103. What a perfectly beautiful republican movement! thinks Sismondi, seeing, in all this, nothing but the energy of a multitude; and entirely ignoring the peculiar capacity of this Florentine mob,—capacity of two virtues, much forgotten by modern republicanism,—order, namely; and obedience; together with the peculiar instinct of this Florentine multitude, which not only felt itself to need captains, but knew where to find them.
104. Hubert of Lucca—How came they, think you, to choose him out of a stranger city, and that a poorer one than their own? Was there no Florentine then, of all this rich and eager crowd, who was fit to govern Florence?
I cannot find any account of this Hubert, Bright mind, of Ducca; Villani says simply of him, "Fu il primo capitano di Firenze."
They hung a bell for him in the Campanile of the Lion, and gave him the flag of Florence to bear; and before the day was over, that 20th of October, he had given every one of the twenty companies their flags also. And the bearings of the said gonfalons were these. I will give you this heraldry as far as I can make it out from Villani; it will be very useful to us afterwards; I leave the Italian when I cannot translate it:—
105. A. Sesto, (sixth part of the city,) of the other side of Arno.
Gonfalon 1. Gules; a ladder, argent.
2. Argent; a scourge, sable.
3. Azure; (una piazza bianca con
nicchi vermigli).
4. Gules; a dragon, vert.
B. Sesto of St. Peter Scheraggio.
1. Azure; a chariot, or.
2. Or; a bull, sable.
3. Argent; a lion rampant, sable.
4. (A lively piece, "pezza gagliarda")
Barry of (how many?) pieces,
argent and sable.
You may as well note at once of this kind of bearing, called 'gagliarda' by Villani, that these groups of piles, pales, bends, and bars, were called in English heraldry 'Restrial bearings,' "in respect of their strength and solid substance, which is able to abide the stresse and force of any triall they shall be put unto." {1} And also that, the number of bars being uncertain, I assume the bearing to be 'barry,' that is, having an even number of bars; had it been odd, as of seven bars, it should have been blazoned, argent; three bars, sable; or, if so divided, sable, three bars argent.
{Footnote 1: Guillim, sect. ii., chap. 3.}