The implacable jealousy entertained against one another by the two monarchs led to the war breaking out again; Francis I. entered into alliance with the Turks under Barbarossa, and a combined army laid siege to Nice in August, 1543. The Turkish cannons completely destroyed the Convent of Ste. Croix, in which Pope Paul had lodged in 1538, and broke down large portions of the city ramparts. It was then that occurred an incident that has never been forgotten in Nice. Catherine Ségurane, commonly called Malfacia (the misshapen), a washerwoman, was carrying provisions on the wall to some of the defenders, when she saw that the Turks had put up a scaling ladder, and that a captain was leading the party, and had reached the parapet. She rushed at him, beat him on the head with her washing-bat, and thrust down the ladder, which fell with all those on it. Then, hastening to the nearest group of Niçois soldiery, she told them what she had done, and they, electrified by her example, threw open a postern, made a sortie, and drove the Turks back to the shore. According to one version of the story, Catherine gripped the standard in the hand of the Turk, wrenched it from him, and with the butt end thrust him back. The story first appears in a “Discours sur l’ancien monastère des religieuses de Nice,” 1608. Honoré Pastorelli, the author, merely says that a standard of the Turks was taken from the ensign by a citizeness named Donna Maufaccia, who fought at the Tour des Caïres, where were the Turkish batteries. A second authority, in 1654, Antonio Fighier, says that the event took place on the Feast of Our Lady in August; that the woman seized the staff of the standard and flung it into the moat. Some weeks later the Turks penetrated into the town and carried off 2,500 prisoners to their galleys; but these were retaken by the Sicilian fleet.