WI: Pope Clement VII killed in 1527?

In 1527 about 1000 Spanish mercenaries and HRE troops sacked Rome. The Pope was able to escape the city due to a heroic last stand by the Swiss Guard. What if the Stand of the Swiss Guard never happened, or didn't go on for long enough for Clement to escape; and he was killed? What would that do to the Catholic world? To Papal relations with Spain and the HRE?
 
In our time line, Charles V (King of Spain and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire) made amends to Clement VII with a number of concessions, one of which was the use of his army to install Clement's nephew, Alessandro de Medici, as the ruler of Florence. (The leading citizens of Florence had exploited Clement's troubles to eject the Medici and restore republican government.) Thus, the most immediate effect of the death of Clement would be the continuation of the restored Florentine republic.

Resentment of Charles V within the College of Cardinals might lead to the election of a pope who was anti-Hapsburg (and thus pro-French). As such a pope would be in the market for powerful counterweights to Spain and the Empire, he might be convinced to annul the marriage of Henry VIII of England and Catherine of Aragon. (One can imagine a situation in which Henry ceded Calais to King Francis I of France in exchange for the latter's good offices in arranging this annulment.)
 
Which is more poignant, and thus more worthy of song: guards who sacrifice themselves in order to allow a leader to escape or a leader who dies at the head of his guards?
 
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The problem is the song would be forced to overlook the fact that all 189 of the Guards, and specifically the 42 that accompanied him, FAILED. That removes any poignancy... It would just mourn the Pope. You would have a sad tune indeed.

My final words on this... do not want to be derailing a thread too much. Chat is where that belongs.


So to help the thread out...

Pope succeeding Clement? Any thoughts as to who that might be?
 
Well, it would give Francis a massive stick with which to beat Charles. Might it not also lead to better relations between Charles and the Lutherans?
 
In our time line, one of the results of the survival of Clement VII and his subsequent reconciliation with Charles V was the marriage of Alessandro de Medici, a nephew of Clement, and Margaret of Austria, a natural daughter of Charles. Later, after the death of Alessandro, Margaret married the Duke of Parma. That second marriage produced Alexander Farnese, who would later lead the forces of Spain in the Netherlands.

Between 1577 and 1587, Farnese conducted a series of successful sieges that returned much of the southern Netherlands, that is, a good part of present day Belgium, to Spanish control. This resulted in the emigration of a substantial portion of the Protestant population of that region to emigrate to other parts of the Netherlands, as well as the immigration of Catholics from places that remained under Protestant control.

So, if Clement VII is killed by the mutineers in 1527, then we have no marriage of Margaret and Alessandro de Medici. Thus, Margaret would not be available for remarriage to the Duke of Parma, and we have no Alexander Farnese. Without Farnese, who owed much of his success to the political skills he learned from his mother, we have no Spanish reconquest of the southern Netherlands. Without the Spanish reconquest of the southern Netherlands, there is no concentration of the Catholic population in the southern Netherlands. Without that concentration, the cultural and demographic conditions needed for the creation of a separate Kingdom of the Belgians never develop, and we enter the twentieth century with a larger, more powerful Kingdom of the Netherlands.
 
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