I was reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, and in the chapter on the Italian Renaissance, and he claims that prior to the First Italian War of 1494, wars were 'almost bloodless', because the soldiers who fought in them were mercenaries who wished to minimize 'vocational risks'.
He then goes on to claim that when France invaded in 1494, 'French troops shocked the Italians by actually killing people in battle'.
Is this an over-exaggeration? Or were the politics and intrigue of Renaissance Italy so consuming that this more violent form of warfare was a new development in Italy?
No, that is an absurd interpretation. There is a plausible argument to be made that the Italian Wars featured armies that saw action on a larger scale than the 14th century conflicts between city-states, but mercenaries in Italy quite readily fought each other and were entirely willing to kill. If any Italians were shocked that the French were killing people in 1494, it was because they hadn't been paying attention for the past several centuries. Much of the popular interpretation of mercenaries in Italy comes from later Italian writers like Machiavelli who had a serious axe to grind against foreign mercenaries. These mercenaries were experienced military professionals, even if they were too independent for the liking of their employers. Why would anyone have paid these men and their exorbitant salaries if they weren't doing any actual fighting?