, or BEVs. Again, not a scientist. Okay. So Felicia ends up going into the semi-retirement. She spends most of her time as a pet on the mink farm, which feels like a bad place for a fair to be.
You look too much like the merchandise. Yeah. But one night, the following spring, she’s at the home of NAL employee Charles Crows, and she falls ill. Crows, because she’s beloved, takes her to the vet the very next day. And under medical care, she briefly rallies, but then within a couple of days, she’s died on March 9th, 1972.
And she ends up having an autopsy, and it’s revealed that she had a ruptured abscess to her intestinal tract. That’s wild. Right? Now, the village crier, apparently newspaper, noted that it was planned that Felicia’s body will be stuffed and mounted to be displayed permanently as a symbol of the early NAL development.
Angie: A taxidermied, taxidermied, taxidermied, yeah. Okay. Okay.
Theresa: But crazy thing, remember that archivist and historian, NAL, she’s never found any evidence that that happened. Nobody seems to recall if she was taxidermied, and they’ve tried to track down the people who worked with Felicia, looking for more information about her life after death. And there’s no luck. Many of them have passed away themselves. So maybe there’s just a taxidermied ferret in some broom closet.
Angie: I think it is of on somebody’s mantle with the bat hat.
Theresa: Yeah. Charles Croce took it home one last time, never brought it back.
Angie: Isn’t somebody shoebox under their bed? Yeah.
Theresa: And there’s jokes about, you know, if it’s hidden somewhere on a deep dark shelf, and Higgin says it seems very unlikely. I would love if I found that, but there’s too many corners, or there’s not too many corners, and at this point that somebody hasn’t been to. Basically, she’s like, look, we’ve explored every nook, every cranny, we’ve gone through everything twice, we’ve Marie Kondoed this bitch over and over again. We’d have found her.
Angie: Maybe they just had a little burial for her there on a property, and like said a few words in a moment of peace, you know?
Theresa: I mean, quite possibly. But I mean, basically the lab runs quite a bit. But I do have a photo of our girl.
Angie: Oh my God, she’s so cute.
Angie: Okay, it is a black and white image, and she is coming out, I think, of like one of the titles, but her little paws are on the ledge, and her upper body is coming out, and she’s just looking at the camera like, what’s up?
Yeah, I mean. And she has the cutest little face, like her nose is black, her snout is white, and then right behind it for like an inch is black, and then it’s white, and then it’s black. It’s a little bullseye. Like, yeah, it’s a bullseye. The copier ran out of ink. Yeah.
Theresa: But I mean, so cute. It is just the craziest little story. I love her. Yeah. I, so the titles you didn’t get that I was just like they were just wild wouldn’t make sense. Why physicists tried to put a ferret in a particle accelerator or Felicia, the diaper wearing ferret was sent into a particle accelerator for science. Those were all great.
Angie: And thank you for hiding it from me because the whole time you’re talking about a particle accelerator, I’m like, what is Bob going to do?
Theresa: Bob’s got a problem with magnets. I can’t wait to see where this goes.
Angie: You know what’s funny is they solved the problem. Like, okay, they used her and then the guy that creates the tool literally creates another version of her. Yeah. Yeah.
Theresa: But one that could be a little different. There was a podcast I listened to and I didn’t write it down. I should have, but they got the like, obviously Bob went to, you know, grew up in a hunting area, but apparently Felicia wasn’t the first ferret.
There was a ferret in New Zealand that was faced with a similar challenge and they lured him, I’m assuming male ferret, to go through the thing by like taking meat and an air compressor to like push the smell of like meat where they wanted him to go. So he was like, oh, dinner. I’m heading towards the barbecue. I love that.
Angie: So here’s what I think. This is wild. Okay. So they, they stick a ferret in a machine to try to clean the machine. And then our girl, the ferret dies of an abscess in her intestines that could have another needed tube. Yeah. Yeah. Another set of cleaning could have helped. Yeah.
Theresa: Where’s the ferret for the ferret? It’s what I’m hearing you ask. Yeah. It’s like ferret inception is what I’m.
