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Before the hour expired, the Duce, who in his fustian prime had bellowed to his followers, "If I retreat, kill me!" was in headlong flight. At 9 p.m. he reached Como near the Swiss border. At 2 a.m. Thursday he sent an envoy to ask Swiss authorities to grant asylum to his wife, Donna Rachele, and their children. The Swiss emphatically declined. About 6 a.m. Mussolini sneaked northward presumably in the hope of reaching Germany. According to one report he joined a German truck convoy trying unsuccessfully to disguise himself in a German officer's overcoat. He was spotted near Dongo and held for arrest.
A partisan commander known by the nom de guerre "Eduardo" dispatched ten men and an officer to "settle the matter." They found the dictator and his mistress in a cottage on a hill outside the village. When he saw his countrymen approaching, Mussolini thought they had come to liberate him. Joyfully he embraced his Petacci. When he learned that he was under arrest, his face turned yellow with fear and fury. He cried: "Let me save my life, and I'll give you an empire!"
But the partisans gave him short shrift. He was bluntly informed that he had been condemned to death. After a brief "trial," the 16 other Fascists in the Duce's party were also adjudged guilty. The Duce's last words as he faced the firing squad were: "No! No!"
The bodies of the 18 were loaded into a moving van and trucked south to Milan. There, at 3 a.m. Friday, they were dumped in the old Piazza Loreto, now renamed Piazza Quindici Martiri, in honor of 15 antiFascists recently executed there.
"It Is Finished." The bodies lay on the ground for many hours. Then, to give the mob a better view, the partisans hanged Mussolini and Petacci by their feet from a scaffold on the Piazza. "Hah!" jeered an onlooker, "Mussolini has become a pig!"
Shortly before noon today the bodies were removed to a mortuary. Mussolini and Petacci were dragged like sacks of grain into a high-walled courtyard. Men, women & children followed, climbing the brick wall and peering over at the shapeless pulp that was the Duce's face. The people's temper, as though satiated, seemed calmer now. "At last, it is finished," said one quietly. "He was punished by God."