Lehal Library

An appeal to conquer Italy and free it from foreign occupation Going back over everything I’ve said, I’ve been asking myself whether the time is right, in Italy now, for a new ruler; whether there’s the sort of material available here that would give a shrewd man with the right qualities the chance to impose some form, winning honour for himself and doing good to the people as a whole. And my impression is that a lot of things are running the way of a new man, so many in fact that I don’t know what time was ever more right than the present. If, as I said earlier, Moses could only emerge after the people of Israel had been enslaved in Egypt, Cyrus show his great spirit after the Persians were crushed by the Medes, Theseus prove his excellence after the Athenians were defeated and dispersed, so today, for us to witness the qualities of a great Italian, the country had to be reduced to its present state: more slave than the Jews, more crushed than the Persians, more divided than the Athenians, leaderless, lawless, beaten, plundered, broken and overrun, ruined in every way. There was one man* who showed glimpses of greatness, the kind of thing that made you think he was sent by God for the country’s redemption, but then at the height of his achievements his luck turned. So now Italy lies, half-dead, waiting to see who will heal her wounds and put an end to the devastation of Lombardy, the extortionate taxation of * Presumably Borgia.