Chapter II: The Commercial Revolution (1)

[Sidenote: Introductory]

Five hundred years ago a European could search in vain the map of "the world" for America, or Australia, or the Pacific Ocean. Experienced mariners, and even learned geographers, were quite unaware that beyond the Western Sea lay two great continents peopled by red men; of Africa they knew only the northern coast; and in respect of Asia a thousand absurd tales passed current. The unexplored waste of waters that constituted the Atlantic Ocean was, to many ignorant Europeans of the fifteenth century, a terrible region frequented by fierce and fantastic monsters. To the average European the countries surveyed in the preceding chapter, together with their Mohammedan neighbors across the Mediterranean, still comprised the entire known world.

Shortly before the close of the fifteenth century, daring captains began to direct long voyages on the high seas and to discover the existence of new lands; and from that time to the present, Europeans have been busily exploring and conquering--veritably "Europeanizing"-- the whole globe. Although religion as well as commerce played an important role in promoting the process, the movement was attended from the very outset by so startling a transformation in the routes, methods, and commodities of trade that usually it has been styled the Commercial Revolution. By the close of the sixteenth century it had proceeded far enough to indicate that its results would rank among the most fateful events of all history.

It was in the commonplace affairs of everyday life that the Commercial Revolution was destined to produce its most far-reaching results. To appreciate, therefore, its true nature and significance, we must first turn aside to ascertain how our European ancestors actually lived about the year 1500, and what work they did to earn their living. Then, after recounting the story of foreign exploration and colonization, we shall be in a position to reappraise the domestic situation in town and on the farm.

AGRICULTURE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: Differences between Sixteenth-century Farming and That of To-day]

Agriculture has always been the ultimate basis of society, but in the sixteenth century it was of greater relative importance than it is now. People then reckoned their wealth, not by the quantity of stocks and bonds they held, but by the extent of land they owned. Farming was still the occupation of the vast majority of the population of every European state, for the towns were as yet small in size and few in number. The "masses" lived in the country, not, as to-day, in the city.

A twentieth-century observer would be struck by other peculiarities of sixteenth-century agriculture. He would find a curious organization of rural society, strange theories of land-ownership, and most unfamiliar methods of tillage. He would discover, moreover, that practically each farm was self-sufficing, producing only what its own occupants could consume, and that consequently there was comparatively little external trade in farm produce. From these facts he would readily understand that the rural communities in the year 1500, numerous yet isolated, were invulnerable strongholds of conservatism and ignorance.

[Sidenote: Two Rural Classes: Nobility and Peasantry]

In certain respects a remarkable uniformity prevailed in rural districts throughout all Europe. Whether one visited Germany, Hungary, France, or England, one was sure to find the agricultural population sharply divided into two social classes--nobility and peasantry. There might be varying gradations of these classes in different regions, but certain general distinctions everywhere prevailed.

[Sidenote: The Nobility]

The nobility [Footnote: As a part of the nobility must be included at the opening of the sixteenth century many of the higher clergy of the Catholic Church--archbishops, bishops, and abbots--who owned large landed estates quite like their lay brethren.] comprised men who gained a living from the soil without manual labor. They held the land on feudal tenure, that is to say, they had a right to be supported by the peasants living on their estates, and, in return, they owed to some higher or wealthier nobleman or to the king certain duties, such as fighting for him, [Footnote: This obligation rested only upon lay noblemen, not upon ecclesiastics.] attending his court at specified times, and paying him various irregular taxes (the feudal dues). The estate of each nobleman might embrace a single farm, or "manor" as it was called, inclosing a petty hamlet, or village; or it might include dozens of such manors; or, if the landlord were a particularly mighty magnate or powerful prelate, it might stretch over whole counties.

Each nobleman had his manor-house or, if he were rich enough, his castle, lording it over the humble thatch-roofed cottages of the villagers. In his stables were spirited horses and a carriage adorned with his family crest; he had servants and lackeys, a footman to open his carriage door, a game-warden to keep poachers from shooting his deer, and men-at-arms to quell disturbances, to aid him against quarrelsome neighbors, or to follow him to the wars. While he lived, he might occupy the best pew in the village church; when he died, he would be laid to rest within the church where only noblemen were buried.

[Sidenote: Reason for the Preëminence of the Nobility]

In earlier times, when feudal society was young, the nobility had performed a very real service as the defenders of the peasants against foreign enemies and likewise against marauders and bandits of whom the land had been full. Then fighting had been the profession of the nobility, And to enable them to possess the expensive accoutrements of fighting--horses, armor, swords, and lances--the kings and the peasants had assured them liberal incomes.

Now, however, at the opening of the sixteenth century, the palmy days of feudalism were past and gone. Later generations of noblemen, although they continued by right of inheritance to enjoy the financial income and the social prestige which their forbears had earned, no longer served king, country, or common people in the traditional manner. At least in the national monarchies it was the king who now had undertaken the defense of the land and the preservation of peace; and the nobleman, deprived of his old occupation, had little else to do than to hunt, or quarrel with other noblemen, or engage in political intrigues. More and more the nobility, especially in France, were attracted to a life of amusement and luxury in the royal court. The nobility already had outlived its usefulness, yet it retained its old- time privileges.

[Sidenote: The Peasantry]

In striking contrast to the nobility--the small minority of land-owning aristocrats--were the peasantry--the mass of the people. They were the human beings who had to toil for their bread in the sweat of their brows and who were deemed of ignoble birth, as social inferiors, and as stupid and rude. Actual farm work was "servile labor," and between the man whose hands were stained by servile labor and the person of "gentle birth" a wide gulf was fixed.

