at the head of two thousand infantry defended for the Republic, with the utmost valour and heroically supported by the inhabitants, for more than two months. On the night of the 14th of June, the Sienese saw great fires blazing round Montalcino, and on the morning of the 15th heavy clouds of smoke still hung over it. The appearance of the French and Turkish fleets off the shores of Italy had forced Don Garcia to raise the siege; he had burned his lodgings, and was about to hurry southwards for the defence of Naples. “Now,” writes the diarist of Montalcino, “whoso this morning had seen our afflicted city in such great gladness and triumph, would have made the hardest heart grow tender. When the bells had ceased ringing, Masses have been celebrated and there has been a devout procession around the piazza, with such great contrition; all injuries have been forgiven, men have gone to embrace one another and to give the kiss of peace; always thanking God and the Most Holy Virgin, our protectress, that in their pity and mercy they have deigned to deliver us from so great a disaster.”[123]
In the meanwhile, through the intrigues of Cosimo, who was only biding his time for the Marzocco and the Lupa to be bound together in his golden chain, a conspiracy had been formed in Siena, to admit the Florentines through the Porta Ovile and expel the French. It was discovered; the three principal conspirators, Giulio Salvi, Captain of the People, his brother Ottaviano, Proposto of the Duomo, and the canon Gismondo Vignali, were beheaded in the cortile of the Captain of Justice—the two priests having been degraded in the Sala del Consiglio on the previous day. But the Sienese factions continued, even in the face of the imminent danger. The French agents themselves were divided, Monsieur de Termes taking one side, the Cardinal of Ferrara the other. “And always as many of them as were sent to us from the King, up to the last, behaved in this fashion, as though the discords of the city of Siena were like to a contagious illness, so that whoever came near them was obliged to take part in them.”[124]
The breathing space was but short. With the new year, 1554, the tempest burst upon Siena. Piero Strozzi, the deadliest enemy of the Duke of Florence, came to the city as vicar-general of the Most Christian King—in spite of Orlando Malavolti, then one of the Eight of War, who urged that he should not be received without an express order from France, as it would give an excuse to the Duke to declare war, being a breach of one of the conditions, which stipulated that the Sienese should not shelter Florentine fuorusciti. In his history, Malavolti remarks upon the analogies between this last war of Siena and that ancient one of Montaperti, both begun by the Florentines on the pretext that the Sienese had broken treaties by receiving their exiles; and he declares bitterly that Strozzi, unlike Giordano, “had intentions quite other than the defence and salvation of the city of Siena,” that he had sent away a number of the soldiers, and left unprotected the forts outside Porta Camollia. Similarly, Sozzini declares that Piero’s coming was held to be the ruin of Siena, since it brought the Duke of Florence into the field, without whom the Caesarian Majesty could have done them little harm.[125] But these are mere words; Strozzi or no Strozzi, Cosimo and Charles were equally bent upon the subjugation, complete and final, of Siena.
The armies of the Emperor and the Duke of Florence entered the dominions of the Republic, under the command of the last and most formidable of the condottieri, Gian Giacomo de’ Medici, Marchese di Marignano. The sudden capture, on the night of January 26th, 1554, of the forts outside the Porta Camollia began that last tremendous war of the Sienese, that siege—no less heroic and more prolonged than that of Florence twenty-four years before—in which the last great Republic of the Middle Ages died a giant’s death. The war lasted till the April of the following year, both round the city and in the contado, and was most ruthless in its character. For ten miles around, the once smiling country became a desolate, fire-stained and blood-soaked wilderness—a few trees being left standing, merely that the Spaniards might hang the hapless contadini who attempted to bring supplies through their lines to the starving people in the beleaguered city. The earlier engagements mostly resulted in favour of the Sienese with their French allies and German mercenaries. At first they had so many prisoners in their hands that, when the Marchese di Marignano raised a gallows on the captured forts, they raised another on the citadel, and threatened to hang ten of their prisoners for every one that the imperialists executed—a threat averted by the intervention of the Spanish soldiers themselves, who sent a message to Strozzi that they would force their own general to act a buona guerra; which, alas! was held only to apply to combatants, and not always even to them.