Angie: Today’s nightners have been brought to you by Angie. Sorry. And when I say that, I’m not very. You just check this check. You know, we do, we do what we can, right? I’m going to tell you, I have no clear. There’s no, there’s no segue for me. So I’m just going to tell you that I’m going to tell you about the 1527 sack of Rome. Hell, yes.
Okay. My sources are an article on smart history, the sack of Rome. The darkest day in the history of the Swiss guard, it is from the Swiss, Swiss national museum by a man called Thomas. We though the sack of Rome. I didn’t really use this. What’s this source assignment?
I’m just going to include exciting. They’re called the EBS CO research center. A lovely timeline article from a P. And then the medievalist net has an article called hell itself was a more beautiful site to behold sack of Rome 1527 by Peter. Konie. Please forgive me if I say your name wrong, Peter.
Theresa: Peter, I’ll give you her personal address. You just email me at unhinge history. email.com.
Angie: I will personally walk you to Teresa’s front door.
Theresa: We don’t live next to each other, so I will enjoy watching your location change. It’s going to be awesome.
Angie: I’m going to tell you that I was originally going to do my story was going to be on the Vatican archives today. But we’ve had a real busy last few weeks and I don’t know if my brain just couldn’t comprehend it. But has it ever occurred to you that Vatican Archives history is pretty much the world’s history in a nutshell?
Theresa: I mean I wouldn’t necessarily go with the whole world, but at least the western.
Angie: Yeah, the western world’s history is there. It’s the whole thing. So I kept finding myself like I’d be one paragraph in and there would be three things in that paragraph that I had to go look up. And then I’d be one of the next paragraph and there’d be three more which is like, you know, that’s a moment we love to like constantly learn those things. But I was like, this is going to take 20 episodes and Teresa is going to kill me. So I just need to take a moment from the history of the Vatican.
Theresa: Look, just because any couple, and I’m going to say couple because you know, I feel like this is a committed relationship. Indeed. When one of us wanders in front of a bus, the authorities are going to look for hand prints on the back. They’re going to look to see if it is mine that it be pushed you in front of the express.
Angie: I know it’s not going to be hand print on the back from you, but rather something you’d secretly tied around my foot to just make me trip in front of the bus.
Theresa: So I tied your leg to the axle.
Angie: Here we go. All that to say, I didn’t want to leave you with six or seven episodes just on the Vatican History Archive. So I chose a moment from the Vatican’s history, and that is the 1527s act of Rome, which is also going to be a huge oversimplified version. If anything that I say interests you, please go read about it because I’m sure that there’s something I’m not saying that is really compelling.
That said, back story time. I’m going to do this as straightforward as possible and keep the names to a minimum, but I’m going to tell you, it’s a real awkward Thanksgiving dinner for this family because everybody’s involved. The Borscht. Oh, everybody. Oh, okay. All right.
All right. So we have this little, we’ve got this little skirmish. It’s called the Italian Wars, and they range from, excuse me, 1494 to 1559, and these Italian Wars have dragged other major power players into them. So think like France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Papal States, which at this time is a collection of states kind of in central Italy with Rome as its capital, and they border the kingdom of Naples to the south and other powers like Florence and Milan and Venice, right? Okay. So all the major power players of the Western world are a little bit in the mix of this. And basically it’s a pretty constant state of war for quite a while. Then, Giulio DiMidici becomes Pope Clement VII in 1523.
Theresa: Oh, Catherine’s family member. Right.
Angie: And he begins trying to navigate this sort of mess that he’s inherited, and he starts forming alliances to both protect and then expand like the papal influence, right? In 1526, Clement joins the League of Cognac, which is an alliance with the Kingdom of France, Pope Clement, the Republic of Venice, the Kingdom of England, the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Genoa, and the Republic of Florence, and obviously Florence is belonging to the Medici, and the whole goal of this alliance is to push back at the ever-growing dominance of the Habsburgs.