[Sidenote: Serfdom and the Manorial System]

During the early middle ages most of the peasants throughout Europe were "serfs." For various reasons, which we shall explain presently, serfdom had tended gradually to and the die out in western Europe, but at the opening of the sixteenth century most of the agricultural laborers in eastern and central Europe, and even a considerable number in France, were still serfs, living and working on nobles' manors in accordance with ancient customs which can be described collectively as the "manorial system."

The serf occupied a position in rural society which it is difficult for us to understand. He was not a slave, such as was usual in the Southern States of the American Union before the Civil War; he was neither a hired man nor a rent-paying tenant-farmer, such as is common enough in all agricultural communities nowadays. The serf was not a slave, because he was free to work for himself at least part of the time; he could not be sold to another master; and he could not be deprived of the right to cultivate land for his own benefit. He was not a hired man, for he received no wages. And he was not a tenant-farmer, inasmuch as he was "attached to the soil," that is, he was bound to stay and work on his land, unless he succeeded in running away or in purchasing complete freedom, in which case he would cease to be a serf and would become a freeman.

[Sidenote: Obligations of the Serf to the Lord]

To the lord of the manor the serf was under many and varied obligations, the most essential of which may be grouped conveniently as follows: (1) The serf had to work without pay two or three days in each week on the strips of land and the fields whose produce belonged exclusively to the nobleman. In the harvest season extra days, known as "boon-days," were stipulated on which the serf must leave his own work in order to harvest for the lord. He also might be called upon in emergencies to draw a cord of wood from the forest to the great manor- house, or to work upon the highway (_corvée_). (2) The serf had to pay occasional dues, customarily "in kind." Thus at certain feast-days he was expected to bring a dozen fat fowls or a bushel of grain to the pantry of the manor-house. (3) Ovens, wine-presses, gristmills, and bridges were usually owned solely by the nobleman, and each time the peasant used them he was obliged to give one of his loaves of bread, a share of his wine, a bushel of his grain, or a toll-fee, as a kind of rent, or "banality" as it was euphoniously styled. (4) If the serf died without heirs, his holdings were transferred outright to the lord, and if he left heirs, the nobleman had the rights of "heriot," that is, to appropriate the best animal owned by the deceased peasant, and of "relief," that is, to oblige the designated heir to make a definite additional payment that was equivalent to a kind of inheritance tax.

[Sidenote: Free-Tenants]

As has been intimated, the manorial system was already on a steady decline, especially in western Europe, at the opening of the sixteenth century. A goodly number of peasants who had once been serfs were now free-tenants, lessees, or hired laborers. Of course rent of farm-land in our present sense--each owner of the land letting out his property to a tenant and, in return, exacting as large a monetary payment as possible--was then unknown. But there was a growing class of peasants who were spoken of as free-tenants to distinguish them from serf- tenants. These free-tenants, while paying regular dues, as did the others, were not compelled to work two or three days every week in the lord's fields, except occasionally in busy seasons such as harvest; they were free to leave the estate and to marry off their daughters or to sell their oxen without the consent of the lord; and they came to regard their customary payments to the lord not so much as his due for their protection as actual rent for their land.

[Sidenote: Hired Laborers]

While more prosperous peasants were becoming free-tenants, many of their poorer neighbors found it so difficult to gain a living as serfs that they were willing to surrender all claim to their own little strips of land on the manor and to devote their whole time to working for fixed wages on the fields which were cultivated for the nobleman himself, the so-called lord's demesne. Thus a body of hired laborers grew up claiming no land beyond that on which their miserable huts stood and possibly their small garden-plots.

[Sidenote: Métayers]

Besides hired laborers and free-tenants, a third group of peasants appeared in places where the noble proprietor did not care to superintend the cultivation of his own land. In this case he parceled it out among particular peasants, furnishing each with livestock and a plow and expecting in return a fixed proportion of the crops, which in France usually amounted to one-half. Peasants who made such a bargain were called in France _métayers_, and in England "stock-and-land lessees." The arrangement was not different essentially from the familiar present-day practice of working a farm "on shares."

[Sidenote: Steady Decline of Serfdom]

In France and in England the serfs had mostly become hired laborers, tenants, or _métayers_ by the sixteenth century. The obligations of serfdom had proved too galling for the serf and too unprofitable for the lord. It was much easier and cheaper for the latter to hire men to work just when he needed them, than to bother with serfs, who could not be discharged readily for slackness, and who naturally worked for themselves far more zealously than for him. For this reason many landlords were glad to allow their serfs to make payments in money or in grain in lieu of the performance of customary labor. In England, moreover, many lords, finding it profitable to inclose [Footnote: There were no fences on the old manors. Inclosing a plot of ground meant fencing or hedging it in.] their land in order to utilize it as pasturage for sheep, voluntarily freed their serfs. The result was that serfdom virtually had disappeared in England before the sixteenth century. In France as early as the fourteenth century the bulk of the serfs had purchased their liberty, although in a few districts serfdom remained in its pristine vigor until the French Revolution.

In other countries agricultural conditions were more backward and serfdom longer survived. Prussian and Austrian landowners retained their serfs until the nineteenth century; the emancipation of Russian serfs on a large scale was not inaugurated until 1861. There are still survivals of serfdom in parts of eastern Europe.

