land or sea, was extremely limited. To
the first region belonged the Netherlands, the coasts of France,
Germany, and Scandinavia, and the maritime districts of England. In the
second we may class the provinces of Valencia and Catalonia, those of
Provence and Languedoc, and the whole of Italy.

[Sidenote: Woollen manufacture of Flanders.]

1. The former, or northern division, was first animated by the woollen
manufacture of Flanders. It is not easy either to discover the early
beginnings of this, or to account for its rapid advancement. The
fertility of that province and its facilities of interior navigation
were doubtless necessary causes; but there must have been some temporary
encouragement from the personal character of its sovereigns, or other
accidental circumstances. Several testimonies to the flourishing
condition of Flemish manufactures occur in the twelfth century, and
some might perhaps be found even earlier.[571] A writer of the
thirteenth asserts that all the world was clothed from English wool
wrought in Flanders.[572] This, indeed, is an exaggerated vaunt; but the
Flemish stuffs were probably sold wherever the sea or a navigable river
permitted them to be carried. Cologne was the chief trading city upon
the Rhine; and its merchants, who had been considerable even under the
emperor Henry IV., established a factory at London in 1220. The woollen
manufacture, notwithstanding frequent wars and the impolitic regulations
of magistrates,[573] continued to flourish in the Netherlands (for
Brabant and Hainault shared it in some degree with Flanders), until
England became not only capable of supplying her own demand, but a rival
in all the marts of Europe. "All Christian kingdoms, and even the Turks
themselves," says an historian of the sixteenth century, "lamented the
desperate war between the Flemish cities and their count Louis, that
broke out in 1380. For at that time Flanders was a market for the
traders of all the world. Merchants from seventeen kingdoms had their
settled domiciles at Bruges, besides strangers from almost unknown
countries who repaired thither."[574] During this war, and on all other
occasions, the weavers both of Ghent and Bruges distinguished themselves
by a democratical spirit, the consequence, no doubt, of their numbers
and prosperity.[575] Ghent was one of the largest cities in Europe, and,
in the opinion of many, the best situated.[576] But Bruges, though in
circuit but half the former