When he arrived at the corridor which led to the Orba prison, however, one of the nobles in attendance gently arrested his progress with, “This way, my lord.”
“But that is not the right way,” retorted the count hurriedly.
“Yes, yes, it is perfectly so,” was the answer given.
At this moment, guards appeared, surrounded Carmagnola, and pushed him into the corridor. The last words which he was heard to utter were: “I am lost!” and, as he spoke, a deep-drawn sigh escaped from him. During two days, he refused to take any kind of nourishment. The trial began on the 9th of April with all the forms recognised and required in criminal procedure by the constitution; the examination was conducted by a special committee of nine persons—Luca Mocenigo, privy councillor; Antonio Barbarigo, Bartolommeo Morisini, and Marino Lando, chiefs of the Ten; Daniele Vetturi, Marco Barbarigo, and Luigi Veniero, inquisitors of the Ten; and Faustino Viaro and Francesco Loredano, avogadors of the commune.
On the 11th, the accused, having declined to make any answers, was put to the question. It happened that one of his arms had been fractured in the service of the republic; and the committee consequently objected to the use of the estrapade. But a confession was wrung from him by the application of the brazier. During Lent, the process was suspended. At its recommencement a mass of documents was submitted for investigation, and numerous witnesses were summoned. Independently of the confession, which was possibly of indifferent value, damning evidences of treasonable connivance with Visconti were adduced. On the propriety of conviction there was perfect unanimity; but in regard to the nature of the sentence opinions were divided. The doge himself and three of the privy council proposed perpetual imprisonment. The three chiefs of the Ten, and the avogadors of the commune were, under all the circumstances of aggravated guilt, in favour of capital punishment. A resort was had to the ballot, and, of seven and twenty persons entitled to vote, nineteen voted for death.
[1432-1441 A.D.]
On the 5th of May, 1432, Francesco di Carmagnola was led as a public traitor to the common place of execution. He wore a scarlet vest with sleeves, a crimson mantle, scarlet stockings, and a velvet cap alla Carmagnola; a gag was in his mouth; his hands were pinioned behind him according to usage; and there between the “red columns,” in the sight of all Venice, his head was severed from his body at the third stroke of the axe.
Thus fell, in the prime of life, the victim of his own blind and perverse folly, a man of the first order of talents, and within whose reach the most splendid opportunities had so recently been. The government of Venice had tolerated his errors [says Hazlitt] until his criminality was beyond a doubt. When his death was decreed, his corruption and treason were already sufficiently glaring. Yet there were subsequent discoveries, which made his case infinitely worse, and which procured an instant mitigation of the penalty against Niccolo Trevisano and the other officers concerned in the loss of the battle of the Po; and some justice, however tardy and inadequate, was rendered to the sufferers by the open declaration of a member of the seigniory in the great council, “that, if the government had at the time been in possession of that exact information which was now in its hands, its treatment of Trevisano and his comrades would have been very different.” It has been said by a modern writer, that “Carmagnola seems to have acted in so equivocal a manner as would have made him amenable to any court-martial with little chance of absolution.”[k]
There are other writers, however, who have regarded the guilt of Carmagnola as by no means so clearly proved, and there are many who would be disposed to approve the judgment of Pignotti,[o] who says, “Probably he was guilty, but the public have always the right to term injustice any act which decides the life and honour of a celebrated man without seeing proofs of his guilt, or at least must consider them very doubtful, as no person who possesses understanding can discover any reasonable motive for concealing them. The proof of this,” Pignotti continues, “may be found in the criminal system of the most polite nations, in particular in that which has formed the glory and personal security of the English people.”
This perhaps is a slight over-statement; there may be reasons of state that make it desirable to give publicity to all the facts where treason is involved. And certainly it would seem as if the Venetian authorities must have felt very sure of their ground before they decided to do away with their captain-general, when no man of similar capacity was at hand to take his place. Nevertheless, the question of the justice of the execution of Carmagnola remains one of the unsolved problems of history.