This great piece of
military engineering must not be considered by itself, but as a part of
a great scheme of defence conceived by Paul III, to protect the city
against a hostile invasion from the sea. The Pope could not forget that,
in August 1534, the fleet of infidels commanded by Barbarossa had cast
anchor at the mouth of the Tiber to renew its supply of water, and that
if its leader had thought fit they could have stormed, sacked, and
plundered the city, and carried off the Pope himself into slavery
without any possibility of defence on the Christian side. This point has
not been taken into due consideration by modern writers; the
fortifications of Rome, designed or begun or finished at the time of
Paul III., have nothing to do with the sack of 1527, with the Connetable
de Bourbon, or with the Emperor Charles V. All the bastions, that of the
Belvedere excepted, point towards the sea-coast, which was perpetually
harried and terrified by Turkish or Barbary pirates. These would appear
with lightning-like rapidity in more than one place at a time, and carry
off as many unfortunate men, women, and children as they could
collect.... To prevent the recurrence of such disasters the sea-coast
was lined with watch-towers, the guns of which could warn the peasants
of the approach of suspicious vessels."
That Paul III. had good warrant for the precautions which he designed to
take is not only instanced by the fact of Barbarossa anchoring in the mouth
of the Tiber on the occasion of the raid with which we are at present
concerned, but from what had occurred to his predecessor on the Papal
throne in 1516.
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