Chapter XXIII: Section III: Cities of Germany and the Netherlands

But we must leave the Italian towns to look at the cities which sprang up in the northern parts of Europe. The Lombardic cities were Roman municipalities, keeping up a struggle for existence after the fall of the empire, and Venice and Amalfi were communities, which sprung up immediately upon that fall, imbibing some elements of Roman civilisation, intermingled with others of an oriental cast, derived from their dependence on the eastern emperors and their subsequent intercourse with the Saracens; but the cities to which attention is now to be directed, had their origin in feudal times; they arose amidst that state of disorder into which society was plunged by the inroads of the northern barbarians; they exhibited new developments of social life and manners; they derived their spirit of independence from the Gothic races who founded them; their progress was a struggle with their feudal lords, and their final establishment and prosperity secured the overthrow of the feudal system. The former were in a great measure but the reflection of ancient civilisation, the latter were the infant, but vigorous forms of modern civilisation. There we see the Roman city, here the German borough. The ancient Germans, according to Tacitus, had no cities. The people lived a wandering life, and when they settled anywhere for a time, they erected for themselves rude, detached, and scattered dwellings.[1] Long after the invasion of the south of Europe the Gothic tribes retained their uncitizenlike habits. "Till the reign of Charlemagne," observes Hallam, "there were no towns in Germany, except a few that had been erected on the Rhine and Danube by the Romans. A house with its stables and farm buildings, surrounded by a hedge, or inclosure, was called a court, or, as we find it in our law books, a curtilage--the toft, or homestead, of a more genuine English dialect. One of these, with the adjacent domain of arable fields and woods, had the name of a villa, or manse. Several manses composed a march, and several marches formed a pagus, or district. From these elements in the progress of population arose villages and towns." The character of these tofts, or homesteads, is well illustrated by a passage from Dr. Whitaker's History of Craven:--"A toft is a homestead in a village, so called from the small tufts of maple, elm, ash, and other wood, with which dwelling-houses were anciently overhung. Even now it is impossible to enter Craven without being struck with the isolated homesteads, surrounded by their little garths, and overhung with tufts of trees. These are the genuine tofts and crofts of our ancestors, with the substitution only of stone to the wooden crocks and thatched roofs of antiquity." The little towns which thus sprung up were subject of course to the feudal lord in whose domain they were situate; but, probably, the condition of their inhabitants was preferable to that of his dependents, who lived in the open country. Some small amount of manufacture and trade would necessarily arise in these infant communities, all of which doubtless had their weavers, smiths, and curriers, for the supply of garments and implements of husbandry to the rural labourers in the vicinity.[2]

Germs of civic communities also appeared, in many instances, under the immediate shadow of the feudal castle. Groups of serfs who tilled the neighbouring fields, and some few artisans who manufactured necessary articles for the household, gathered round the baronial abode, and formed a little village, out of which, in process of time, there arose a town of some importance. In a similar way, villages sprang up in the vicinity of convents; and no doubt, as Guizot has remarked, the progress of towns was considerably promoted by the right of sanctuary in churches. "Even before the boroughs were constituted, and before their force and ramparts enabled them to hold out an asylum to the wretched population of the fields, the protection which could be found in the church alone was sufficient to attract a great many fugitives into the towns. They came to shelter themselves, either in the church itself, or around the church; and they were not confined to men of the inferior class--serfs and boors--but were frequently men of consideration and wealth who had been proscribed. The chronicles of the epoch are full of such examples. We see men, formerly powerful, pursued by a neighbour yet more powerful, or by the king himself, abandoning their domains, carrying off all their movables, and flying to a town to put themselves under the protection of a church. These men became burgesses, and such refugees were, in my opinion, of some influence on the progress of towns, as they brought into them both wealth and the elements of a population superior to the bulk of the former inhabitants. Besides, is it not probable that, when anything like a considerable association had been formed in any quarter, men would flock to it, not only on account of the greater security afforded by it, but also from the mere spirit of sociability which is so natural to them."[3] Thus these towns became places of refuge; characters of all sorts, good and bad, those who fled from the oppressor, and those who sought to escape the avenger, were gathered together; and thus the rise of modern towns resembled the rise of ancient ones, and many a European city had an origin like that of Rome. "Many fled thither from the countries round about; those who had shed blood, and fled from the vengeance of the avenger of blood--those who were driven out from their own homes by their enemies, and even men of low degree who had run away from their lords. Thus the city became full of people."[4] Such was the commencement of the proud patrician families of Rome, and in like manner originated many a wealthy and noble family of merchants in modern times.