[Sidenote: Survival of Servile Obligations after Decline of Serfdom]

Emancipation from serfdom by no means released the peasants from all the disabilities under which they labored as serfs. True, the freeman no longer had week-work to do, provided he could pay for his time, and in theory at least he could marry as he chose and move freely from place to place. But he might still be called upon for an occasional day's labor, he still was expected to work on the roads, and he still had to pay annoying fees for oven, mill, and wine-press. Then, too, his own crops might be eaten with impunity by doves from the noble dovecote or trampled underfoot by a merry hunting-party from the manor-house. The peasant himself ventured not to hunt: he was precluded even from shooting the deer that devoured his garden. Certain other customs prevailed in various localities, conceived originally no doubt in a spirit of good-natured familiarity between noble and peasants, but now grown irritating if none the less humorous. It is said, for instance, that in some places newly married couples were compelled to vault the wall of the churchyard, and that on certain nights the peasants were obliged to beat the castle ditch in order to rest the lord's family from the dismal croaking of the frogs.

[Sidenote: Persistence of "Three-field System" of Agriculture]

In another important respect the manorial system survived long after serfdom had begun to decline. This was the method of doing farm work. A universal and insistent tradition had fixed agricultural method on the medieval manor and tended to preserve it unaltered well into modern times. The tradition was that of the "three-field system" of agriculture. The land of the manor, which might vary in amount from a few hundred to five thousand acres, was not divided up into farms of irregular shape and size, as it would be now. The waste-land, which could be used only for pasture, and the woodland on the outskirts of the clearing, were treated as "commons," that is to say, each villager, as well as the lord of the manor, might freely gather fire-wood, or he might turn his swine loose to feed on the acorns in the forest and his cattle to graze over the entire pasture. The cultivable or arable land was divided into several--usually three--great grain fields. Ridges or "balks" of unplowed turf divided each field into long parallel strips, which were usually forty rods or a furlong (furrow-long) in length, and from one to four rods wide. Each peasant had exclusive right to one or more of these strips in each of the three great fields, making, say, thirty acres in all; [Footnote: In some localities it was usual to redistribute these strips every year. In that way the greater part of the manor was theoretically "common" land, and no peasant had a right of private ownership to any one strip.] the lord too had individual right to a number of strips in the great fields.

[Sidenote: Disadvantages of Three-field System of Agriculture]

This so-called three-field system of agriculture was distinctly disadvantageous in many ways. Much time was wasted in going back and forth between the scattered plots of land. The individual peasant, moreover, was bound by custom to cultivate his land precisely as his ancestors had done, without attempting to introduce improvements. He grew the same crops as his neighbors--usually wheat or rye in one field; beans or barley in the second; and nothing in the third. Little was known about preserving the fertility of the soil by artificial manuring or by rotation of crops; and, although every year one-third of the land was left "fallow" (uncultivated) in order to restore its fertility, the yield per acre was hardly a fourth as large as now. Farm implements were of the crudest kind; scythes and sickles did the work of mowing machines; plows were made of wood, occasionally shod with iron; and threshing was done with flails. After the grain had been harvested, cattle were turned out indiscriminately on the stubble, on the supposition that the fields were common property. It was useless to attempt to breed fine cattle when all were herded together. The breed deteriorated, and both cattle and sheep were undersized and poor. A full-grown ox was hardly larger than a good-sized calf of the present time. Moreover, there were no potatoes or turnips, and few farmers grew clover or other grasses for winter fodder. It was impossible, therefore, to keep many cattle through the winter; most of the animals were killed off in the autumn and salted down for the long winter months when it was impossible to secure fresh meat.

[Sidenote: Peasant Life on the Manor]

Crude farm-methods and the heavy dues exacted by the lord [Footnote: In addition to the dues paid to the lay lord, the peasants were under obligation to make a regular contribution to the church, which was called the "tithe" and amounted to a share, less than a tenth, of the annual crops.] of the manor must have left the poor man little for himself. Compared with the comfort of the farmer today, the poverty of sixteenth-century peasants must have been inexpressibly distressful. How keenly the cold pierced the dark huts of the poorest, is hard for us to imagine. The winter diet of salt meat, the lack of vegetables, the chronic filth and squalor, and the sorry ignorance of all laws of health opened the way to disease and contagion. And if the crops failed, famine was added to plague.

On the other hand we must not forget that the tenement-houses of our great cities have been crowded in the nineteenth century with people more miserable than ever was serf of the middle ages. The serf, at any rate, had the open air instead of a factory in which to work. When times were good, he had grain and meat in plenty, and possibly wine or cider, and he hardly envied the tapestried chambers, the bejeweled clothes, and the spiced foods of the nobility, for he looked upon them as belonging to a different world.

In one place nobleman and peasant met on a common footing--in the village church. There, on Sundays and feast-days, they came together as Christians to hear Mass; and afterwards, perhaps, holiday games and dancing on the green, benignantly patronized by the lord's family, helped the common folk to forget their labors. The village priest, [Footnote: Usually very different from the higher clergy, who had large landed estates of their own, the parish priests had but modest incomes from the tithes of their parishioners and frequently eked out a living by toiling on allotted patches of ground. The monks too were ordinarily poor, although the monastery might be wealthy, and they likewise often tilled the fields.] himself often of humble birth, though the most learned man on the manor, was at once the friend and benefactor of the poor and the spiritual director of the lord. Occasionally a visit of the bishop to administer confirmation to the children, afforded an opportunity for gayety and universal festivity.

