In 1385, he allied with the Visconti of Milan against the Scaliger of Verona. In 1387 the Paduan troops, led by John Hawkwood and his son Francesco Novello, defeated the Scaliger troops in the Battle of Castagnaro. The following year, however, Venice and Milan formed a coalition against Francesco, who was forced to abdicate in favour of his son and to go into exile in Lombardy. Later Gian Galeazzo Visconti transferred him first to Como, and then to the Forni jail of Monza, where he died in 1393.
He married Fina Buzzaccarini and their daughter Cecilia of Carrara (d. 1435) married Wenceslaus I, Duke of Saxe-Wittenberg. His other daughter, Caterina, married the Croatian count Stephen II of Frankopan,
lord of Krk: their only surviving daughter Elizabeth married Frederick II, Count of Celje. After the death of Francesco's grandson Marsilio, the offspring of those two marriages remained Francesco's only surviving legitimate male descendants. None of them is known to have claimed the Carraresi inheritance.