Medieval Europe

hern France, and the Rhineland-stand on the sites, and even within the walls, of ancient municipia, those miniature Homes which the statecraft of the Empire had created as seats of govern

afts and a commercial class, was it found necessary to distinguish between the town and the manorial village; and to a much later time the small town preserved the characteristics of an agricultural society. Many a burgess supplemented the profits of a trade by tilling acres in the common fields and grazing cattle on the common pastures; pigs and poultry scavenged in the streets; the farmyard wa

ustom and the protection of the great, have grown rich and independent; they have bought privileges or have usurped them. But they have still to reckon with the servants, the retainers, and the other partisans of a superior always on the watch to recover his lost rights of property and jurisdiction; the forces of the common enemy are permanently encamped within the walls. Again, if the town lies on a frontier or in newly-conquered country, it will be as much a fortress as a mart; a number of the residents will be knights or men-at-arms who hold their lands by the tenure of defending the town; and these burgess

nd the interests of a petty seignor; and even kings were inclined to deal with the towns which stood upon the royal demesne in a spirit of the frankest opportunism. Moreover, the inclination of all lords was to meddle with their burgesses no further than seemed necessary to ensure the full and punctual discharge of all services and pecuniary dues. So long as these were guaranteed, the internal affairs of the town might be left for the residents to settle as seeme

t is, self-governing bodies corporate. The distinction between the two classes is not precise enough to satisfy a modern lawyer. Often a "free" town is obliged to allow the lord some voice in the appointment of magistrates; while the humblest body of traders may enjoy the right of doing justice in a market-court with

licence to hold a weekly market, and possibly a yearly fair as well; it is agreed that all disputes of traders, which arise in fair or market, shall be decided according to the law of merchants, the general usage of the commercial world; and a safe-conduct is granted to all strangers who resort to either gathering for lawful purposes. At first the tolls of the fair and market are collected by the lord, and the law-merchant is administered in the court of his bailiff. Often, however, he ends by leasing both the tolls and the commercial jurisdiction to the townsmen. When they are permitted (as in Flanders and in England) to form a merchant-gild, it is with this body that such barga

nth century is remarkable for the speculative acumen displayed by lay and secular lords in fostering the development of new commercial centres; the Norman bourg of Breteuil, founded in 1060 by a seneschal of William the Conqueror, deserves special consideration as a model extensively imitated in England, Wales, and Ireland; the Suabian towns of Allensbac

is "Commune," novum ac pessimum nomen; and it is blended with complaints of feudal tyranny, which often develop, since the seigneur of the town is commonly a bishop or an abbot, into complaints against the Church. The commune is a sworn confederacy (conjuratio), which bears some resemblance both to the fraternities established for the enforcement of the Truce of God (supra, p. 103) and to the merchant-gilds. But it has also new and striking features. It is formed in de

armed companies to distant fairs. The Milanese and the men of Ghent are typical in their greed for empire, in their readiness to strike a blow for their own profit whenever war is in the land. If the seigneurs of such cities gave cause for dissatisfaction, they found that they had brought a hornet's nest about their ears. In the struggle for liberties the popular party displayed a high courage which rose superior to defeat, though in the hour of triumph it was too often sullied by ferocious act

; the communal parties ceased to be democratic, though they never ceased to be republican; and power was practically if not formally monopolised by a municipal patriciate. The mass-meeting of the burgesses, all-powerful in the days when the commune was an organised rebellion, gradually became insignificant in the older communes, and in many of the late foundations was never recognised at all, its powers being distributed among the craft-gilds meeting in their separate assemblies. Concurrent with this diminution in the importance of the ordinary burgess, there is a tendency to restrict the fr

ne the mass-meeting plays a conspicuous part, not only electing magistrates and councils, but also voting taxes, auditing the accounts of expenditure, and deciding on all questions of exceptional importance. Where the general assembly is non-existent or moribund, offices are filled either by co-optation or by elections in the assemblies of the craft-gilds, or are even allowed to descend by hereditary right. As the popular control over the executive declines, jealousy of the executive leads to some disastrous changes: to the multiplication of offices, to the shortening of terms of office, to the creation of innumerable c

tudy the commune in the period of infancy and growth, when no other refuge from anarchy and oppression was

n the government. At Genoa, on the other hand, the commune appears (in 1122) after several earlier conjurationes have been successfully resisted and dispersed. Probably the case of Pisa is more typical than that of Genoa, since we usually hear of a commune for the first time when it is already a fully developed institution. In most of the North Italian cities it was at the expense of a bishop that the commune was established. Legally the change meant the transference, from the bishop or another seigneur to the town, of powers derived by delegation