Theresa: Oh, yes. Yeah, that in breath. Right. Right. And this includes like the dominions of Charles V, primarily the Holy Roman Empire in Spain, because basically, Clement sees Charles V as a threat to papal power. And then in 1526, this group of allies, the League, they begin hostilities by attacking the Republic of Siena. But this proves a failure and immediately shows the weakness of the troops at the Pope’s disposal. So it’s like, hmm, maybe we should have thought our attack plan through here a little better. Here’s where it gets interesting. So the Imperial Army having, and this, the Imperial Army is Charles V’s army, having obviously just won the battle, you’d think they’d be all like in the throes of victory, right? Like they’re having a good time. Nope. There’s this little problem. There’s no funds to pay the soldiers.
Theresa: Oh, were we supposed to requisition that?
Angie: Well, this seems to be a problem since right about this time, Henry VIII dips out because, you know, he’s got stuff going on back home, and it leaves Charles in a bit of a lurch. Now, I don’t know if Henry VIII dipping out is the exact reason why all of a sudden Charles V can’t pay anybody, but it sure does line up really nice. Like maybe Henry VIII was funding a little more than they thought.
Um, so we have, we have that going on. Now, for some context, the Imperial Army consists of 6,000 Spaniards, 1,400 Lanschnicks, which they fight under George von Frudensburg. These guys are German mercenaries. The section of Italian infantry, and they also have on their side the powerful Italian Cardinal Pompano Colonna and Luigi Gonzaga.
And then there’s some cavalry under the command of a man called Fernando Gonzaga and Filbert, the Prince of Orange, because once again, the Prince of Orange has to be involved in the middle of everything. Now, because this whole awkward family affair wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t bring in the one cousin whose religious beliefs are slightly different than everybody else, Martin Luther himself is against this whole idea of, of both attacking Rome and the Pope, like, Hey guys, maybe we don’t, like maybe we don’t be violent. I don’t have to agree with the Pope to be like, well, maybe we should just leave the Pope alone, which feels wild to me to have the context that at any point in this story, Martin Luther was involved, but he was. So the problem is some of his followers view the Pope and the Pope’s capital city as a target, you know, for religious reasons.
Theresa: I mean, you say religious reasons. I just say reasons. Yeah.
Angie: There’s also outlaws and also the League of Cognac also has its own deserters who team up with the Imperial Army. So you have this sort of wild hodge podge of army. And let me tell you what they did next.
So these 34,000 troops throw a little mutiny and they forced their commander, a one Duke Charles III to Bobon to lead them to Rome. There. Oh, we’ve got the Bobons in here too. I’m telling you, it is a whole family affair.
Theresa: So you were just kind of going through being like, Oh, check, check, check.
Angie: Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay.
Theresa: Um, I have a question. Didn’t you say in every conflict, there’s like a couple of Irish men just bumming about?
Angie: Always there’s, you’re going to have one Scott. Always. I’m sure one of the main men stay around. I didn’t, but don’t think I’m not looking because I was wondering the same thing as I was writing my notes, but I was so tired that I was like, if I don’t get through the main portion of this, she’ll kill me. Um, so his men, they’re thinking like, Hey, Rome’s an easy target. It’s a little bit politically unstable right now. And this situation makes for wonderful pillaging.
So late April, it’s like the 20th. Bobon sees an opportunity to attack when political chaos breaks out. So basically what’s happened is there’s a rebellion in Florence against the powerful Medici family, you know, the family the Pope comes from, and this sort of distracts the Pope’s allies. And the Duke sends a message to Pope Clement basically saying, sorry, I can’t control my soldiers. They’re forcing me to march for Rome. I am literally like their prisoner. I’m like, I’m not even their leader anymore.
Like I’m their prisoner. People who witnessed these events and historians sense don’t buy this excuse one little bit. They think he was lying and very much wanted to attack Rome.
Theresa: So, I mean, you know, he had one very charismatic general who was like, look, if I forced you at gunpoint, I won’t, but if I did, you couldn’t stop me. Could you? I couldn’t. What’s the point? I got this, I got this dagger. Like, let’s just lie and say I did.
