Entirely devoted to the interests of his master, who was now prosecuting the war with Spain, he had still ear and eye for his native island, from which voices reached him now and then that moved him deeply. He came to Corsica in the year 1547, to take a wife from among his own countrywomen. He chose a daughter of one of the oldest houses beyond the mountains--the house of Ornano. Though he was himself without ancestry, Sampiero's fame and well-known manly worth were a patent of nobility which Francesco Ornano could not despise; and he gave him the hand of his only daughter, the beautiful Vannina, the heiress of Ornano. No sooner did the governor of the Genoese Bank learn the presence of Sampiero--in whom he foreboded an implacable foe--within the bounds of his authority, than, in defiance of all justice, he had him seized and thrown into prison. Francesco Ornano, fearing for his son-in-law's life, hastened to Genoa to the French ambassador. The latter instantly demanded Sampiero's liberation. The demand was complied with; but the insult done him was now for Sampiero another and a personal spur to give relief in action to his long-cherished hatred of Genoa, and ardent wish to free his native country. The posture of continental affairs, the war between France and Charles V., soon gave him opportunity. Henry II., husband of Catherine de Medici, deeply involved in Italian politics, in active war with the Emperor, and in alliance with the Turks, who were on the point of sending a fleet into the Western Mediterranean, agreed to the proposal of an enterprise against Corsica. A double end seemed attainable by this: for first, in threatening Corsica, Genoa was menaced; and secondly, as the Republic, since Andreas Doria had freed her from the French yoke, had become the close ally of Charles V., carrying the war into Corsica was carrying it on against the Emperor himself. And besides, the island offered an excellent position in the Mediterranean, and a basis for the operations of the combined French and Turkish fleets. Marshal Thermes, therefore, at that time in Italy, and besieging Siena, received orders to prepare for the conquest of Corsica.