termine the game by
underhand backing; and all four, with every small state in Italy, were
afraid of Venice--Venice the cautious, the stable, and the strong, that
wanted to stretch its arms not only along both sides of the Adriatic but
across to the ports of the western coast, Lorenzo de' Medici, it was
thought, did much to prevent the fatal outbreak of such jealousies,
keeping up the old Florentine alliance with Naples and the Pope, and yet
persuading Milan that the alliance was for the general advantage. But
young Piero de' Medici's rash vanity had quickly nullified the effect of
his father's wary policy, and Ludovico Sforza, roused to suspicion of a
league against him, thought of a move which would checkmate his
adversaries: he determined to invite the French king to march into
Italy, and, as heir of the house of Anjou, take possession of Naples.
Ambassadors--"orators," as they were called in those haranguing times--
went and came; a recusant cardinal, determined not to acknowledge a Pope
elected by bribery (and his own particular enemy), went and came also,
and seconded the invitation with hot rhetoric; and the young king seemed
to lend a willing ear. So that in 1493 the rumour spread and became
louder and louder that Charles the Eighth of France was about to cross
the Alps with a mighty army; and the Italian populations, accustomed,
since Italy had ceased to be the heart of the Roman empire, to look for
an arbitrator from afar, began vaguely to regard his coming as a means
of avenging their wrongs and redressing their grievances.

And in that rumour Savonarola had heard the assurance that his prophecy
was being verified. What was it that filled the ears of the prophets of
old but the distant tread of foreign armies, coming to do the work of
justice? He no longer looked vaguely to the horizon for the coming
storm: he pointed to the rising cloud. The French army was that new
deluge which was to purify the earth from iniquity; the French king,
Charles the Eighth, was the instrument elected by God, as Cyrus had been
of old, and all men who desired good rather than evil were to rejoice in
his coming. For the scourge would fall destructively on the impenitent
alone. Let any city of Italy, let Florence above all--Florence beloved
of God, since to its ear the warning voice had been specially sent--
repent and turn from its ways, like Nineveh of old, and the storm-cloud
would roll over it and leave only refreshing rai