Till the ninth century, the people of Germany lived in open towns, or villages, under their feudal lords; but, at that period, the privilege of having walls began to be allowed. Hamburg was built, at that time, by Charlemagne, and was so distinguished; in the following century, a few more walled towns appeared on the banks of the Rhine and Danube, but their commerce was low and feeble. A charter was granted to Magdeburg, A.D. 940, "to build and fortify their city, and exercise municipal law therein;"[5] but the most northern parts of Germany could not boast of any towns till a later period. The first which was erected on the shores of the Baltic was Lubeck, which was founded, A.D. 1140, by Adolphus count of Holstein.[6]

In the Netherlands, the towns were in advance of those in Germany. In the tenth century, Thiel contained no less than fifty-five churches, from which it may be concluded that the population was very large. The people then had learned the art of draining their lands, and by the formation of dykes, they recovered from the waters extensive portions of territory. Habits of industry, union, and reciprocal justice were thus cherished, and the seeds of their subsequent commercial greatness sprang up in these Flemish communities. Their woollen manufactures, enabled them to trade with France, and thus to acquire considerable wealth, while their own population was clothed in good apparel.[7] Baldwin, count of Flanders, established annual fairs, or markets in the cities of his dominion, without demanding any tolls of the merchants who trafficked there. It was some time, however, before any of these towns could boast of much that was imposing in their appearance. The houses, in the ninth, century, were made of watlings of rods, or twigs plastered over with clay, and roofed with thatch, which, as trade advanced, gave way, no doubt, to habitations of a better order. But wood long remained the chief material in the construction of edifices, even of the superior order. As late as the eleventh century, buildings of stone were rare; and the parish church and the city bridges were commonly of timber.

The noble cathedral of Tournay, bearing evident traces of resemblance to the Byzantine architecture, is, however, a proof that, at an early period, there were edifices to be found in the Netherlands of great magnificence. It is interesting to look at these communities in their earlier history, located on the borders of vast forests, and in the midst of wide-spread marshes, contending with the difficulties of their situation, patiently laying the foundations of commercial greatness and renown, and teaching posterity what can be accomplished by earnest enterprising industry.

Some of the cities of the Netherlands were subject to episcopal jurisdiction, and the bishops of Liege, Utrecht, and Tournay, are distinguished in the annals of the middle ages; but other cities were subject to the counts of the province in which they were situate. Yet, at an early period, the shrewd people of that commercial country banded together for mutual protection and assistance, under the forms of guilds, or fraternities, which prepared for the municipal corporations of later times: and, in the case of the Frisons, or people of Friesland, they secured for themselves very considerable rights in the ninth century. These rights consisted in the freedom of every order of citizens, the possession of property, the privilege of trial by their own judges, a narrow limitation of military service, and an hereditary title to feudal estates, in direct line, on payment of certain dues. These rights formed the Magna Charta of the Frieslanders, and gave them a proud distinction among their neighbours.

With regard to the cities of France, Mr. Hallam remarks: "Every town, except within the royal domain, was subject to some lord. In episcopal cities, the bishop possessed a considerable authority, and in many there was a class of resident nobility. It is probable that the proportion of freemen was always greater than in the country; some sort of retail trade and even of manufacture, must have existed in the rudest of the middle ages; and, consequently, some little capital was required for their exercise. Nor is it so easy to oppress a collected body as the dispersed and dispirited cultivators of the soil: probably, therefore, the condition of the towns was, at all times, by far the more tolerable servitude, and they might enjoy several immunities by usage before the date of those charters which gave them sanction. In Provence, where the feudal star shone with a less powerful ray, the cities, though not independently governed, were more flourishing than the French. Marseilles, in the beginning of the twelfth age, was able to equip powerful navies, and to share in the wars of Genoa and Pisa against the Saracens of Sardinia."

If Paris is to be taken as a sample of the towns of France, before the twelfth century, they must have been in a deplorable condition of filth and wretchedness. The swine were accustomed to wallow in the streets of this metropolis, until a prince of the blood was thrown from his horse, in consequence of a sow running between the legs of the animal. To prevent the recurrence of such accidents, an order was issued to prohibit the swinish multitude from infesting the public thoroughfares of the city. But the monks of St. Antony remonstrated at this--the pigs of their monastery having had, from time immemorial, the privilege of frequenting, at liberty, every part of the towns, of feeding on such scraps and offal as they could find, and of reposing on the choice beds of mire which covered certain spots in the great highway. The monks were not to be resisted; and, at length, there was granted to the swine of their convent, the exclusive privilege of roaming about the Parisian streets without molestation, provided, only, that the said swine went forth on their peregrinations with bells tied about their necks.

[1] Germania, xvi.

[2] Hallam's Middle Ages, c. ix. p. 1.

[3] Guizot, Civilisation of Europe, Lect. 7.

[4] Arnold's History of Rome, vol. i. p. 7.

[5] Anderson's History of Commerce.

[6] Hallam.

[7] Macpherson's Annals of Commerce.