[Sidenote: Rural Isolation and Conservatism]

At other times there was little to disturb the monotony of village life and little to remind it of the outside world, except when a gossiping peddler chanced along, or when the squire rode away to court or to war. Intercourse with other villages was unnecessary, unless there were no blacksmith or miller on the spot. The roads were poor and in wet weather impassable. Travel was largely on horseback, and what few commodities were carried from place to place were transported by pack- horses. Only a few old soldiers, and possibly a priest, had traveled very much; they were the only geographies and the only books of travel which the village possessed, for few peasants could read or write.

Self-sufficient and secluded from the outer world, the rural village went on treasuring its traditions, keeping its old customs, century after century. The country instinctively distrusted all novelties; it always preferred old ways to new; it was heartily conservative. Country-folk did not discover America. It was the enterprise of the cities, with their growing industries and commerce, which brought about the Commercial Revolution; and to the development of commerce, industry, and the towns, we now must turn our attention.

TOWNS ON THE EVE OF THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION

[Sidenote: Trade and the Towns ]

Except for the wealthy Italian city-states and a few other cities which traced their history back to Roman times, most European towns, it must be remembered, dated only from the later middle ages. At first there was little excuse for their existence except to sell to farmers salt, fish, iron, and a few plows. But with the increase of commerce, which, as we shall see, especially marked the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, more merchants traveled through the country, ways of spending money multiplied, and the little agricultural villages learned to look on the town as the place to buy not only luxuries but such tools, clothing, and shoes as could be manufactured more conveniently by skillful town artisans than by clumsy rustics. The towns, moreover, became exchanges where surplus farm products could be marketed, where wine could be bartered for wool, or wheat for flax. And as the towns grew in size, the prosperous citizens proved to be the best customers for foreign luxuries, and foreign trade grew apace. Town, trade, and industry thus worked together: trade stimulated industry, industry assisted trade, and the town profited by both. By the sixteenth century the towns had grown out of their infancy and were maintaining a great measure of political and economic freedom.

[Sidenote: Freedom of the Towns.] [Sidenote: Town Charters]

Originally many a town had belonged to some nobleman's extensive manor and its inhabitants had been under much the same servile obligations to the lord as were the strictly rural serfs. But with the lapse of time and the growth of the towns, the townsmen or burghers had begun a struggle for freedom from their feudal lords. They did not want to pay servile dues to a baron, but preferred to substitute a fixed annual payment for individual obligations; they besought the right to manage their market; they wished to have cases at law tried in a court of their own rather than in the feudal court over which the nobleman presided; and they demanded the right to pay all taxes in a lump sum for the town, themselves assessing and collecting the share of each citizen. These concessions they eventually had won, and each city had its charter, in which its privileges were enumerated and recognized by the authority of the nobleman, or of the king, to whom the city owed allegiance. In England these charters had been acquired generally by merchant gilds, upon payment of a substantial sum to the nobleman; in France frequently the townsmen had formed associations, called _communes_, and had rebelled successfully against their feudal lords; in Germany the cities had leagued together for mutual protection and for the acquisition of common privileges. Other towns, formerly founded by bishops, abbots, or counts, had received charters at the very outset.

[Sidenote: Merchant Gilds]

A peculiar outgrowth of the need for protection against oppressive feudal lords, as well as against thieves, swindlers, and dishonest workmen, had been the typically urban organization known as the merchant gild or the merchants' company. In the year 1500 the merchant gilds were everywhere on the decline, but they still preserved many of their earlier and more glorious traditions. At the time of their greatest importance they had embraced merchants, butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers: in fact, all who bought or sold in the town were included in the gild. And the merchant gild had then possessed the widest functions.

[Sidenote: Earlier Functions of the Merchant Gild.] [Sidenote: Social]

Its social and religious functions, inherited from much earlier bodies, consisted in paying some special honor to a patron saint, in giving aid to members in sickness or misfortune, attending funerals, and also in the more enjoyable meetings when the freely flowing bowl enlivened the transaction of gild business.

[Sidenote: Protective]

As a protective organization, the gild had been particularly effective. Backed by the combined forces of all the gildsmen, it was able to assert itself against the lord who claimed manorial rights over the town, and to insist that a runaway serf who had lived in the town for a year and a day should not be dragged back to perform his servile labor on the manor, but should be recognized as a freeman. The protection of the gild was accorded also to townsmen on their travels. In those days all strangers were regarded as suspicious persons, and not infrequently when a merchant of the gild traveled to another town he would be set upon and robbed or cast into prison. In such cases it was necessary for the gild to ransom the imprisoned "brother" and, if possible, to punish the persons who had done the injury, so that thereafter the liberties of the gild members would be respected. That the business of the gild might be increased, it was often desirable to enter into special arrangements with neighboring cities whereby the rights, lives, and properties of gildsmen were guaranteed; and the gild as a whole was responsible for the debts of any of its members.

