Charles III., the unfortunate, was ruling over these desolated provinces and his subjects suffered every species of indignity, outrage and despotism. To render matters, if possible, a little worse, Gonzaga urged the Emperor to reduce to a swamp all that wide plain between the Alps and the Po to form a barrier to French invasion of Lombardy. In fine, there was no city in all Italy which was not conquered and oppressed by foreign armies. Of Genoa I shall speak in its place. It is worth while to mention Nice, where in 1538 Paul III. held the congress at which a truce was concluded between Cæsar and Francis I. Five years afterwards, Francis marched upon and besieged it with the help of the Turks. This siege is memorable in Italian history for the heroic spirit of Segurana, but after the death at the sword’s point of all her bravest defenders, the city was forced to surrender. The citizens abandoned their homes, though they had obtained a promise of immunity for their property from pillage by the soldiery. The Turks kept faith, while the French violated their pledges, thus giving rise to a general desire among Italians to become subject to the Turks, from a conviction that they could no longer endure the weight of their misfortunes. There were writers as Vives, who speaking of Italy, (1529) sought to discourage this sentiment, telling the Italians that the Turks would heap worse miseries upon them. But it is incredible that Soliman could have equalled the endless tortures inflicted by Francis I. and Charles V. Segni says: “More than two hundred thousand persons killed in war, more than a hundred cities and important castles sacked and destroyed, so many thousands of innocent men and women destroyed by pestilence and famine that one cannot number them, matrons debauched, maidens ravished, abominable practices with children, an endless catalogue of crimes against religion and nature committed against each other by christians, all owe their origin to the implacable enmity of two men, who were born and have grown old in eternal hatred to each other. They are not weary of shedding the blood of their fellows; they continue to fight and will fight to the end of their lives.”[12] He proceeds:--“Afflicted peoples cannot do better than pray God to destroy or subject them both to the sway of the grand Turk, so that the world may come under the power of a single monarch, who, though he be a barbarian and an enemy to our laws, may give us a little repose wherein to rear our children to a life, of poverty indeed, but free from the burdens of our miserable existence.”