The conspirators, true to their promises, abandoned hospitable Venice and went to the posts assigned them by Cybo. Ottaviano Zino returned to Genoa, and, while studying to seem idle, laboured incessantly to prepare the populace for revolt. Paolo Spinola was sent to Garfagnana, once subject to the Fieschi, where he hoped to find ardent partisans. Others on similar missions travelled to other places. Cybo, who had supreme command, obtained through the aid of Montachino a dependent of Scipione Fieschi, three thousand gold crowns. The French agents gave him countersigns for the Governor of Mondovi, Candele, who was instructed to support the movement with two thousand infantry. He then travelled through Ferrara and Parma to Pontremoli. The governor of that feud, Pietro Dureta, encountered him at the ford of the Magra and attacked him. Cybo drew his sword and raised the cry of _Gatto_ hoping to raise the vassals of Fieschi; but he was struck in the head by a halberd, received a wound in his right hand and fell lifeless to the ground. He was sent to Milan under a strong guard and Nicolò Secco was appointed to prepare the process against him. The letters of the Fieschi which were found on his person left no room to doubt his guilt. Some tell us that he was several times tortured and confessed that Farnese, Maffei, Ghisa and the Pope himself were accomplices in the plot, and that the Fieschi and Farnese were its instigators. The emperor did not wish to execute Cybo; and we find evidence in documents of the period that even the bloodthirsty Gonzaga made every exertion to save him. On the other hand Graneville and Doria laboured with all their power to secure his punishment. In fact, so soon as Doria heard of this plot, committed rather in intention than act and excusable by the youth of the conspirator, “the prince (I use the words of Porzio) inflamed to wrath by the offence and full of vengeful animosity, disregarded the double tie which bound him to the young man, and made incessant appeals to Cæsar for the blood of his relative.” Many Italian and foreign princes asked grace for the prisoner, and the emperor was at first undecided; but severity triumphed over mercy--Doria desired vengeance and he obtained it. The victim met his fate with manly intrepidity. He was beheaded and his body exposed between two wax candles in the public square. Nearly all the historians are in error regarding the time of his execution. The chronicle of Venturini declares that it occurred on the 18th of May, 1548. He was scarcely twenty years of age. Porzio says:--“His courage and military capacity inspired all who knew him with the conviction that, if he had not perished in boyhood, he would have become one of the first captains of his age. He made a single mistake: that of endeavouring to expel one foreigner with another--to drive out the Spaniards in order to establish the French in Italy.”