Italian Renaissance wars were largely fought by mercenary condottieri, which is Italian for "contractors."
Not surprisingly, the condottieri on opposing sides were not anxious to destroy their capital investment, their army, by engaging in mutually bloody battle. Their wars therefore tended to be sieges or minimally bloody manuever-fests.
This did not, however, keep the wars themselves from being bloody, as soldiers on all sides had no problems with pillaging and killing civilians.
Machievelli saw the problems with mercenary armies and tried to organize a Florentine national army. Didn't work out.
Not surprisingly, numerous condottieri took over as tyrants of many Italian states.
The whole system collapsed pretty thoroughly in 1494 with the French invasion. The condottieri fell apart when faced with a real army that fought for keeps.
Thereafter Italy was generally dominated and fought over by outsiders for the next 350 years or so.
“This did not, however, keep the wars themselves from being bloody, as soldiers on all sides had no problems with pillaging and killing civilians.”
“The whole system collapsed pretty thoroughly in 1494 with the French invasion. The condottieri fell apart when faced with a real army that fought for keeps.”
- What keeps:D?
Furthermore; when the French, a people already insane by nature, enter another nation which also is out of their minds, but in a different way (like Italians are) the French automatically adopt the insanity of that particular nation - on top of their original insanity.
This explains the development of that particular epoque of Italian history in a quite satisfying manner.
Anyhow, good ol’ Luca reports that the French troops behaved very well while staying visiting Florence. According to Landucci, no citizen told of anything like a French soldier being overly drunk in the street or having harassed a Florentine girl.
In 1527, a leaderless mercenary army took and sacked Rome. For three days the citizens of Rome were subjected to torture, murder, rape, pillage and all the other evils the kind of men a mercenary army was composed of could subject the citizens to.