Burchard Loses Horses As French Occupy Rome: January 6, 1495

As example of the kinds of personal injuries and inconveniences suffered during the French occupation of Rome, even by those of high position and the well connected, Johann Burchard Master of Ceremonies to pope Alexander VI, gave this quick anecdote. Dated from January 6:

"When I returned to my house after Mass, I found that the French had entered it, against my wish and yet with the knowledge and permission of Don Marco Tebaldi, our regionary captain. They had taken out seven of the eight horses, mules or asses which I had in my stable, and had quartered there instead seven of their own beasts which were busily eating up my hay. My room had been requisitioned for the Comte de Rouen, whilst that of my physician, Don Andrea Ondorp, a Doctor of Arts and Medicine, who had lived with me for many years, was taken for another nobleman who, a few days later, died of the plague in the house of Don Jacopo Galli. Another lower room in the house, where all my servants were quartered - since other poeple still occupied the rest of the apartments - was handed over to the households of these same Frenchmen. I was greatly upset by such an injury and accordingly approached the king himself to complain of what had happened. He sent me on to the Grand Marshal to whom I similarly protested, in company with Cardinals Savelli, Colonna and de la Grolaye, who had other complaints. I asked that the Frenchmen should be assigned other quarters in the house of Don Jacopo Galli, and this was done. Apart from the seven horses stabled at my house, nobody else made an appearance, and the horses themselves remained only until the following evening, when they were taken elsewhere." [pp 105-6]

Here we learn just a bit about some different parts of Burchard's household construction. A question of whether Burchard kept a multi-story in-town structure or something else, I'd like answered. Did his neighbors have horses too? Some probably did. He had a stable with horses and transport mules and probably kept on a first floor. Burchard also reveals he had a live-in Doctor of Medicine, someone he knew and lived with for many years. Was this also common in his neighborhood? But it seems Burchard didn't get the worst of it.

Over the next couple days, several houses of notable people were ransacked and pillaged by 'the French'. That of Paolo Branca whose sons were killed, or those unnamed others, 'including Jews who were murdered and homes ransacked'. The house of the mother of Cesare Borgia, Donna Vanozza Catanei was pillaged too. On the ninth of January Burchard says, a great number of thieves were hung, conspicuously, out in the open. From windows, on streetcorners. The pope had been moved to the Castel San Angelo, but there were disasters there, too.

On the twelfth of January, the French King was given a tour of the city by Cardinal de la Grolaye.

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quotes and pagination from Johann Burchard: At The Court of the Borgia translated for english, with introduction by Geoffrey Parker, The Folio Society, Ltd, 1963