Angie: I mean, I’m going to pillage my way out of it. They’re never going to find me. So, right, like, oh, good. Let’s just have a good time, but. Right. Um, so as his army moves towards Rome, his soldiers who are poorly disciplined loot and destroy several towns along the way. By early May, they reached the walls of Rome itself. So for some context here, fighting on the side of Rome, basically it doesn’t have that big of an army to defend it. It’s only got like 5,000 local militiamen led by this guy called Renzo Dessuri. And around 189 Swiss guards that are loyal to the Pope. I need you to know that the side quest the Swiss guard took me on yesterday was ridiculous.
Theresa: But anyway, I really only know what I know about them from the one Archer episode where he thinks he’s going up against a couple of people and like some really pants and like a pike. And it’s like, no, they’re fully trained, basically mercenaries now.
Angie: They’re, yeah, that’s fully capable. Nailed it. You’re your episode of Archer nailed it. The Swiss guard have been guarding the Pope since the early 1500s. Like it’s tradition. That’s what they do. Now, what the city does have going forward is it has these huge allurean walls and some really substantial artillery, which the invading army does not have. But there’s a couple problems here. But one knows that if he’s going to sac Rome, they need to do it fast.
So they’re not stuck between the besieged city and the league’s army that’s waiting on the outside between a rock and a hard place. Yeah. Okay. So on May 6th, the Imperial Army hits the walls and I’m going to butcher this and I’m so sorry at Unicolo and the Vatican Hills with full force. In the chaos of the attack, the Duke of Obon was killed by a man who was mortally wounded. Now, to his discredit here, he’s wearing his iconic white cloak.
The purpose of this iconic white cloak is so that his men can spot him easily. But like, guess what? So can everyone else. And for that guy. Yeah. So according to. Red.
Pretty much. According to his own retelling, the famous artist. Then Ben Venuto Salini, he’s defending Rome. He fires the shot that kills the Duke and injures silver of so which is the Prince of Orange or a member of the House of Orange. When the Duke fell, he was the last respected leader in the Imperial ranks and it’s gone. Once the walls are breached later that day, the discipline completely collapses among the soldiers. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.
Theresa: They were barely being held together by the. Oh, I’ve been held against my will. Oh, I died. Yeah. Okay. I’m sure I’m tracking.
Angie: Yeah, like barely. They were just fighting for their lives. Those commanders were. But once he dies, all that’s left to hold them together just immediately evaporates amongst the common soldiers.
Silver of Orange. He tries to take command, but he doesn’t have the reputation or the clout to really lead in his authority. Pretty much crumbles. Meanwhile, in what would become known as the state, the stand of the Swiss guard, the Swiss and the remaining defenders make a final desperate stand at the Teutonic Cemetery inside the Vatican. Their captain, a man called Casper Royce, was wounded in the fighting and later fled to his home only to be killed by Spanish soldiers in front of his own wife. He’s like, I just want to die in my bed. Pretty much.
Yeah. Now the Swiss, they fight with a ferocity, but they are hopelessly outnumbered and most are wiped out. A handful of survivors, roughly 147 Swiss guards along with some refugees, they pull all the way back to St. Peter’s Basilica, but those who reached the steps are slaughtered by what history says was 20,000 attackers.
I’m not just a handful. Yeah, it’s that seems like a lot for that amount of men. But okay, at this point, only 42 members of the Swiss guard still stand. 40. 42.
Theresa: Okay. So we’re playing with some like battle of marathon numbers. Yeah.
Angie: Um, and they’re led by a man called Hercules Goldie and this small band managed to hold off the Habsburg troops long enough to protect the Pope’s escape along the Pasito de Borgo. And this is like a, it’s an elevated secret corridor that connects the Vatican to the Castile of St. Angelo.
Uh, so they, they’re basically like taking him through the tunnel to get, to get him out. It’s him and these 42 guys. According to the Swiss National Museum, they say, quote, 42 of the escapees were Swiss guards under the command of Lieutenant Hercules Goldie from Zurich. And one was Pope Clement the seventh himself. The escape was successful, but guards and the Pope reached Castile St. Angelo unscathed. After which a thousand of the city’s remaining defenders were executed. And then things quickly dissolve into absolute chaos.
Theresa: I’m glad it waited. So now. Right.
Angie: Once the resistance is crushed, the looting explodes churches, monasteries, the cardinals, palaces, church officials, homes, their ransacked and wrecked soldiers.
