literature, the theatre--the list is endless--have all
been products of the city.

For almost four thousand years the wooden bee-hive which
we call a town had been the workshop of the world. Then came

the great migrations. The Roman Empire was destroyed.
The cities were burned down and Europe once more became a

land of pastures and little agricultural villages. During the
Dark Ages the fields of civilisation had lain fallow.

The Crusades had prepared the soil for a new crop. It
was time for the harvest, but the fruit was plucked by the

burghers of the free cities.
I have told you the story of the castles and the monasteries,

with their heavy stone enclosures--the homes of the knights
and the monks, who guarded men's bodies and their souls.

You have seen how a few artisans (butchers and bakers and an
occasional candle-stick maker) came to live near the castle

to tend to the wants of their masters and to find protection
in case of danger. Sometimes the feudal lord allowed these

people to surround their houses with a stockade. But they
were dependent for their living upon the good-will of the

mighty Seigneur of the castle. When he went about they knelt
before him and kissed his hand.

Then came the Crusades and many things changed. The
migrations had driven people from the north-east to the west.

The Crusades made millions of people travel from the west to
the highly civilised regions of the south-east. They discovered

that the world was not bounded by the four walls of their little
settlement. They came to appreciate better clothes, more

comfortable houses, new dishes, products of the mysterious Orient.
After their return to their old homes, they insisted that they

be supplied with those articles. The peddler with his pack
upon his back--the only merchant of the Dark Ages--added

these goods to his old merchandise, bought a cart, hired a few
ex-crusaders to protect him against the crime wave which

followed this great international war, and went forth to do
business upon a more modern and larger scale. His career was

not an easy one. Every time he entered the domains of another
Lord he had to pay tolls and taxes. But the business

was profitable all the same and the peddler continued to make
his rounds.

Soon certain energetic merchants discovered that the goods
which they had always imported from afar could be made at

home. They turned part of their homes into a workgshop.{sic}
They ceased to be merchants and became manufacturers. They

sold their products not only to the lord of the castle and to the
abbot in his monastery, but they exported them to nearby towns.

The lord and the abbot paid them with products of their farms,
eggs and wines, and with honey, which in those early days was

used as sugar. But the citizens of distant towns were obliged
to pay in cash and the manufacturer and the merchant began to

own little pieces of gold, which entirely changed their position
in the society of the early Middle Ages.

It is difficult for you to imagine a world without money.
In a modern city one cannot possible live without money. All

day long you carry a pocket full of small discs of metal to
``pay your way.'' You need a nickel for the street-car, a dollar

for a dinner, three cents for an evening paper. But many
people of the early Middle Ages never saw a piece of coined

money from the time they were born to the day of their death.
The gold and silver of Greece and Rome lay buried beneath

the ruins of their cities. The world of the migrations, which
had succeeded the Empire, was an agricultural world. Every

farmer raised enough grain and enough sheep and enough
cows for his own use.

The mediaeval knight was a country squire and was rarely
forced to pay for materials in money. His estates produced

everything that he and his family ate and drank and wore on
their backs. The bricks for his house were made along the

banks of the nearest river. Wood for the rafters of the hall
was cut from the baronial forest. The few articles that had to

come from abroad were paid for in goods--in honey--in eggs
--in fagots.

But the Crusades upset the routine of the old agricultural
life in a very drastic fashion. Suppose that the Duke of Hildesheim

was going to the Holy Land. He must travel thousands
of miles and he must pay his passage and his hotel-bills.

At home he could pay with products of his farm. But he
could not well take a hundred dozen eggs and a cart-load of

hams with him to satisfy the greed of the shipping agent of
Venice or the inn-keeper of the Brenner Pass. These gentlemen

insisted upon cash. His Lordship therefore was obliged
to take a small quantity of gold with him upon his voyage.

Where could he find this gold? He could borrow it from the
Lombards, the descendants of the old Longobards, who had

turned professional money-lenders, who seated behind their
exchange-table (commonly known as ``banco'' or bank) were

glad to let his Grace have a few hundred gold pieces in exchange
for a mortgage upon his estates, that they might be repaid

in case His Lordship should die at the hands of the Turks.
That was dangerous business for the borrower. In the end,

the Lombards invariably owned the estates and the Knight
became a bankrupt, who hired himself out as a fighting man to

a more powerful and more careful neighbour.
His Grace could also go to that part of the town where the

Jews were forced to live. There he could borrow money at a
rate of fifty or sixty percent. interest. That, too, was bad

business. But was there a way out? Some of the people of the
little city which surrounded the castle were said to have money.

They had known the young lord all his life. His father and
their fathers had been good friends. They would not be

unreasonable in their demands. Very well. His Lordship's
clerk, a monk who could write and keep accounts, sent a note

to the best known merchants and asked for a small loan. The
townspeople met in the work-room of the jeweller who made

chalices for the nearby churches and discussed this demand.
They could not well refuse. It would serve no purpose to

ask for ``interest.'' In the first place, it was against the
religious principles of most people to take interest and in the

second place, it would never be paid except in agricultural
products and of these the people had enough and to spare.

