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I think BXVI would have resigned for only one reason: because he felt that his doing so was for the good of the Church and would protect the Church.

I don’t know what they did to threaten him, but he was certainly threatened. His health wasn’t bad, aside from the usual frailty of age. An Italian who managed to have a private interview with him in his “prison” on the Vatican grounds a couple of weeks ago said that he was frail, thin, and can only walk with a walker, but that his mind is clear and unchanged.

Don’t forget that in the months before, there had been the Vatileaks scandal where his butler, among others, had been filtering out private letters written by BXVI in connection with sensitive Church investigations of financial and moral corruption, particularly homosexuality in the hierarchy. This was at the same time that the Pope received the massive report on corruption, which he is said to have been so shocked by reading (because it detailed not only the doings of some powerful people by the collusion of so many others in covering it up and the existence of organized conspiracies) that he was massively weakened, even physically, by his shock and grief.

Personally, I think some of it had to do with Fr. Maciel, the Mexican founder of the Legion of Christ. He was a one-man festival of evil, but he had been protected for years, even by JPII - although in the latter case, it was because the Pope liked the orthodox order, the Legionaries of Christ, that Maciel had founded before he was seized by Satan. This investigation had already begun at the time of he death of JPII, and one of the very first things BXVI did upon taking office was to remove Maciel from the priesthood and basically send him to a monastic prison, where he died not long afterwards. But the investigation continued, leading into other areas, and I think it was something that happened in connection with these investigations that made this elderly group of corrupt leftist cardinals desperate enough to take action and do something to force out BXVI.