The Sack of Rome in 1527 is just another disastrous result of machiavellian thinking of Italian leaders during the Italian Wars. Pope Clement VII thought he could play some clever political games and picked a fight with Emperor Charles V without having an army to back it up.
The war that led to the Sack of Rome was started by Pope when he formed the League of Cognac of Papal States, France, England and some other Italian states against the Emperor Charles V. The Empire responded by raising a big mercenary force and sending it to Italy.
The Pope's idea was that France and England combined would force Charles V out of Italy and that he would be able to play the big powers against each other and reap all the benefits. Of course it failed miserably, like these machiavellian tactics always do.
The Imperial Landsknecht mercenaries who entered Italy were starving, unpaid and looking for blood. The Pope had practically no army to face them and relied that others would do the work for him, which they didn't. He had no back up plan. One of the worst Popes in history.
It's ridiculous that Pope Clement VII is now seen as some sort of victim because of the brutality of the Sack of Rome, but he picked a fight with a much stronger enemy that was known to employ these ferocious mercenaries and dragged Charles V in a war he didn't actually want.
There was also no way for the bankrupt Imperial leaders to control the angry unpaid mercenaries after they were unleashed. They had to plunder and sack something, and the only justified target was Rome, the seat of the man who started it all, to finish it all.
This is why you can't really blame Charles of Bourbon for leading the mercenary force to Rome because he had to give them some rich city to sack and plunder, and Rome was the ideal target for it. The other option was Florence, but they decided to go straight for Rome.
Charles of Bourbon then died during the siege which caused the order to break down completely and it led to unrestricted plundering for more than a week and Pope was disgraced and captured. The lesson of the story? Don't play machiavellian games with powerful ruthless empires.
The entire Italian Wars were caused by the same retarded machiavellian thinking of the Sforzas when they invited the mighty French to Italy hoping the French would eliminate their rivals and leave, and then Pope Julius II doing the same with League of Cambrai.
But now too often you see the narrative that poor little Italy was plundered by evil evil barbarians from the north, without giving the context that these barbarians were almost always invited in Italy and drawn into war by the Italian leaders themselves.
It's also weird when Catholics defend Pope Clement VII and complain about Landsknechts sacking Rome. Pope Clement VII was allied to France that was allied to the Ottoman empire, and dragged Charles V into a war in Italy to sack his resources to defend Christendom against Turks.
The same Landsknecht mercenaries who sacked Rome saved Vienna and entire Central Europe from the invading Ottoman army two years later, who were in turn allied to the French which the Pope was supported. The Pope did not really push interests of Catholic Europe at the time.
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