``But,'' suggested the tailor who spent his days quietly sitting
upon his table and who was somewhat of a philosopher,

``suppose that we ask some favour in return for our money.
We are all fond of fishing. But his Lordship won't let us

fish in his brook. Suppose that we let him have a hundred
ducats and that he give us in return a written guarantee allowing

us to fish all we want in all of his rivers. Then he gets
the hundred which he needs, but we get the fish and it will be

good business all around.''
The day his Lordship accepted this proposition (it seemed

such an easy way of getting a hundred gold pieces) he signed
the death-warrant of his own power. His clerk drew up the

agreement. His Lordship made his mark (for he could not
sign his name) and departed for the East. Two years later

he came back, dead broke. The townspeople were fishing in
the castle pond. The sight of this silent row of anglers annoyed

his Lordship. He told his equerry to go and chase the crowd
away. They went, but that night a delegation of merchants

visited the castle. They were very polite. They congratulated
his Lordship upon his safe return. They were sorry his

Lordship had been annoyed by the fishermen, but as his Lordship
might perhaps remember he had given them permission

to do so himself, and the tailor produced the Charter which
had been kept in the safe of the jeweller ever since the master

had gone to the Holy Land.
His Lordship was much annoyed. But once more he was

in dire need of some money. In Italy he had signed his name
to certain documents which were now in the possession of Salvestro

dei Medici, the well-knownbanker. These documents
were ``promissory notes'' and they were due two months from

date. Their total amount came to three hundred and forty
pounds, Flemish gold. Under these circumstances, the noble

knight could not well show the rage which filled his heart and
his proud soul. Instead, he suggested another little loan. The

merchants retired to discuss the matter.
After three days they came back and said ``yes.'' They

were only too happy to be able to help their master in his
difficulties, but in return for the 345 golden pounds would he give

them another written promise (another charter) that they,
the townspeople, might establish a council of their own to be

elected by all the merchants and free citizens of the city, said
council to manage civic affairs without interference" target="_blank" title="n.干涉，干扰，妨碍">interference from the

side of the castle?
His Lordship was confoundedly angry. But again,

he needed the money. He said yes, and signed the charter.
Next week, he repented. He called his soldiers and went to

the house of the jeweller and asked for the documents which
his crafty subjects had cajoled out of him under the pressure

of circumstances. He took them away and burned them.
The townspeople stood by and said nothing. But when next

his Lordship needed money to pay for the dowry of his daughter.
he was unable to get a single penny. After that little

affair at the jeweller's his credit was not considered good.
He was forced to eat humble-pie and offer to make certain reparations.

Before his Lordship got the first installment of the stipulated sum,
the townspeople were once more in possession of all their old charters

and a brand new one which permitted them to build a ``city-hall''
and a strong tower where all the charters might be kept protected

against fire and theft, which really meant protected against
future violence on the part of the Lord and his armed followers.

This, in a very general way, is what happened during the
centuries which followed the Crusades. It was a slow process,

this gradual shifting of power from the castle to the city. There
was some fighting. A few tailors and jewellers were killed and

a few castles went up in smoke. But such occurrences were
not common. Almost imperceptibly the towns grew richer

and the feudal lords grew poorer. To maintain themselves
they were for ever forced to exchange charters of civic liberty

in return for ready cash. The cities grew. They offered an
asylum to run-away serfs who gained their liberty after they

had lived a number of years behind the city walls. They came
to be the home of the more energetic elements of the

surrounding country districts. They were proud of
their new importance and expressed their power in the

churches and public buildings which they erected
around the old market place, where centuries before

the barter of eggs and sheep and honey and salt
had taken place. They wanted their children to

have a better chance in life than they had enjoyed
themselves. They hired monks to come to their city and

be school teachers. When they heard of a man who could
paint pictures upon boards of wood, they offered him a pension

if he would come and cover the walls of their chapels and their
town hall with scenes from the Holy Scriptures.

Meanwhile his Lordship, in the dreary and drafty halls of
his castle, saw all this up-start splendour and regretted the

day when first he had signed away a single one of his sovereign
rights and prerogatives. But he was helpless. The townspeople

with their well-filled strong-boxes snapped their fingers
at him. They were free men, fully prepared to hold what they

had gained by the sweat of their brow and after a struggle
which had lasted for more than ten generations.

MEDIAEVAL SELF-GOVERNMENT
HOW THE PEOPLE OF THE CITIES ASSERTED

THEIR RIGHT TO BE HEARD IN THE
ROYAL COUNCILS OF THEIR COUNTRY

As long as people were ``nomads,'' wandering tribes of shepherds,
all men had been equal and had been responsible for the

welfare and safety of the entire community.
But after they had settled down and some had become rich

and others had grown poor, the government was apt to fall into
the hands of those who were not obliged to work for their living

and who could devote themselves to politics.
I have told you how this had happened in Egypt and in

Mesopotamia and in Greece and in Rome. It occurred among
the Germanic population of western Europe as soon as order

had been restored. The western European world was ruled
in the first place by an emperor who was elected by the seven

or eight most important kings of the vast Roman Empire of
the German nation and who enjoyed a great deal of imaginary

and very little actual power. It was ruled by a number of
kings who sat upon shaky thrones. The every-day government

was in the hands of thousands of feudal princelets. Their
subjects were peasants or serfs. There were few cities. There

was hardly any middle class. But during the thirteenth century
(after an absence of almost a thousand years) the middle

class--the merchant class--once more appeared upon the his-
torical stage and its rise in power, as we saw in the last chapter,

had meant a decrease in the influence of the castle folk.
Thus far, the king, in ruling his domains, had only paid

attention to the wishes of his noblemen and his bishops. But the
new world of trade and commerce which grew out of the

Crusades forced him to recognise the middle class or suffer
from an ever-increasing emptiness of his exchequer. Their

majesties (if they had followed their hidden wishes) would
have as lief consulted their cows and their pigs as the good

burghers of their cities. But they could not help themselves.
They swallowed the bitter pill because it was gilded, but not

without a struggle.
In England, during the absence of Richard the Lion