red a pertinacious opposition to all demands for enfranchisement; the King was a timid and vacillating ally, always inclined to desert the cause of the townsfolk for a bribe, always in fear that the movement might spread to hi

nd even on Good Friday! The citizens themselves thought no season too sacred for such a crusade against anarchy; once, when their militia went out to attack a castle, the bishop and his clergy were induced to lead the vanguard, bearing crosses and consecrated banners. But after a time the fortune of war turned against the commune; the militia were routed and the count's lieutenant recovered the castle which dominated Le Mans. The citizens offered their allegiance to the Count of Anjou, if he woul

ed himself by debasing the local currency, till it was practically worthless; and he gratified his spite against the citizens by an atrocious crime. Professing to have discovered a conspiracy against his life, he arrested the Mayor and caused the unhappy man to be blinded by a black slave, whom he employed as his bodyguard and executioner. The friends of the Mayor complained to the Pope; but the bishop got before them with his own version of the story, and by the help of bribery secured an honourable acquittal. By the same arguments he induced the King to quash the charter of the commune, and then seemed master of the situation. But the men of Laon conspired to kill him as he was going in state to the cathedral; he was with difficulty rescued by his knights, and found it necessary to garrison the episcopal palace with villeins from his country estates. Arrogant as ever, he boasted of his power and the satisfaction that he would exact; the time was coming, he said, when his black slave should pull the noses

unds of law. They invoked the King's help, and he, for an adequate consideration, destroyed seignorial rights by a few strokes of the pen; which he did the more readily since his lawyers had formulated the doctrine that communes were tenants of the Crown, liable to military service and to taxation at the royal pleasure. From the close of the twelfth century there was a firm alliance between the Third Estate and the French monarchy. On the whole it was more advantageous to the King than to the communes. Under St. Louis and his successors, when the power of the feudatories was broken, the c

he charters of the French communes were frequently cancelled with the approval of the citizen assemblies. The situation was different in Flanders and North Italy, where the city was the natural unit of society, and the burgher class, enriched by foreign trade, were strong enough to negotiate on equal terms with their nominal superiors. Cities such as Ghent and Milan were s

ced in self-defence to assume the leading role. At Courtrai (in 1302) they turned the tables on the Crown, and took an ample vengeance for Bouvines, by a terrible slaughter of French knights and men-at-arms, demonstrating to a startled Europe that feudal tactics were obsolete, and that pikemen on foot were a match for the best mailed cavalry. Cheated by a treacherous Count of the due fruits of their victory, the Flemish communes nursed their resentment and waited for new opportunities, while consoling themselves with savage persecution of the nobles, the clergy, and all others whom they suspected of French sympathies. The ambition of Edward III came at length to their assistance; under the leadership of Jacques van Artevelde, a merchant-prince and demagogue of Ghent, they signed a treaty with the English King for the invasion and conquest of France (1339). It was a brief and ill-starred alliance, ruinous to Flemish trade and abruptly ended by the fall of Artevelde, whom his fellow-citizens tore limb from limb under the impression that he was aiming at a tyranny (1345). But events soon justified the bold proposals of the fallen statesman. In 1369 the heiress of the county was given to a French prince of the blood; the French party in Flanders reared their heads; Bruges, to the alarm and fury of all patriots, joined the foreign cause from jealousy of Ghent. War broke out b

and the wealth of individual genius which it fostered. The Italian Renaissance was little more than the harvest-time of medieval Italy, the glorious evening of a day which had dawned with the Fourth Crusade and had reached high noon in the lifetimes of Dante and Giotto. In the fifteenth century the aptitudes which had ripened in the intense and crowded life of turbulent republics were concentrated upon art and letters. The leisure and the security which the specialist demands were bought by renouncing

(map) The Alps

n of the peninsula, the trade between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean converged upon her seaports and the Alpine passes which stand above the valley of the Po. The untiring industry of Italian capital and labour made Lombardy and Tuscany the homes of textile manufactures, of scientific cultivation, of banking and finance. In every port of the Levant, the Aegean and the Black Sea, the shipmen and merchants of Venice, Benoa, and Pisa hunted for trade like sleuth-hounds, and fought like wolves to secure a preference or a monopoly. By land and sea the rule of life was competition for territory and trade. War was a normal and often a welco

istory. They prepared the way for Innocent III to plant his foot upon the necks of kings, and for Innocent IV to destroy the House of Hohenstauffen. That this would be the result of their stand for liberty, neither they nor the other parties to the struggle could foretell. But on

