The breathing space was but short. With the new year, 1554, the tempest burst upon Siena. Piero Strozzi, the deadliest enemy of the Duke of Florence, came to the city as vicar-general of the Most Christian King--in spite of Orlando Malavolti, then one of the Eight of War, who urged that he should not be received without an express order from France, as it would give an excuse to the Duke to declare war, being a breach of one of the conditions, which stipulated that the Sienese should not shelter Florentine _fuorusciti_. In his history, Malavolti remarks upon the analogies between this last war of Siena and that ancient one of Montaperti, both begun by the Florentines on the pretext that the Sienese had broken treaties by receiving their exiles; and he declares bitterly that Strozzi, unlike Giordano, "had intentions quite other than the defence and salvation of the city of Siena," that he had sent away a number of the soldiers, and left unprotected the forts outside Porta Camollia. Similarly, Sozzini declares that Piero's coming was held to be the ruin of Siena, since it brought the Duke of Florence into the field, without whom the Caesarian Majesty could have done them little harm.[125] But these are mere words; Strozzi or no Strozzi, Cosimo and Charles were equally bent upon the subjugation, complete and final, of Siena. The armies of the Emperor and the Duke of Florence entered the dominions of the Republic, under the command of the last and most formidable of the condottieri, Gian Giacomo de' Medici, Marchese di Marignano. The sudden capture, on the night of January 26th, 1554, of the forts outside the Porta Camollia began that last tremendous war of the Sienese, that siege--no less heroic and more prolonged than that of Florence twenty-four years before--in which the last great Republic of the Middle Ages died a giant's death. The war lasted till the April of the following year, both round the city and in the contado, and was most ruthless in its character. For ten miles around, the once smiling country became a desolate, fire-stained and blood-soaked wilderness--a few trees being left standing, merely that the Spaniards might hang the hapless contadini who attempted to bring supplies through their lines to the starving people in the beleaguered city. The earlier engagements mostly resulted in favour of the Sienese with their French allies and German mercenaries. At first they had so many prisoners in their hands that, when the Marchese di Marignano raised a gallows on the captured forts, they raised another on the citadel, and threatened to hang ten of their prisoners for every one that the imperialists executed--a threat averted by the intervention of the Spanish soldiers themselves, who sent a message to Strozzi that they would force their own general to act _a buona guerra_; which, alas! was held only to apply to combatants, and not always even to them.