een snared, evil had it fared,
But now that he is ta'en, his craft is all in vain.
Kyrie Eleison!"

Thus it was under Sigismund's auspices that the late governor was
brought to trial. Instruments of torture sent from Basel were employed
to make Hagenbach confess his crimes. But there was nothing to
confess. As a matter of fact the charges against him were for
well-known deeds the character of which depended on the point of view.
What the Alsatians declared were infringements of their rights, the
duke's deputy stoutly asserted were acts justified by the terms of the
treaty. In regard to his private career the prisoner persisted in
his statement that he was no worse than other men and that all his
so-called victims had been willing and well rewarded for their
submission to him.

On May 9th, the preliminaries were declared over and the trial began
before a tribunal whose composition is not perfectly well known,
but which certainly included delegates from the chief cities of the
landgraviate, and from Strasburg, Basel, and Berne.[9]

The trial was practically lynch law in spite of the cloak of legality
thrown over it. Charles alone was Hagenbach's principal and he alone
was responsible for his lieutenant's acts. The intrinsic incompetence
of the court was hotly urged by Jean Irma of Basel, Hagenbach's
self-appointed advocate, but his defence was rejected. Public opinion
insisted upon extreme measures, and the sentence of capital punishment
was promptly followed by execution.

Petitions from the prisoner that he might die by the sword and be
permitted to bequeath a portion of his property to the church of
St. Etienne at Brisac were granted. The remainder of his wealth was
confiscated by Sigismund, who had withdrawn to Fribourg during the
progress of the trial. Even Hagenbach's bitterest foes acknowledged
that the late governor made a dignified and Christian exit from the
life he had not graced.

Charles is said to have beaten well the messenger who brought him the
news of this trial and execution, in the very presence of Sigismund
who had not yet bought back his rights in the landgraviate, where he
had appointed Oswald von Thierstein as governor, and where he was thus
presuming to use sovereign power. This was not sufficient, however,
to make the duke change his own plans. Stephen von Hagenbach was
entrusted with the commission of punishing the Alsatians for his
brother's ignominious deposition, and he did his tas