Siena was now under the protection of France, with a French garrison. The people were in a fever of delight. Sonnet after sonnet, abusing the Spaniards and extolling the French, satirising the Catholic Majesty and praising the Most Christian, appeared on the Loggia di Mercanzia. With no thought or talk of war, the Sienese gave themselves up to sport and pleasure. The Balìa was abolished, or rather combined with the Concistoro in one chief magistracy composed of the Signoria and twenty others elected by the Senate; the two councils (the General Council of the Campana, or Senate, and the Council of the People) were reduced to one; the Monti were nominally annulled, or united in one body of the "Cittadini Reggenti della Città di Siena." In November the Cardinal of Ferrara, Ippolito d'Este the younger, with a goodly guard of Swiss, came as lieutenant of the King of France, received by the government with the utmost honour, and welcomed by the people, says Malavolti, _con incredibile allegrezza_. Hearing that the Emperor was massing troops in the Kingdom of Naples to come against Siena, the Cardinal had new forts built outside the Porta Camollia. The men of the contrade came to work upon them, "always gladly to the sound of drums and trumpets," while one of the Cardinal's guard played on the flute, so sweetly "that every one stayed to listen to it as a thing most rare." But wiser folk shook their heads, noticing that the forts were being designed in such a way that they would serve equally to bombard the city, "from which thing many took a right sinister impression."[121] And again the strange weird figure of Brandano appeared, wandering up and down the streets, gazing upon the new fortifications, singing in a quaint doggerel of his own: "Little good, O Cardinal, may'st thou bring us! Siena, Siena, the physician will come who will cure thee of thy madness."[122] The first attempt of the powers of Spain and the Empire to avenge their discomfiture failed signally. At the beginning of 1553, a great army of Germans, Spaniards and Italians under Don Garcia de Toledo (the brother-in-law of Duke Cosimo) invaded the dominion of the Republic, occupied the Valdichiana, took Pienza, and captured Monticchiello after a heroic defence in which the garrison of the little castle, commanded by Adriano Baglioni, only surrendered when all the powder for the arquebuses was spent and they were reduced to fighting with stones. In the Maremma, Cornelio Bentivoglio sallied out of Grosseto and routed the imperial reinforcements that had landed at Piombino from Sicily. In the latter part of March the invading army laid siege to Montalcino, which Giordano Orsini [Illustration: VIA DEI TERMINI]