«My dear Marquis», the People’s Captain Sigismondo Obertenghi said. «The problems are no longer represented either by smugglers or by Jews. The municipal army is now reduced to a small light. The agreements with the Sforza forced me to send most of the men to defend Milan from the assaults of the Lansquenets and the imperial army. And many of them have lost their lives. The few who have returned are not enough to defend our city, and the Saracen pirates are well aware of this. By now they manage to land on the Ligurian coast completely undisturbed and, following the ways of the smugglers, whom they know well by now, they arrive here, where they raid everything they manage to plunder. But if they were content with the robberies, then pushing their raids towards Milan and the Eridano plain,