[Sidenote: Regulative]

The most important duty of the gild had been the regulation of the home market. Burdensome restrictions were laid upon the stranger who attempted to utilize the advantages of the market without sharing the expense of maintenance. No goods were allowed to be carried away from the city if the townsmen wished to buy; and a tax, called in France the _octroi_, was levied on goods brought into the town. [Footnote: The _octroi_ is still collected in Paris.] Moreover, a conviction prevailed that the gild was morally bound to enforce honest straightforward methods of business; and the "wardens" appointed by the gild to supervise the market endeavored to prevent, as dishonest practices, "forestalling" (buying outside of the regular market), "engrossing" (cornering the market), [Footnote: The idea that "combinations in restraint of trade" are wrong quite possibly goes back to this abhorrence of engrossing.] and "regrating" (retailing at higher than market price). The dishonest green grocer was not allowed to use a peck-measure with false bottom, for weighing and measuring were done by officials. Cheats were fined heavily and, if they persisted in their evil ways, they might be expelled from the gild.

These merchant gilds, with their social, protective, and regulative functions, had first begun to be important in the eleventh century. In England, where their growth was most rapid, 82 out of the total of 102 towns had merchant gilds by the end of the thirteenth century. [Footnote: Several important places, such as London, Colchester, and Norwich, belonged to the small minority without merchant gilds.] On the Continent many towns, especially in Germany, had quite different arrangements, and where merchant gilds existed, they were often exclusive and selfish groups of merchants in a single branch of business.

[Sidenote: Decline of Merchant Guilds]

With the expansion of trade and industry in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the rule of the old merchant gilds, instead of keeping pace with the times, became oppressive, limited, or merely nominal. Where the merchant gilds became oppressive oligarchical associations, as they did in Germany and elsewhere on the Continent, they lost their power by the revolt of the more democratic "craft gilds." In England specialized control of industry and trade by craft gilds, journeymen's gilds, and dealers' associations gradually took the place of the general supervision of the older merchant gild. After suffering the loss of its vital functions, the merchant gild by the sixteenth century either quietly succumbed or lived on with power in a limited branch of trade, or continued as an honorary organization with occasional feasts, or, and this was especially true in England, it became practically identical with the town corporation, from which originally it had been distinct.

[Sidenote: Industry: the Craft Guilds]

Alongside of the merchant gilds, which had been associated with the growth of commerce and the rise of towns, were other guilds connected with the growth of industry, which retained their importance long after 1500. These were the craft gilds. [Footnote: The craft gild was also called a company, or a mistery, or _métier_ (French), or _Zunft_ (German).] Springing into prominence in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the craft gild sometimes, as in Germany, voiced a popular revolt against corrupt and oligarchical merchant gilds, and sometimes most frequently so in England--worked quite harmoniously with the merchant gild, to which its own members belonged. In common with the merchant gild, the craft gild had religious and social aspects, and like the merchant gild it insisted on righteous dealings; but unlike the merchant gild it was composed of men in a single industry, and it controlled in detail the manufacture as well as the marketing of commodities. There were bakers' gilds, brewers' gilds, smiths' gilds, saddlers' gilds, shoemakers' gilds, weavers' gilds, tailors' gilds, tanners' gilds, even gilds of masters of arts who constituted the teaching staff of colleges and universities.

When to-day we speak of a boy "serving his apprenticeship" in a trade, we seldom reflect that the expression is derived from a practice of the medieval craft gilds, a practice which survived after the gilds were extinct. Apprenticeship was designed to make sure that recruits to the trade were properly trained. The apprentice was usually selected as a boy by a master-workman and indentured--that is, bound to work several years without wages, while living at the master's house. After the expiration of this period of apprenticeship, during which he had learned his trade thoroughly, the youth became a "journeyman," and worked for wages, until he should finally receive admission to the gild as a master, with the right to set up his own little shop, with apprentices and journeymen of his own, and to sell his wares directly to those who used them.

This restriction of membership was not the only way in which the trade was supervised. The gild had rules specifying the quality of materials to be used and often, likewise, the methods of manufacture; it might prohibit night-work, and it usually fixed a "fair price" at which goods were to be sold. By means of such provisions, enforced by wardens or inspectors, the gild not only perpetuated the "good old way" of doing things, but guaranteed to the purchaser a thoroughly good article at a fair price.

[Sidenote: Partial Decay of Craft Gilds]

By the opening of the sixteenth century the craft gilds, though not so weakened as the merchant gilds, were suffering from various internal diseases which sapped their vitality. They tended to become exclusive and to direct their power and affluence in hereditary grooves. They steadily raised their entrance fees and qualifications. Struggles between gilds in allied trades, such as spinning, weaving, fulling, and dyeing, often resulted in the reduction of several gilds to a dependent position. The regulation of the processes of manufacture, once designed to keep up the standard of skill, came in time to be a powerful hindrance to technical improvements; and in the method as well as in the amount of his work, the enterprising master found himself handicapped. Even the old conscientiousness often gave way to greed, until in many places inferior workmanship received the approval of the gild.

Many craft gilds exhibited in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a tendency to split somewhat along the present lines of capital and labor. On the one hand the old gild organization would be usurped and controlled by the wealthier master-workmen, called "livery men," because they wore rich uniforms, or a class of dealers would arise and organize a "merchants' company" to conduct a wholesale business in the products of a particular industry. Thus the rich drapers sold all the cloth, but did not help to make it. On the other hand it became increasingly difficult for journeymen and apprentices to rise to the station of masters; oftentimes they remained wage-earners for life. In order to better their condition they formed new associations, which in England were called journeymen's or yeomen's companies. These new organizations were symptomatic of injustice but otherwise unimportant. The craft gilds, with all their imperfections, were to continue in power awhile longer, slowly giving away as new trades arose outside of their control, gradually succumbing in competition with capitalists who refused to be bound by gild rules and who were to evolve a new "domestic system," [Footnote: See Vol. II, ch xviii.] and slowly suffering diminution of prestige through royal interference.

