In the early centuries Assisi had bravely fought for her independence and held her own fairly well; but in the fourteenth century a sudden whirlwind swept across the country threatening to destroy the last remnant of her freedom. At this time the _condottieri_ were busy carving out principalities for themselves, and one after another they marched through the land forcing the towns to bear their yoke. Assisi, not without a sharp struggle, fell a prey to Biordo Michelotti and Braccio Fortebraccio, successive despots of Perugia; and the citizens found themselves for the next twenty years in turn the vassals of Guidantonio of Montefeltro, of Sforza, and of the Pope. In 1442 Perugia was governed, in the name of the Pope, by Niccolò Piccinino, successor to Fortebraccio as the leader of the Bracceschi troops, and consequently a successor to the rivalry with Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan. Assisi, therefore, who had spontaneously given herself to Sforza, preferring the tyranny of strangers to the yoke of Perugia, was not likely to be favourably looked on by Piccinino, and sooner or later he determined to besiege her. But just at this time Perugia had made peace with all the world, and, delighted with this novel state of things, she rang the great bell of the Commune, lit beacon fires on the hills, and sent a special messenger to Assisi to proclaim the fact. The Assisans, with more courage than discretion, cursed the messenger and those who sent him, saying they had half a mind to kill him. "Return with this message," they cried, "say unto those who sent thee, that they try to wipe us from the face of the earth and then send words of peace. But we will have war and only war." This insulting message was duly delivered to the astonished priors, and that night the beacon fires were extinguished. When news reached Assisi of the vast preparations in Perugia for war, these hasty words were regretted. Luckily Francesco Sforza sent the Assisans a good supply of troops, and every day they hoped for the arrival of his brother Alessandro. The month that followed was disastrous to Assisi, and the account of the war given us by the Perugian chronicler Graziani who took part in the siege, brings before us vividly the many stages she had to pass through before arriving at the calm, seraphic days of later years. By the end of October 1442, Niccolò Piccinino, alluded to always as _el Capitano_, arrived in the plain below Assisi with some 20,000 men, and took up his quarters in the Franciscan monastery of San Damiano. His first intention was to take the town by assault, but on surveying the fortifications and walls and the impregnable castle, he deemed it wiser to wait quietly until hunger should have damped the valour of the citizens. Help, however, came to him from another quarter. It is believed that a Franciscan friar, perhaps one of those with whom he lodged at San Damiano, betrayed to him a way into the town by means of an unused drain.