The Republic had begun by declaring the Fieschi guilty of high treason and denying them trial or defence. He subsequently wrote to the senate: “If your excellencies do not make some change, I shall be in a very painful position and people may justly think that I prosecute this unfortunate affair (maladetta causa) with personal motives. You know how I laboured to relieve myself from this duty. Therefore I beseech you to relieve me at once from my present embarrassment by declaring clearly that we may admit new testimony, or by revoking your second decree, and proceeding logically by carrying out your first executive mandate.” The senate solved the difficulty by ordering the punishment of the prisoners without trial. The common soldiers were pardoned. Some of the conspirators were condemned to the halter, others to the oar. The sentence was executed on the 23rd of July. Desiderio Cangialanza was the first to mount the scaffold and he was followed by some whose names history has not preserved. It was too busy with laudations of Doria and invectives against the fallen. Gerolamo, Verrina and Assereto, being patricians, were beheaded in the chapel of San Rocco at the foot of the fortress. Servile as was the age it was forced to admire the heroic bearing of Verrina whose character was cast in the old Roman mould. He was twice tortured, but he would not utter a word about the secrets of the conspiracy. The night preceeding his execution he spoke with serenity of the doctrines to which he had given his faith, and encouraged his companions to meet their last hour with courageous composure. He went to the scaffold with the step rather of a conqueror than of a criminal. The sentence of death embraced the exiles Ottobuono and Cornelio, and, what is more iniquitous, the youthful Scipione and his descendants to the fifth generation were banished. Some writers have maintained that Sacco was also executed at Montobbio. But though the documents relating to the treaty with Gerolamo are few and it is apparent that many have been surreptitiously removed from the public archives, yet we have been so fortunate as to find some letters of Sacco himself which entirely invalidate this statement. Another person has already printed some of them. His correspondence with Luigi Ferrero of Savona, in February, show that he was then in Turin on his way back from France.