United States or Poland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Having done his best for Bologna, John journeyed to Padua, where the fame of his sanctity had been already spread abroad. The carroccio of the city, on which the standard of Padua floated, and which had led the burghers to many a bloody battle, was sent out to meet him at Monselice, and he entered the gates in triumph. In Padua the same exhortations to peace produced the same results.
Last of all appeared, rumbling on its ancient wheels, the carroccio, or state-car of the Florentine Republic, bearing their captured flags lowered, and trailing in the dust. Castruccio whose sole representatives are the Marchesa Guinigi and yourself, signorina Castruccio followed. He was seated in a triumphal chariot, drawn by eight milk-white horses. Banners fluttered around him.
In these days he animated the Encyclopædists with his spirit, encouraging them in their gigantic undertaking, the "Carroccio of the battle of the eighteenth century." It was a huge dictionary of human knowledge, written in direct antagonism to all belief in spiritual powers or religion. It sold incredibly, and the effect of it on society was immense.
Her institutions like that of the Carroccio, together with her tameless spirit, are communicated to the neighboring cities of Lombardy, cross the Apennines, and animate the ancient burghs of Tuscany. He was summoned before the Diet of Pavia for having dispossessed a noble of his feud.
It was he who devised the Carroccio, an immense car drawn by oxen, bearing the banner of the Commune, with an altar and priests ministrant, around which the pikemen of the city mustered when they went to war. This invention of Heribert's was soon adopted by the cities throughout Italy.
Naturally enough, but very unwisely, the Florentine Ghibellines declined to take part in this battle; whereupon the people, returning flushed with victory, drove them all out, and established pure Guelph government in Florence, changing at the same time the flag of the city from gules, a lily argent, to argent, a lily gules; but the most ancient bearing of all, simply parted per pale, argent and gules, remained always on their carroccio of battle, "Non si muto mai."
Legnano was brilliantly avenged on the field of Cortenuova , where the Emperor routed the Milanese and captured the carroccio, the symbol of their independence. But he, like his grandfather, was worn out by the difficulties of siege warfare; and in 1240 he turned southward to reduce the States of the Church. One more attempt he made on Lombardy in the winter of 1247-1248.
It was something that he marched forth to battle beneath the Carroccio, which had been the object of his childish veneration: that his aged father looked down from the battlements on his exploits; that his friends and his rivals were the witnesses of his glory. If he fell, he was consigned to no venal or heedless guardians. The same day saw him conveyed within the walls which he had defended.
In the days of the Lombard League, of Campaldino and Montaperti, the citizens could fight, hand to hand, round their carroccio or banner, without much discipline being required; but when it came to fortifying towns against cannon, to drilling bodies of heavily armed cavalry, acting by the mere dexterity of their movements; when war became a science and an art, then the citizen had necessarily to be left out, and adventurers and poor nobles had to form armies of mercenaries, making warfare their sole profession.
Word Of The Day