y the fourteenth century
Bruges had thus become in the north what Venice was in the south,
the capital of commerce. Trading companies from all the surrounding
countries had their "factories" in the town, and every European king
or prince of importance kept a resident minister accredited to the
merchant republic.

Some comprehension of the mercantile condition of Europe in general
during the Middle Ages is necessary in order to understand the early
importance and wealth of the Flemish cities. Southern Europe, and in
particular Italy, was then still the seat of all higher civilization,
more especially of the trade in manufactured articles and objects of
luxury. Florence, Venice and Genoa ranked as the polished and learned
cities of the world. Further east, again, Constantinople still
remained in the hands of the Greek emperors, or, during the Crusades,
of their Latin rivals. A brisk trade existed via the Mediterranean
between Europe and India or the nearer East. This double stream of
traffic ran along two main routes--one, by the Rhine, from Lombardy
and Rome; the other, by sea, from Venice, Genoa, Florence,
Constantinople, the Levant, and India.

On the other hand, France was still but a half civilized country,
with few manufactures and little external trade; while England was an
exporter of raw produce, chiefly wool, like Australia in our own time.
The Hanseatic merchants of Cologne held the trade of London; those of
Wisby and Luebeck governed that of the Baltic; Bruges, as head of the
Hansea, was in close connection with all of these, as well as with
Hull, York, Novgorod, and Bergen.

The position of the Flemish towns in the fourteenth century was thus
not wholly unlike that of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston at the
present day; they stood as intermediaries between the older civilized
countries, like Italy or the Greek empire, and the newer producers of
raw material, like England, North Germany, and the Baltic towns.

In a lost corner of the great lowland flat of Flanders, defended from
the sea by an artificial dike, and at the point of intersection of an
intricate network of canals and waterways, there arose in the early
Middle Ages a trading town, known in Flemish as Brugge, in French as
Bruges (that is to say, The Bridge), from a primitive structure that
here crossed the river. A number of bridges now span the sluggish
streams. All of them open in the middle to admit the passage of
shipping.

Bruges stood