Burning with rage, Boniface repeated and redoubled his menaces. But Philip now determined on a shorter path to settle the contest. He dispatched a trustworthy officer, Nogaret, with Sciarra Colonna, a member of a noble Italian house which Boniface had ruined and desolated; and who was, of course, the sworn enemy of the pope. These, with other adventurers, and three hundred armed horsemen, had strict orders to arrest the pope wherever he might be found, and bring him a prisoner to Paris. The perplexed old man -now in his eighty-sixth year—had retired to his palace at Anagni, his native place, to compose another bull, in which he maintained, "that as vicar of Christ, he had the power to govern kings with a rod of iron, and to dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel." But his blasphemous assumption of omnipotence was soon turned into a spectacle of human weakness and death.
A shout was heard; the pope, and the cardinals, who were all assembled around him, were startled with the trampling of armed horse, and the terrible cry, "Death to pope Boniface! Long live the king of France!" The soldiers were immediately masters of the pontifical palace. Nearly all the cardinals, and even the personal attendants of the pope fled. He was left alone, but he lost not his self-command. Like the English Thomas a Becket, he awaited the final blow with courage and resolution. He hurriedly threw the mantle of St. Peter over his shoulders, placed the crown of Constantine on his head, grasped the keys in one hand and the cross in the other, and seated himself on the papal throne. His age, intrepidity, and religious majesty, struck the conspirators with awe. When Nogaret and Colonna saw the venerable form and dignified composure of their enemy, they refrained from their sanguinary purpose, and satisfied themselves with heaping vulgar abuse on the wretched old pontiff. The wrongs inflicted on the families and friends of these officers by the cruel pope had extinguished every feeling towards him but revenge. But in the providence of God they were restrained from shedding the blood of a helpless old man in his eighty-sixth year.
While the leaders were thus employed, the body of the conspirators had dispersed themselves throughout the splendid apartments in eager pursuit of plunder. "The palaces of the pope," says Milman, "and of his nephew were plundered; so vast was the wealth, that the annual revenues of all the kings in the world would not have been equal to the treasures found and carried off by Sciarra's freebooting soldiers. His very private chamber was ransacked; nothing was left but bare walls."
At length the people of Anagni were aroused to insurrection. They assaulted the soldiers by whom they had been overawed. But as they were now in possession of the plunder, and the pope imprisoned, they were not unwilling to withdraw. The pope was restored to his freedom; infuriated by the disgrace of his captivity, he hurried to Rome burning with revenge. But the violence of his passion overpowered his reason; he refused nourishment; he cried for revenge; but he was now impotent as other men. He removed all his attendants, shut himself up in a room lest any one might see him die—but he died; and he died alone; and will stand before the judgment-seat of God alone; and have to answer alone for the deeds done in the body, and under a responsibility entirely his own. We cross not the line; but what, oh what! must the eternal portion be of one, of whom impartial history says, "of all the Roman pontiffs, Boniface has left the darkest name for craft, arrogance, ambition, even for avarice and cruelty."