Alois Palffy and the officers under his command were soon captured. After a brief interrogation, they confessed.
Most of them were second-generation military men who had never seen a battlefield. So why had they fled?
The answer was that they had no supply train at all. Where the money meant for their supplies had gone was anyone's guess.
As for their reason for marching back to Venice, they had heard along the way that the city had been liberated, and wanted to help Duke Alois Palffy save face.
Naturally, they couldn't admit defeat. So they blamed the common soldiers for being cowardly and incompetent. They had even prepared a whole speech to silence Franz.
But none of that would be necessary now. Franz intended to put an end to this privilege without responsibility.
Then, more than a hundred aristocratic officers were hanged without ceremony in a square in Venice. They had plenty to say and plenty of people they wanted to see, but Franz neither wanted to listen nor meet with them.
Duke Alois Palffy, in particular, couldn't understand why Franz had done this. They could have all lived in peace.
More than a hundred bodies hung in a neat row across the square. Seeing the lords who had lorded it over them meet such grisly ends, the soldiers felt the pent-up anger in their chests ease, and their spirits slackened.
After all, Archduke Franz seemed so young, and he didn't look like a bad man.
But they soon changed their minds.
"I require you to march at once to the Po River front and reinforce Archduke Albrecht against the Papal States' army."
At that, the soldiers began murmuring among themselves.
"We've been running for days. We don't have the strength!"
"Exactly. And I hear the Papal States has a