Theresa: How many finger bones of saints do you think wandered away in pockets?
Angie: Dude, I literally, I had the same question. It was worded differently, but I was like, I wonder how many relics walked away.
Theresa: I like how you want to know relics. And I’m like specific finger bone relics.
Angie: How many pinkies. Yeah. Yeah.
Theresa: Give me the land.
Angie: I’m going to need 27. I think it was 27. So the soldiers, they don’t care who you were, pro-imperial cardinals. They’re literally paying to protect their own stuff while the rest of the army just runs wild. They’re like, yo, I will pay you to protect my house right now.
Theresa: I feel like that. I think it’s time to just give up your worldly possessions and just disappear into a tunnel. You would think.
Angie: Now you’ve got the everyday Romans that live in Rome too. They get dragged into the horror. Women are assaulted. Sick people that are in hospices are killed. High profiles of the emperor himself. They’re not safe either. The German landsmite, many of whom are Lutherans, show a special sort of intense hostility towards any Catholic holy places. They don’t just loot the churches. They desecrate them. Holy relics are defiled. Sacred art smashed. And they even stage a mocking version of Catholic rituals. At one point, a prostitute is thrown into priestly robes and plopped on St. Peter’s throne while soldiers shout things at her. And then according to the Catholic Church, they commit the worst of crimes and someone gives the custom name.
No, that would be awesome. Someone carved the name Luther into the wall under one of their paintings and it wouldn’t be discovered for like 500 years. I know. Yeah. Yeah. Didn’t start babies.
Theresa: Did they just didn’t punch a widow in the face? Wrote a name on the wall that you didn’t even see for a bit of time.
Angie: For for several hundred years. Yeah, they’re real mad about that. They’re still salty about it. Um, I, you know what?
Theresa: I’m getting a magic marker. I’m going to become immortal.
Angie: We’re going to solve this problem right quick. Now the brutality, excuse me, the brutality, it doesn’t stop with buildings. Clergy are targeted personally. Monks are mutilated. Nuns are raped and priests are killed. Even though, as I mentioned earlier, Martin Luther himself, he is against all this violence and the German troops actions are fueled by this, you know, rolling religious anger of the air and symbolism plays a role, of course. So attacking the church leaders in sacred sites, they’re meant to send a message. But honestly, a lot of the pillaging is just done because they want their money. Soldiers would capture people and hold them for ransom. The richer the captive, the bigger the payout.
Theresa: So, you know, that is a feeling. It doesn’t, it’s like, I just need my wages were this, this amount per week times. I’ve been out of campaign for 52 weeks. So if I could just get that with and just contribute to my 401k, I have a feeling they’re just like, I’m just going to go for broke.
Angie: Yeah, that’s, yeah, that’s what I’m getting also. Then on May 8th, Cardinal Pompano Colono, who absolutely hated Pope Clement the seventh, marches into Rome with his followers, mostly peasants seeking revenge from previous looting by papal forces. When he sees how badly the city has been trashed, he is genuinely moved, taking in civilians at his own palace and trying to restore a bit of order. Slowly, the pillaging eases as authority takes hold. But I wouldn’t say it really totally stops.
Okay. The Vatican library actually survives this event because in a major unexpected plot twist, my guy, Gilbert, he sets his camp up there. And so I guess for whatever reason, people just leave it alone. And after three days of chaos, he tells his soldiers, basically, chill, stop looting. But they don’t listen and they keep ransacking stuff for like an extra five days, but apparently not the library. So good for us, I guess.
Theresa: But meanwhile, the library is not necessarily known for having diamonds.
Angie: No, just 53, 53 miles of archival history. You know, the stuff we’d be interested in seeing.
Theresa: Yes, but also I would need to be in the right frame of mind. If I’m in a pillaging frame of mind, I’m not going to be going, but where’s biographies?
Angie: Could you point me to, I’m looking for. Is it under B?
Theresa: I’m looking for a self-help.
Angie: St. Francis of Assisi, maybe.
