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Courtesy Extended From One Enemy to Another |
The Onset of the Siege of Siena
On Christmas Eve, 1554, the commander of the forces besieging Siena had sent to the commander of the besieged, Blaise de Monluc: "...half a stag, six capons, six partridges, six borachios of excellent wine and six loaves of bread, wherewith the next day to keep the feast." de Monluc was seriously ill at the time, so: "...he had permitted my physicians to send men through his camp to fetch certain drugs from Florence, and had himself three or four times sent me very excellent sort of birds..." The enemy commander was the Italian condottiere, the Marquis of Marignano.
de Monluc continued: "But whilst the Marquis caressed me with his presents... he was preparing for me another kind of feast; for the same night about an hour after midnight he with all his army gave a scalado* to the citadel and to the fort Camollia." The forces of the Marquis took them, too.
*Attack with intent to scale the walls.