[Sidenote: Life in the Towns]

In the year 1500 the European towns displayed little uniformity in government or in the amount of liberty they possessed. Some were petty republics subject only in a very vague way to an extraneous potentate; some merely paid annual tribute to a lord; some were administered by officers of a king or feudal magnate; others were controlled by oligarchical commercial associations. But of the general appearance and life of sixteenth-century towns, it is possible to secure a more uniform notion.

It must be borne in mind that the towns were comparatively small, for the great bulk of people still lived in the country. A town of 5000 inhabitants was then accounted large; and even the largest places, like Nuremberg, Strassburg, London, Paris, and Bruges, would have been only small cities in our eyes. The approach to an ordinary city of the time lay through suburbs, farms, and garden-plots, for the townsman still supplemented industry with small-scale agriculture. Usually the town itself was inclosed by strong walls, and admission was to be gained only by passing through the gates, where one might be accosted by soldiers and forced to pay toll. Inside the walls were clustered houses of every description. Rising from the midst of tumble-down dwellings might stand a magnificent cathedral, town-hall, or gild building. Here and there a prosperous merchant would have his luxurious home, built in what we now call the Gothic style, with pointed windows and gables, and, to save space in a walled town, with the second story projecting out over the street.

The streets were usually in deplorable condition. There might be one or two broad highways, but the rest were mere alleys, devious, dark, and dirty. Often their narrowness made them impassable for wagons. In places the pedestrian waded gallantly through mud and garbage; pigs grunted ponderously as he pushed them aside; chickens ran under his feet; and occasionally a dead dog obstructed the way. There were no sidewalks, and only the main thoroughfares were paved. Dirt and filth and refuse were ordinarily disposed of only when a heaven-sent rain washed them down the open gutters constructed along the middle, or on each side, of a street. Not only was there no general sewerage for the town, but there was likewise no public water supply. In many of the garden plots at the rear of the low-roofed dwellings were dug wells which provided water for the family; and the visitor, before he left the town, would be likely to meet with water-sellers calling out their ware. To guard against the danger of fires, each municipality encouraged its citizens to build their houses of stone and to keep a tub full of water before every building; and in each district a special official was equipped with a proper hook and cord for pulling down houses on fire. At night respectable town-life was practically at a standstill: the gates were shut; the curfew sounded; no street-lamps dispelled the darkness, except possibly an occasional lantern which an altruistic or festive townsman might hang in his front-window; and no efficient police-force existed--merely a handful of townsmen were drafted from time to time as "watchmen" to preserve order, and the "night watch" was famed rather for its ability to sleep or to roister than to protect life or purse. Under these circumstances the citizen who would escape an assault by ruffians or thieves remained prudently indoors at night and retired early to bed. Picturesque and quaint the sixteenth-century town may have been; but it was also an uncomfortable and an unhealthful place in which to live.

TRADE PRIOR TO THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION

Just as agriculture is the ultimate basis of human society, so town- life has always been an index of culture and civilization. And the fortunes of town-life have ever depended upon the vicissitudes of trade and commerce. So the reviving commerce of the later middle ages between Europe and the East meant the growth of cities and betokened an advance in civilization.

[Sidenote: Revival of Trade with the East]

Trade between Europe and Asia, which had been a feature of the antique world of Greeks and Romans, had been very nearly destroyed by the barbarian invasions of the fifth century and by subsequent conflicts between Mohammedans and Christians, so that during several centuries the old trade-routes were traveled only by a few Jews and with the Syrians. In the tenth century, however, a group of towns in southern Italy--Brindisi, Bari, Taranto, and Amalfi--began to send ships to the eastern Mediterranean and were soon imitated by Venice and later by Genoa and Pisa.

This revival of intercourse between the East and the West was well under way before the first Crusade, but the Crusades (1095-1270) hastened the process. Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, on account of their convenient location, were called upon to furnish the crusaders with transportation and provisions, and their shrewd Italian citizens made certain that such services were well rewarded. Italian ships, plying to and from the Holy Land, gradually enriched their owners. Many Italian cities profited, but Venice secured the major share. It was during the Crusades that Venice gained numerous coastal districts and islands in the Ægean besides immunities and privileges in Constantinople, and thereby laid the foundation of her maritime empire.

The Crusades not only enabled Italian merchants to bring Eastern commodities to the West; they increased the demand for such commodities. Crusaders--pilgrims and adventurers--returned from the Holy Land with astonishing tales of the luxury and opulence of the East. Not infrequently they had acquired a taste for Eastern silks or spices during their stay in Asia Minor or Palestine; or they brought curious jewels stripped from fallen infidels to awaken the envy of the stay-at-homes. Wealth was rapidly increasing in Europe at this time, and the many well-to-do people who were eager to affect magnificence provided a ready market for the wares imported by Italian merchants.

[Sidenote: Commodities of Eastern Trade]

It is desirable to note just what were these wares and why they were demanded so insistently. First were spices, far more important then than now. The diet of those times was simple and monotonous without our variety of vegetables and sauces and sweets, and the meat, if fresh, was likely to be tough in fiber and strong in flavor. Spices were the very thing to add zest to such a diet, and without them the epicure of the sixteenth century would have been truly miserable. Ale and wine, as well as meats, were spiced, and pepper was eaten separately as a delicacy. No wonder that, although the rich alone could buy it, the Venetians were able annually to dispose of 420,000 pounds of pepper, which they purchased from the sultan of Egypt, to whom it was brought, after a hazardous journey, from the pepper vines of Ceylon, Sumatra, or western India. From the same regions came cinnamon-bark; ginger was a product of Arabia, India, and China; and nutmegs, cloves, and allspice grew only in the far-off Spice Islands of the Malay Archipelago.

