for election to the council and to the parochial offices. This continued
long after the battle of Worringen (1288) had finally secured for the
city full self-government, and the archbishops had ceased to reside
within its walls. In the 14th century a narrow patrician council
selected from the Richerzeche, with two burgomasters, was supreme. In
1370 an insurrection of the weavers was suppressed; but in 1396, the
rule of the patricians, having been weakened by internal dissensions, a
bloodless revolution led to the establishment of a comparatively
democratic constitution, based on the organization of the trade and
craft gilds, which lasted with but slight modification till the French
Revolution.

The greatness of Cologne, in the middle ages as now, was due to her
trade. Wine and herrings were the chief articles of her commerce; but
her weavers had been in repute from time immemorial, and exports of
cloth were large, while her goldsmiths and armourers were famous. So
early as the 11th century her merchants were settled in London, their
colony forming the nucleus of the Steelyard. When, in 1201, the city
joined the Hanseatic League (q.v.) its power and repute were so great
that it was made the chief place of a third of the confederation.

In spite of their feuds with the archbishops, the burghers of Cologne
were stanch Catholics, and the number of the magnificent medieval
churches left is evidence at once of their piety and their wealth. The
university, founded in 1389 by the sole efforts of the citizens, soon
gained a great reputation; in the 15th century its students numbered
much more than a thousand, and its influence extended to Scotland and
the Scandinavian kingdoms. Its decline began, however, from the moment
when the Catholic sentiment of the city closed it to the influence of
the Reformers; the number of its students sank to vanishing point, and
though, under the influence of the Jesuits, it subsequently revived, it
never recovered its old importance. A final blow was dealt it when, in
1777, the enlightened archbishop Maximilian Frederick (d. 1784) founded
the university of Bonn, and in 1798, amid the confusion of the
revolutionary epoch, it ceased to exist.

The same intolerance that ruined the university all but ruined the city
too. It is difficult, indeed, to blame the burghers for resisting the
dubious reforming efforts of Hermann of Wied, archbishop from 1515 to
1546, inspired mainly by secular ambitions;