It seems doubtful how far they were, in so doing, executing the orders or carrying out the wishes of the Emperor. Clement, though he had played the traitor to Charles, as he did to everyone else, and had been at war with him recently, had now entered into a treaty with the Emperor's viceroy. And apart from this there was a degree of odium and scandal attaching to the sight of the "most Catholic" Emperor sending a Lutheran army in his pay to attack the head of the Church, and ravage the venerated capital of Christendom, which so decorous a sovereign as Charles would hardly have liked to incur. Still, it may be assumed that if the Emperor wished his army kept together, and provided no sums for the purpose, he was not unwilling that they should live by plunder. And perhaps his real intention was to extort from Rome the means of paying his troops by the mere exhibition of the danger arising from their propinquity while they remained unpaid. Upon the whole we are warranted in supposing that Bourbon and Frundsberg would hardly have ventured on the course they took if they had not had reason to believe that it would not much displease their master. And Charles was exactly the sort of man who would like to have the profit of an evil deed without the loss of reputation arising from the commission of it, and who would consider himself best served by agents who could commit a profitable atrocity without being guilty of the annoying want of tact of waiting for his direct orders to commit it.