Precious stones were then, as always, in demand for personal adornment as well as for the decoration of shrines and ecclesiastical vestments; and in the middle ages they were thought by many to possess magical qualities which rendered them doubly valuable. [Footnote: Medieval literature is full of this idea. Thus we read in the book of travel which has borne the name of Sir John Maundeville: "And if you wish to know the virtues of the diamond, I shall tell you, as they that are beyond the seas say and affirm, from whom all science and philosophy comes. He who carries the diamond upon him, it gives him hardiness and manhood, and it keeps the limbs of his body whole. It gives him victory over his enemies, in court and in war, if his cause be just; and it keeps him that bears it in good wit; and it keeps him from strife and riot, from sorrows and enchantments, and from fantasies and illusions of wicked spirits. ... [It] heals him that is lunatic, and those whom the fiend torments or pursues."] The supply of diamonds, rubies, pearls, and other precious stones was then almost exclusively from Persia, India, and Ceylon.

Other miscellaneous products of the East were in great demand for various purposes: camphor and cubebs from Sumatra and Borneo; musk from China; cane-sugar from Arabia and Persia; indigo, sandal-wood, and aloes-wood from India; and alum from Asia Minor.

The East was not only a treasure-house of spices, jewels, valuable goods, and medicaments, but a factory of marvelously delicate goods and wares which the West could not rival--glass, porcelain, silks, satins, rugs, tapestries, and metal-work. The tradition of Asiatic supremacy in these manufactures has been preserved to our own day in such familiar names as damask linen, china-ware, japanned ware, Persian rugs, and cashmere shawls.

In exchange for the manifold products of the East, Europe had only rough woolen cloth, arsenic, antimony, quicksilver, tin, copper, lead, and coral to give; and a balance, therefore, always existed for the European merchant to pay in gold and silver, with the result that gold and silver coins grew scarce in the West. It is hard to say what would have happened had not a new supply of the precious metals been discovered in America. But we are anticipating our story.

[Sidenote: Oriental Trade-Routes]

Nature has rendered intercourse between Europe and Asia exceedingly difficult by reason of a vast stretch of almost impassable waste, extending from the bleak plains on either side of the Ural hills down across the steppes of Turkestan and the desert of Arabia to the great sandy Sahara. Through the few gaps in this desert barrier have led from early times the avenues of trade. In the fifteenth century three main trade-routes--a central, a southern, and a northern--precariously linked the two continents.

(1) The central trade-route utilized the valley of the Tigris River. Goods from China, from the Spice Islands, and from India were brought by odd native craft from point to point along the coast to Ormuz, an important city at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, thence to the mouth of the Tigris, and up the valley to Bagdad. From Bagdad caravans journeyed either to Aleppo and Antioch on the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean, or across the desert to Damascus and the ports on the Syrian coast. Occasionally caravans detoured southward to Cairo and Alexandria in Egypt. Whether at Antioch, Jaffa, or Alexandria, the caravans met the masters of Venetian ships ready to carry the cargo to Europe.

(2) The southern route was by the Red Sea. Arabs sailed their ships from India and the Far East across the Indian Ocean and into the Red Sea, whence they transferred their cargoes to caravans which completed the trip to Cairo and Alexandria. By taking advantage of monsoons,--the favorable winds which blew steadily in certain seasons,--the skipper of a merchant vessel could make the voyage from India to Egypt in somewhat less than three months. It was often possible to shorten the time by landing the cargoes at Ormuz and thence dispatching them by caravan across the desert of Arabia to Mecca, and so to the Red Sea, but caravan travel was sometimes slower and always more hazardous than sailing.

(3) The so-called "northern route" was rather a system of routes leading in general from the "back doors" of India and China to the Black Sea. Caravans from India and China met at Samarkand and Bokhara, two famous cities on the western slope of the Tian-Shan Mountains. West of Bokhara the route branched out. Some caravans went north of the Caspian, through Russia to Novgorod and the Baltic. Other caravans passed through Astrakhan, at the mouth of the Volga River, and terminated in ports on the Sea of Azov. Still others skirted the shore of the Caspian Sea, passing through Tabriz and Armenia to Trebizond on the Black Sea.

The transportation of goods from the Black Sea and eastern Mediterranean was largely in the hands of the Italian cities,[Footnote: In general, the journey from the Far East to the ports on the Black Sea and the eastern Mediterranean was performed by Arabs, although some of the more enterprising Italians pushed on from the European settlements, or _fondachi_, in ports like Cairo and Trebizond, and established _fondachi_ in the inland cities of Asia Minor, Persia, and Russia.] especially Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence, although Marseilles and Barcelona had a small share. From Italy trade-routes led through the passes of the Alps to all parts of Europe. German merchants from Nuremberg, Augsburg, Ulm, Regensburg, and Constance purchased Eastern commodities in the markets of Venice, and sent them back to the Germanies, to England, and to the Scandinavian countries. After the lapse of many months, and even years, since the time when spices had been packed first in the distant Moluccas, they would be exposed finally for sale at the European fairs or markets to which thousands of countryfolk resorted. There a nobleman's steward could lay in a year's supply of condiments, or a peddler could fill his pack with silks and ornaments to delight the eyes of the ladies in many a lonesome castle.

