Love Among the Ruins by Warwick Deeping

Gilderoy had risen.

It was midnight. A great bell boomed and clashed over the city, with a roar of many voices floating on the wind, like the sullen thunder of a rising sea. Torches flashed and ebbed along the streets, with hundreds of scampering shadows, and a glinting of steel. Knots of armed men hurried towards the great piazza, where, by the City Cross, Sforza the Gonfaloniere and his senators had gathered about the red and white Gonfalon of the Commune. All the Guild companies were there with their banners and men-at-arms. "Fulviac," "Saint Yeoland," "Liberty and the Commune": such were the watchwords that filled the mouths of the mob.