Foucault met his fate resisting the guard on board the "Santa Maria," where he was held prisoner; while Lafreniere, De Noyan, Caresse, Marquis, and Joseph Milhet were condemned to be publicly hanged.

The earnest supplication, both of colonists and Spanish officials, shocked by the unjust severity of this sentence, sufficed to save them from the disgrace of the gallows, but fated them to fall before the volley of a file of grenadiers.
With the firing of the sunset gun the evening of their last earthly day, the post-captain visited the condemned men, and spoke with each in turn; they numbered five.

All through the dark hours of that night heavily armed sentries stood in the narrow passageway before nail-studded doors, while each hour, as the ship's bell struck, the Commandant of Marine peered within each lighted apartment where rested five plainly outlined forms.

With the first gray of the dawn the unfortunate prisoners were mustered upon deck, but they numbered only four.

And four only, white faced, yet firm of step and clear of eye, stood an hour later with backs to the rising sun and hearts to the levelled rifles, and when the single volley had echoed and reechoed across the wide river, the white smoke slowly lifting and blown away above the trees, only four lifeless bodies lay closely pressed against the red-brick wall--the fifth condemned man was not there: _Chevalier Charles de Noyan had escaped his fate_.