The other partizans of the conspiracy fared no better.[232] Antonio Maffei and Stefano da Bagnone had taken refuge in the Benedictine abbey. For two days they were vainly sought for by crowds of people, who when they discovered them, mutilated their noses and ears and then killed them. The monks were preserved with difficulty from ill-treatment. Giovan Batista da Montesecco was seized in flight on May 1. A long trial was begun of the man who was not groundlessly suspected of knowing a good deal about the connections of the accomplices at Rome. In this the judges were not deceived, for the revelations which Batista made of the consultations of the Pazzi and the archbishop with Pope Sixtus and Girolamo Riario, enable us to perceive the truth and falsehood in the unmeasured accusations hurled against the Pope by the Florentines, as they furnish the proper preface to the conspiracy as it has been represented above. Had Pope Sixtus IV. played another part in this story, and stooped to what was ascribed to him, Montesecco, who must above all have sought to diminish his own guilt, would certainly not have kept silence upon the subject. In spite of these revelations, which bore the visible stamp of truth, which have been half taken in their real sense and half arbitrarily construed, it has been the fashion, even to the present day, to accuse the Pope of a share in the guilt of the murder. That the evil effect of the revelations was feared in Rome, is seen from a subsequent letter of the Florentine ambassador, Pier Filippo Pandolfini, who advised their dissemination in order to oppose the Roman accusations. On May 4, Montesecco was beheaded in the court of the palace of the Podestà. Eighteen days later Donato Acciaiuoli, Napoleone Orsini, and the Archbishop Rinaldo Orsini, who had witnessed the bad effect produced in Rome by the trial and execution, advised that Batista’s property should be restored to his brother Leone, who was residing there.[233] Napoleone Franzesi fled with the assistance of Piero Vespucci, who dearly paid for the aid he afforded him. Bernardo Bandini, who had at first concealed himself in the tower of the cathedral, reached Constantinople, was given up by command of the Sultan, and in 1479 shared the fate of his accomplices during Lorenzo’s absence. Antonio de’ Medici, a distant relation of Cosimo’s line, had been sent to Constantinople to thank Mohammed II., and bring the prisoner home in chains. The deliverance of Bandini, more, perhaps than any other circumstance, contributed to increase the idea of Lorenzo’s greatness in the eyes of his fellow-citizens.