The 147 Who Died Defending The Pope

On the morning of 6th May 1527, a thick fog rolled across Rome. Twenty thousand Imperial mercenaries — unpaid, starving, leaderless after their commander was killed by a stray shot — poured over the city walls and into the streets.

They had not been ordered to attack. They had no plan. They had not been paid in months. They were an army that had become a mob, and the mob was heading for the Vatican.

Between the mob and the Pope stood 189 Swiss Guards.

THE HORROR The Swiss Guard had defended the papacy since 1506 — mountain boys from the cantons, recruited for their size and their stubbornness, armed with halberds and trained to fight in formations that had broken cavalry charges across Europe. They were not soldiers of fortune. They were oath-takers. Every man had sworn to protect the Pope with his life.

On the morning of 6th May, the oath came due.

As the Imperial forces stormed the Borgo district — the neighbourhood between Castel Sant’Angelo and the Vatican — Captain Kaspar Röist assessed the situation and understood it immediately. There was no winning this. There was no holding the Vatican. There was only one task left: get the Pope out alive.

The Swiss Guard split. Forty-two men — under Lieutenant Herkules Göldli — formed around Pope Clement VII and hustled him toward a door in the wall of St Peter’s that most people did not know existed. The Passetto di Borgo — an 800-metre fortified corridor built inside the Vatican’s outer wall, connecting the basilica to Castel Sant’Angelo — was the papal escape route. The ultimate panic button.

The Pope was pushed through the door and into the narrow corridor. Behind him, the forty-two guards followed, fighting off Imperial soldiers who had spotted the escape and were pursuing them down the passage.

The remaining 147 guards stayed behind.

They formed on the steps of St Peter’s Basilica — in their blue and yellow and red uniforms, halberds forward, backs to the doors of the most sacred church in Christendom. Below them, twenty thousand men surged across the square. The guards were outnumbered more than a hundred to one.

They held.

They held on the steps. They held on the portico. They held until the formation was broken and the fighting became hand-to-hand. They inflicted roughly 900 casualties — nearly five kills for every guard who fell. The marble of St Peter’s steps ran with blood.

The last of the 147 died on the high altar of St Peter’s itself — inside the basilica, at the holiest point in Catholic Christianity, with a halberd in his hands and twenty thousand enemies in the nave.

Captain Röist was wounded but escaped the basilica. He staggered through the streets to his house. The mercenaries followed him. They broke down his door. They killed him in front of his wife.

From the windows of the Passetto — the narrow corridor high above the streets — Pope Clement VII looked down and watched his guards die. The sources record that he wept. The man they were dying for watched the dying through glass and cried.

THE MODERN RELIC Every year, on 6th May — the anniversary of the massacre — new recruits of the Pontifical Swiss Guard are sworn in at the Vatican. They stand in the San Damaso Courtyard in the same style of uniform the 147 wore on the steps. They raise three fingers — representing the Holy Trinity — and swear to defend the Pope faithfully, loyally, and honourably, sacrificing their lives if necessary.

The oath is the same oath. The uniform is the same uniform. The date is the same date. The ceremony is held on the anniversary of the day when 147 men proved the oath was not ceremonial.

The Passetto di Borgo is still there — visible from outside the Vatican as an elevated stone corridor running along the top of the wall. Tourists photograph it without knowing what it is. The corridor the Pope fled through while his guards died is now an architectural curiosity in the background of selfies.

The Swiss Guard still stands at the Vatican. They still wear the striped uniforms. They still carry halberds. Tourists photograph them and think they are decorative. They are not decorative. They are the descendants of 189 men who stood on the steps of St Peter’s against twenty thousand and held long enough for one man to reach a door in a wall.

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