At the beginning of June the Cardinal of Ferrara, tardily obeying the summons of the King, left the city, and went home with a safe conduct; French and Swiss reinforcements arrived under the command of Blaise de Montluc, afterwards Marshal of France, who came to take charge of the city that Strozzi might have a free hand elsewhere. There had been some question as to the safety of sending this dashing Gascon to Siena; his enemies assured the king that he was (to use his own phrase) un des plus coleres hommes du monde, et le plus bisarre, and that, “considered the humours of the Sienese, it would be fire against fire.” As it turned out, his dauntless heroism, his never failing high spirits (even when he lay at the point of death), his amazing harangues (for he prided himself upon his Italian, and had got up some Sienese history to serve his need), chimed in precisely with the temper of the people, and the name of the gallant Gascon general is ever to be linked with that of the glorious Italian republic, whose liberties he was to defend. The third book of his Commentaires, taken with the Diario of Alessandro Sozzini, lets us follow every phase of the siege. He found, he tells us, that “the Sienese were stark mad of fighting, and I do believe, fighting for their liberty, would have played the devils.” The heroic devotion of the ladies of the city—to whose prayers he professed to owe his recovery from sickness—especially moved his enthusiasm:—
“It shall never be, you Ladies of Siena, that I will not immortalise your names so long as the Book of Montluc shall live; for in truth you are worthy of immortal praise, if ever women were. At the beginning of the noble resolution these people took to defend their liberty, all the ladies of Siena divided themselves into three squadrons; the first led by Signora Forteguerra, who was herself clad in violet, as also those of her train, her attire being cut in the fashion of a Nymph, short, and discovering her buskins; the second was the Signora Piccolomini, attired in carnation satin, and her troop in the same livery; the third was the Signora Livia Fausta, apparelled all in white, as also her train, with her white ensign. In their ensigns they had very fine devices, which I would give a good deal I could remember. These three squadrons consisted of three thousand ladies, gentlewomen and citizens; their arms were picks, shovels, baskets and bavins; and in this equipage they made their muster, and went to begin the fortifications. Monsieur de Termes, who has often told me this story (for I was not then arrived at Siena), has assured me that in his life he never saw so fine a sight. I have since seen their ensigns, and they had composed a song to the honour of France, for which I wish I had given the best horse I have that I might insert it here.”[126]
This first comparatively bright and hopeful phase of the struggle ended with the summer. Piero Strozzi with the flower of the French army retreated from the city, hoping to make a diversion, to unite with reinforcements that he expected, to carry the war into Florentine territory. At the beginning of August he came to a pitched battle with Marignano’s forces, on the hills of Scannagalli near Marciano in the Valdichiana. Over his army, together with the golden lilies of France, there floated a green banner with the Dantesque text: Libertà vo cercando, “I go seeking Liberty.” Under a blazing sun, Swiss and Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans and Italians, dashed together in a terrible melée; but the victory on the part of Spain and the Empire was complete and crushing. Four thousand men of Strozzi’s army are said to have been killed. The hospitals of Siena were filled to overflowing with the wounded, who made their way in from the scene of disaster; while the rest limped slowly along the streets or lay about in the squares, utterly broken in spirit, wailing for aid. No one who beheld this piteous spectacle, says Sozzini, “could have possibly kept back his tears, even if he had had a heart of hardest stone.” It was said that the defeat had been caused by the treachery of a French ancient—though Montluc will not assert this—and Strozzi, while he lay helpless with his wounds at Montalcino, got the man into his hands, extorted a confession by torture, and executed him together with one of his own officers to whom he ascribed his overthrow.
The doom of Siena was now sealed. The imperialists drew their lines closer and closer round the city, while the heroism of Montluc and of the Sienese themselves prolonged the resistance for eight months. There were the usual attempts to storm Heaven on behalf of the Republic. The “Madonna delle Grazie” was carried through the city preceded by three hundred little girls, white-robed and barefooted, crying: Christe audi nos! And then procession was made with the wooden Crucifix of the Duomo, said to have been that carried by the victors of Montaperti, with all the children of the Spedale and a thousand young maidens of the city walking in front, followed by the Disciplinati of Our Lady, all the friars and clergy, and, after the Crucifix, a great multitude of men and women. Then it was decreed that the “useless mouths,” le bocche disutili, should be expelled from the city; and these sweet voices of the children grew silent. Four officials specially appointed, the Quattro sopra le bocche disutili, on September 22nd at nightfall, drove out more than a thousand men, women and children, weeping with sorrow and terror. Then Piero Strozzi, who had temporarily returned to Siena with the Archbishop and others, bade the Rector of the Spedale expel 700 more, in order that the soldiers might make use of the supply of grain that the Spedale possessed, an escort being promised to guard them out of danger. On October 5th, 250 little children, from six to ten years old, mostly in litters, with a number of men and women, passed out of the Porta Fontebranda, escorted by four companies of soldiers. They fell into an ambuscade, a number of them were slaughtered and the rest driven back towards the city. “And next morning they were all outside Porta Fontebranda (at the place where the annual market of the pigs is held), all lying on the ground with the greatest cries and lamentations. It was the most pitiful sight to see these little despoiled children, wounded and beaten, lying on the ground, and would