Siena

The Black Death of 1348 carried off about half of Siena's 50,000 people and stopped work on the enlarged cathedral, which was never finished. The republic declined slowly from then on, yet it still held a third of Tuscany when war finally ended it. In 1552 the Sienese drove out the Spanish governor whom Charles V had imposed on them; Florence and Spain answered by besieging the city, and after some eighteen months it surrendered in April 1555. Exiles under Piero Strozzi kept a Sienese republic alive at Montalcino under French protection until France gave it up at Cateau-Cambrésis in 1559. By then Philip II had granted Siena to Cosimo de' Medici, and it became the New State of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, ruled from Florence but kept apart, with laws and taxes of its own.