To make my word prevail, there is needed the blood of many.' These are the prophecies with which Savonarola anticipated the coming of a foreign conqueror.

It is interesting to trace in his apostrophes the double feeling of the prophet.

Desire for the advent of Charles as a Messiah, liberator, and purifier of the Church, contends with an instinctive horror of the barbarian.

Savonarola, like Dante, like all Italian patriots, except only Machiavelli, who too late had been lessoned by bitter experience to put no trust in foreign princes, could not refrain from hoping even against hope that good might come from beyond the Alps.

Yet when the foreigners appeared, he trembled at the violence they wrought upon the ancient liberties of Italy.