[Sidenote: Difficulties of European Commerce]

Within Europe commerce gradually extended its scope in spite of the almost insuperable difficulties. The roads were still so miserable that wares had to be carried on pack-horses instead of in wagons. Frequently the merchant had to risk spoiling his bales of silk in fording a stream, for bridges were few and usually in urgent need of repair. Travel not only was fraught with hardship; it was expensive. Feudal lords exacted heavy tolls from travelers on road, bridge, or river. Between Mainz and Cologne, on the Rhine, toll was levied in thirteen different places. The construction of shorter and better highways was blocked often by nobles who feared to lose their toll-rights on the old roads. So heavy was the burden of tolls on commerce that transportation from Nantes to Orleans, a short distance up the River Loire, doubled the price of goods. Besides the tolls, one had to pay for local market privileges; towns exacted taxes on imports; and the merchant in a strange city or village often found himself seriously handicapped by regulations against "foreigners," and by unfamiliar weights, measures, and coinage.

Most dreaded of all, however, and most injurious to trade were the robbers who infested the roads. Needy knights did not scruple to turn highwaymen. Cautious travelers carried arms and journeyed in bands, but even they were not wholly safe from the dashing "gentlemen of the road." On the seas there was still greater danger from pirates. Fleets of merchantmen, despite the fact that they were accompanied usually by a vessel of war, often were assailed by corsairs, defeated, robbed, and sold as prizes to the Mohammedans. The black flag of piracy flew over whole fleets in the Baltic and in the Mediterranean. The amateur pirate, if less formidable, was no less common, for many a vessel carrying brass cannon, ostensibly for protection, found it convenient to use them to attack foreign craft and more frequently "took" a cargo than purchased one.

[Sidenote: Venice]

These dangers and difficulties of commercial intercourse were due chiefly to the lack of any strong power to punish pirates or highwaymen, to maintain roads, or to check the exactions of toll- collectors. Each city attempted to protect its own commerce. A great city-state like Venice was well able to send out her galleys against Mediterranean pirates, to wage war against the rival city of Genoa, to make treaties with Oriental potentates, and to build up a maritime empire. Smaller towns were helpless. But what, as in the case of the German towns, they could not do alone, was partially achieved by combination.

[Sidenote: The Hanseatic League. Towns in the Netherlands: Bruges]

The Hanse or the Hanseatic League, as the confederation of Cologne, Brunswick, Hamburg, Lübeck, Dantzig, Königsberg, and other German cities was called, waged war against the Baltic pirates, maintained its trade-routes, and negotiated with monarchs and municipalities in order to obtain exceptional privileges. From their Baltic stations,-- Novgorod, Stockholm, Königsberg, etc.,--the Hanseatic merchants brought amber, wax, fish, furs, timber, and tar to sell in the markets of Bruges, London, and Venice; they returned with wheat, wine, salt, metals, cloth, and beer for their Scandinavian and Russian customers. The German trading post at Venice received metals, furs, leather goods, and woolen cloth from the North, and sent back spices, silks, and other commodities of the East, together with glassware, fine textiles, weapons, and paper of Venetian manufacture. Baltic and Venetian trade- routes crossed in the Netherlands, and during the fourteenth century Bruges became the trade-metropolis of western Europe, where met the raw wool from England and Spain, the manufactured woolen cloth of Flanders, clarets from France, sherry and port wines from the Iberian peninsula, pitch from Sweden, tallow from Norway, grain from France and Germany, and English tin, not to mention Eastern luxuries, Venetian manufactures, and the cunning carved-work of south-German artificers.

THE AGE OF EXPLORATION

[Sidenote: Desire of Spaniards and Portuguese for New Trade-Routes]

In the unprecedented commercial prosperity which marked the fifteenth century, two European peoples--the Portuguese and the Spanish--had little part. For purposes of general Continental trade they were not so conveniently situated as the peoples of Germany and the Netherlands; and the Venetians and other Italians had shut them off from direct trade with Asia. Yet Spanish and Portuguese had developed much the same taste for Oriental spices and wares as had the inhabitants of central Europe, and they begrudged the exorbitant prices which they were compelled to pay to Italian merchants. Moreover, their centuries-long crusades against Mohammedans in the Iberian peninsula and in northern Africa had bred in them a stern and zealous Christianity which urged them on to undertake missionary enterprises in distant pagan lands. This missionary spirit reënforced the desire they already entertained of finding new trade-routes to Asia untrammeled by rival and selfish Italians. In view of these circumstances it is not surprising that Spaniards and Portuguese sought eagerly in the fifteenth century to find new trade-routes to "the Indies."

[Sidenote: Geographical Knowledge]

In their search for new trade-routes to the lands of silk and spice, these peoples of southwestern Europe were not as much in the dark as sometimes we are inclined to believe. Geographical knowledge, almost non-existent in the earlier middle ages, had been enriched by the Franciscan friars who had traversed central Asia to the court of the Mongol emperor as early as 1245, and by such merchants and travelers as Marco Polo, who had been attached to the court of Kublai Khan and who subsequently had described that potentate's realms and the wealth of "Cipangu" (Japan). These travels afforded at once information about Asia and enormous incentive to later explorers.