For some while the ultimate fate of the once mighty Republic hung in doubt. Cosimo had conquered as the lieutenant of the Emperor, and the latter first invested his own son, Philip II. of Spain, with Siena and its dominion as a vacant fief of the Empire. Philip ruled it for two years by means of the tyrannical Cardinal of Burgos, who, in defiance of the articles of the capitulation, began to build a fortress and filled the prisons with suspected persons. There was even some talk of ceding the Sienese State to Pope Paul IV., that he might invest his nephews, the Caraffa, with it. But at length Cosimo de' Medici had his will, and in July 1557, he obtained from Philip the investiture of Siena, its city and dominion, to be held as a fief from the King of Spain. But the Spanish monarch reserved to himself the seaboard of the late Republic--including Talamone, Orbetello, Port' Ercole and Porto Santo Stefano--which henceforth, until the eighteenth century, formed what were known as the Spanish Praesidia.[130] But Montalcino still held out under French protection. Mario Bandini had carried off the public seals; and, although he sent these back after he had copied them, the Sienese in Montalcino, declaring that _ubi cives, ibi patria_, still represented the old Republic of Siena, coined money, and for some time kept a large portion of the Sienese State in obedience to them and France. Mario Bandini died there in 1558; that other hero of the last days of the Republic, Enea Piccolomini, had died a month before the capitulation of Siena itself. At length, the treaty of Câteau Cambresis, which decided the fate of Italy, decided the destinies of Montalcino as well. The heroic little Republic sent two ambassadors to Cambresis, Bernardino Buoninsegni and Annibale Buonsignori, pleading either for liberty or for the rule of France. That failing, they capitulated in August 1559, to Spain and Cosimo upon honourable terms, and the Republic of Siena was a thing of the past. [Illustration: _Remains of a Mural Tower_] In 1561 Cosimo, Duke of Florence and Siena (he did not become Grand Duke until 1570), made his triumphant entry into Siena. Henceforth he ruled the city by means of a lieutenant-general and a Balìa appointed by himself; the other forms of republican government were preserved, as the Duke was anxious to attract back to Siena those whom Spanish brutality had driven away, but with hardly the shadow of any political authority. The great grand-ducal citadel of Santa Barbara, now that most pleasant of lounging-places at sunset, tells its own story.