Theresa: Yeah. I mean, I just self-help myself to a bunch of pilfered goods, but now I need to really work on something different. Just cookbooks.
Angie: Meanwhile, my guy, Pope Clement, he has been stuck as a guest, not by choice in the world, but by the way, he’s been stuck for like six months. Now, around June 1st, so the Pope gets in prison in the castle for about six months, but in June, so just a few weeks after all of this starts, a couple of dudes roll up with reinforcements in Montorassi, which is just north of Rome. But since the Imperial troops are like basically out of control, these guys decide to play it super safe. So like no easy ones were had. They were like, you know what, we’ll just hang out right here. By June 6th, Clement decides, okay, fine, whatever, I will pay a massive ransom of 400,000 Yucati just to stay alive.
At which point, he also hands over several areas of papal power to the Holy Roman Empire. Now, for whatever reason, I’m unclear why this is. Only one of these places, Medina, actually ends up changing hands. Others just sort of go like get absolved back into their own, what they were doing before. Now, Venice isn’t going to set this out and they swoop in and they take Servia and Ravina. And long story short here, places change names or they change hands, but life goes on as usual. But even after all this treaty signing is done, even after the Pope pays this stupid ransom, the pillaging doesn’t stop. Oh, really? It goes on for months. Months. Months.
Theresa: By this point, did these soldiers even know where they live? They’ve been blackout drunk just knocking everything.
Angie: Yeah, yeah. To sum it up, before this disaster, Rome was the place to be for art, culture, Renaissance humanism, with artists and thinkers walking there for like papal commissions. The victims numbered in the tens of thousands. Afterward, the population plummeted from greater than 55,000 to around 10,000.
Theresa: Oh, so only one in five are alive?
Angie: Basically, yeah. Survivors like artists included, they flee. Libraries, ancient treasures and cultural prestige, they’re lost or destroyed. 90% of Rome’s art treasures were stolen or destroyed during this time, which is wild to me.
Theresa: So yeah, they were walking off with stuff.
Theresa: Super cheap peasant who never made any, has like the statue of David or equivalent of in their living room. Like they’re hanging coats off it.
Angie: As well as a hat rack. Like it’s where extra laundry goes. It’s not quite dirty, but it’s not clean.
Theresa: And it’s like, then you end up like willing it to your children and they’re like, I don’t want it. Like they don’t understand the value of it. And so it just ends up in a landfill.
Angie: Or like a charity shop 500 years later and somebody on an antique throw show was like, well, we’ve been looking for this for a minute. Yeah. Yeah. So it is, it seems fair to say that many of the invaders succumbed to the plague because that swept through Rome in the summer of 1527.
Theresa: You know, I was wondering when God was going to stand up for his holy city. He brought the plague.
Angie: Politically and religiously things shift hard. The Pope loses all kinds of clout. He basically has to close you up to Charles five and ends up blessing decisions that reshape Christianity. Like rejecting the annulment that helped spark the English transformation.
Because remember when I told you, Henry the eighth had dipped out. Oh, yes. Yes. Yeah. He was, he was trying to, he was trying to get the Pope to, he’s trying to stay on the Pope’s good.
side. So he would annul his marriage to Catherine of Arvon. That said, this event marks the symbolic end of the Italian renaissance and helps lock the divide between Catholic and Protestant Europe. To this day, the Swiss guard commemorates the horrors of that day with the swearing in ceremony for new recruits, which takes year, which takes place every year on May 6th in Rome. Wow. So I brought you some unhinged sacking of Rome history. I appreciate it. You’re welcome. It wasn’t a ferret, but it was fun.
Theresa: I mean, look, they can’t all be ferrets. Or ducks. I mean, honestly. God bless Sergeant Seawash. And if you’re wondering what the heck that was, let me pull this up for you. That was a story Angie told about Sergeant Jack Seawash Cornelius, the duck from episode 65. The episode is titled Wing to Wing Combat. He gets a medal for it.
He got that for us. And if you’re thinking, oh, holy crap, I want to get more involved. I want to understand where this is. We actually have a Patreon now that you can join. You can get ad free versions of this. We actually also share the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet.
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Theresa: Bye.
Unhinged History 
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