Word was immediately sent to all the nobles then in Venice to arm themselves, and to bring their servants and retainers armed to the squares near their habitations. During the whole day and the following night these armed men remained constantly on the watch, ready to act under the orders of the Privy Council at a moment’s notice. Eighty or ninety nobles and trusty citizens continually rode through the city from post to post to preserve order and unity.
After the first hours of agitation, arrangements were made for a regular succession of watches at all the principal points. Meanwhile some of the conspirators sought safety in flight, while some were arrested in their houses. Isarello was taken in a garden, immediately after the first revelations of the conspiracy. Some of the other chiefs were chased as far as Chioggia, and brought back. On the same day Filippo Calendario and Isarello were hanged between the red columns of the loggia of the old palace, from which the Doge usually assisted at the Carnival festivities. Others suffered the same sentence, and as their bodies were not taken down directly after they were dead, there was soon a row of eleven corpses hanging from the balcony, beginning with those of the chief conspirators, who had been hanged with gags in their mouths, lest they should cry out to the people. The minor conspirators were spared this indignity.
The Doge during this time was under guard in his own apartments, until at last one counsellor, Giovanni Mocenigo, one inquisitor, Luca da Lezze, and one avogador, Orio Pasqualigo, entered together to examine him. As the Council was not willing to accept the sole responsibility of the trial, a committee was chosen, consisting of twenty nobles of the most ancient and illustrious families of Venice; these, however, were only to have a vote in consultation, but not upon the final sentence. It was in this way that the ‘Zonta,’ or supplementary committee of the Council of Ten, was constituted, and its usefulness was so readily recognised that from that time on it was always called to assist in cases of unusual importance. It followed that the court, before which the Doge was to be tried, consisted of thirty-seven persons, _i.e._ nine of the Council of Ten, since Niccolò Faliero could not sit, six ducal counsellors, twenty of the committee of nobles, and two avogadori of the Commonwealth. The High Chancellor, I presume, however, must also have been present; in which case the court consisted of thirty-eight. Contemporary documents give us the names of all these judges except the last.