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The cruel siege of Siena
When the army of Europe’s most powerful monarch besieged the Tuscan city in 1554, it took terror and hunger to achieve what cannon and arquebus could not, as William E Welsh explains.
The wrath of Charles V – the Holy Roman Emperor and Europe’s most powerful monarch – showed clearly around Siena during the early spring of 1555. Over the past four centuries, the Tuscan city – the capital of the republic of the same name – had grown to become one of the Continent’s economic and cultural centres, known for the quality of its governance as well as for the beauty of its architectural and artistic treasures.
But now it was entering its second year under siege, with Spanish, German, and Italian soldiers of the emperor’s besieging army occupying a string of camps and small forts that encircled it. The once-beautiful surrounding countryside, which formerly boasted
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