Charles V.had finally to interfere and put a stop to the fury of the Pope's revenges.

How cruel and exasperated the mind of Clement was, may be gathered from his treatment of Fra Benedetto da Foiano, who sustained the spirit of the burghers by his fiery preaching during the privations of the siege.
Foiano fell into the clutches of Malatesta Baglioni, who immediately sent him down to Rome.

By the Pope's orders the wretched friar was flung into the worst dungeon in the Castle of S.Angelo, and there slowly starved to death by gradual diminution of his daily dole of bread and water.

Readers of Benvenuto Cellini's Memoirs will remember the horror with which he speaks of this dungeon and of its dreadful reminiscences, when it fell to his lot to be imprisoned there.
Such being the mood of Clement, it is not wonderful that Michelangelo should have trembled for his own life and liberty.

As Varchi says, "He had been a member of the Nine, had fortified the hill and armed the bell-tower of S.Miniato.What was more annoying, he was accused, though falsely, of proposing to raze the palace of the Medici, where in his boyhood Lorenzo and Piero de' Medici had shown him honour as a guest at their own tables, and to name the space on which it stood the Place of Mules." For this reason he hid himself, as Condivi and Varchi assert, in the house of a trusty friend.