side and on that,
it arouses the hinterland into which the harbors cut their indentations.
In this process of growth the two movements finally meet, and bring into
communication the people of the North and the people of the South. By
the beginning of the twelfth century it is an accomplished fact. In 1127
Lombard merchants, journeying by the long route which descends from the
passes of the Alps toward Champagne and the Low Countries, reach the
fairs of Flanders.

If the feeble and precarious commercial activity of the Carolingian
period was sufficient to create gathering-places of merchants at the
points most frequented in travel, it is not difficult to understand that
the steady progress of economic activity from the end of the tenth
century would result in the formation, at the strategic points of
regional transit, of aggregations of like character but much more
important and more stable. The surface of the land, the direction and
the depth of the streams, determining the routes of commerce, also
determined the location of the towns. Indeed, European cities are the
daughters of commerce and of industry. Unquestionably in the countries
of old civilization, in Italy or in Gaul, the Roman cities had not
completely disappeared. Within the circle of their walls, which had now
become too large and were filled with ruins, there gathered, around the
bishop resident in each of them, a whole population of clerics and
monks, and beside them a lay population employed in their service or
support. In the North, one found the same spectacle at the centres of
the new dioceses, at Therouanne, at Utrecht, at Magdeburg, or at Vienna.
But here was no trace, properly speaking, of municipal life. A certain
number of artisans, some of them serfs, a little weekly market for the
most indispensable commodities, sometimes a fair visited by the
merchant-adventurers of whom we have spoken above--this is the sum total
of economic life.

But the situation changes from the moment when the increasing intensity
of commerce begins to furnish men with new means of existence.
Immediately one discovers an uninterrupted movement of migration of
peasants from the country towards the places in which the handling of
merchandise, the towing of boats, the service of merchants furnish
regular occupations and arouse the hope of gain.

If the old cities disadvantageously placed at one side from the highways
of travel continue in their torpor, the others see th