Young nobles left Siena individually and contacted the important Italian lobby in Vienna, hoping to obtain junior positions in some German regiment.
Enea Silvio's father established him in an apartment in the imperial capital, with a page, two valets, and a groom for his horses, while the youngster sought audiences with the emperor Leopold I, empress, the archduke and important ministers on the credentials of his famous ancestors.
The last letter, from November 1681, shows him negotiating through the Dowager Empress Leonora for the positions of pages for his nephews; for him, they represented two more Piccolomini and Sienese in Germany.
After the siege of Vienna (1683), emperor Leopold I mounted a series of campaigns against the Ottomans (see: Great Turkish War), to capture territories of the Balkans.
To prevent the outburst of the disease, or, by other accounts, to retaliate for the siege of Vienna, General Piccolomini ordered the city to be burned (see Fire of Skopje).