After many complicated movements in the lower valley of the Metauro, attended with no decided advantage, and important only as having enabled the youthful Giovanni de' Medici to flesh that sword which soon after won him the laurels of a bright but brief career, the papal army sat down before Mondolfo. The resistance of that small town was encouraged by the state of the besiegers, and embittered by their savage reputation. The Minio despatches of this date represent them as suffering from a scarcity of provisions and a dearth of bread and wine, adding that "the captured castles envy the dead, by reason of the cruelties practised on the survivors." Its garrison consisted of two hundred Spaniards and three hundred militia, so determinedly supported by the inhabitants, that breaches opened during the day were made up before morning, mines were met by counter-excavations, and subterranean galleries were often scenes of death-struggles. Provoked by this obstinacy, Lorenzo swore never to raise the siege until he had razed the place to its foundations, put the males to the sword, and handed over the women to the Devil's service. But in the end of March, a few days after he had uttered this savage bravado, his own career was arrested. Whilst, with more bravery than prudence, he served a battery in the dress of a common soldier, a Spaniard, to whom his person was known, marked him from the walls, and shot him as he leaned upon a cannon to take aim. The ball took effect above the left ear; and the wound extended down his neck to the shoulder.[273] He was removed to Ancona, and for above a week continued in extreme danger, refusing to be trepanned; but by the end of the month his convalescence was complete. [Footnote 273: This account is adopted by Leone, p. 230, by Sismondi, and by Centenelle, Vat. Urb. MSS. No. 907. Baldi (Vat. Urb. MSS. No. 906) and Guicciardini say that Lorenzo, having undergone much personal fatigue at the battery, was walking away to repose himself in a sheltered spot, when a bullet from the walls hit him on the head, grazing his skull to the nape of the neck.]