innumerable complaints of force and fraud. Many of the cities hailed him as a deliverer; against him were only the clients of Milan, or those who, on a humbler scale, aspired to emulate her policy. Even so it was no easy mat

o a prosperous conclusion without Italian help; for it was impossible to interest the German princes in the wars of Italy, or to exact substantial help from them. The first of these difficulties Frederic Bar

when he announced his future policy at a Diet held on the plain of Roncaglia. He disclaimed the intention of ruling as a tyrant, but demanded that his lawful rights should be respected. As guardian of the public peace, he would permit no private wars to be waged and no leagues to be formed among the cities. As lord of the land, he claimed, under the title of regalia, a formidable list of rights and dues which the jurists of Bologna had compiled at the expense of much historical research. It included the nomination of the highest magistrate in every city; the supreme jurisdiction in appeals and criminal causes; the control of mints, markets, and highway

firmly in the saddle, would always be benevolent, or would always be represented by officials of integrity? The claims of the Emperor might be in a sense historical; but the cities knew, if he did not, that the so-called restoration of regalia was in effect a revolution. The time was nearly ripe for general defection; loyalty was strained to breaking-point when Frederic began to appoint for each city a resident commissioner (podesta), empowered to exercise the regalian

for his fame he relented, when hunger and the desertion of their master-engineer compelled the Cremesi to sue for terms. They received permission to depart with as much property as they could carry on their backs. The rest fell to the imperial army; and the men of Cremona were commissioned to demolish the city, which they did with a goodwill. The turn of Milan followed; the Emperor, warned by experience, fell back upon the slow and costly, but irresistible method of blockade. At the end of eight months (May 1161-Feb. 1162) the city was surrendered, evacuated, and condemned to destruction-a sentence which it was found impossible to execute completely, so solid were the ramparts and so vast the buildings they enclosed. For the moment all resistance seemed at an end. The policy outlined at Roncaglia could at length be put in force through the length and breadth of Lombardy; and Frederic departed for Germany, leaving trustworthy lieutenants to complete the vindication of his Italian rights. It only remained to try conclusions with a recalcitrant Pope and the evasive Normans of the South. The Emperor already saw himself in imagination the master of Italy, and even of the Western Mediterranean. Five years passed without bringing him nearer to his goal. Then Frederic returned to effect the expulsion of Alexander III from Rome. He succeeded in this object, and was crowned i

the Lombards were forewarned, and met him, at Legnano (29th May 1176), with a force outnumbering his by more than two to one. The battle was hotly contested. The Lombard vanguard, composed of cavalry, scattered before the onslaught of the Germans. The Emperor then led a charge which penetrated to the centre of the enemy's position. Here was the banner of Milan, mounted on a triumphal car (carroccio) and guarded by picked burgesses, who had sworn to defend their trust to the death. Round them t

and he would accept no peace from which the Lombards were excluded. Frederic yielded to the inevitable with a good grace. A treaty was concluded with the Pope in the same year (November 1176); a few months later, a six years' truce with the Lombards was arranged at Venice; and at Constance, in 1183, this was converted into a lasting p

pass; but the League retaliated by lending support to his rebellious son, Henry, King of the Germans. So began another war in Lombardy. Legnano was brilliantly avenged on the field of Cortenuova (1237), 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. But a disastrous fiasco destroyed his hopes and gave a mortal blow to his prestige. For five months he blockaded Parma, and the city

him, was accomplished by a score of petty local dynasties. At Milan the Visconti completed the enslavement which the Delia Torre had first planned; at Verona it was the Scaligeri who entered on the imperial inheritan

ating free imperial cities within the fiefs of the great princes; and most towns were left to bargain single-handed with their immediate lords. Shut off from any prospects of territorial sovereignty, the towns, even those which held from the Empire, were also excluded from the Diet until the close of the fifteenth century. Trade afforded the only outlet for their activities. But in trade they engaged with such success that, by the close of the Middle Ages, Augsburg rivalled Florence as a centre of cosmopolitan finance, and the Baltic towns had developed a commerce comparable to that of the Mediterranea

nked for some purposes as an independent power. The Hansa policed the Baltic and the waterways and high roads of North Germany; it owned factories (steelyards) in London, Bruges, Bergen, and Novgorod; it concluded commercial treaties, and on occasion it waged wars. In the fourteenth century it monopolised the Baltic trade, and was courted by all the nations which had interests in that sea. In the fifteenth it began to decline, and in the age of the Reformation sank int