the traffic in
merchandise and, despite the prohibition of loans at interest, makes
constantly more rapid progress. The _coutumes_ of the fairs, especially
those of the fairs of the Champagne, in which the merchants of the
regions most advanced in an economic sense, Italy and the Low Countries,
meet each other, give rise to a veritable commercial law. The
circulation of money expands and becomes regulated; the coinage of gold,
abandoned since the Merovingian period, is resumed in the middle of the
thirteenth century. The security of travellers increases on the great
highways. The old Roman bridges are rebuilt and here and there canals
are built and dykes constructed. Finally, in the towns, the commercial
buildings of the previous period, outgrown, are replaced by structures
more vast and more luxurious, of which the _halles_ of Ypres, with their
facade one hundred and thirty-three metres long, is doubtless the most
imposing specimen.

In the presence of these facts it is impossible to deny the existence of
a considerable traffic. Moreover documents abound which attest the
existence in the great cities of men of affairs who hold the most
extended relations with the outside world, who export and import sacks
of wool, bales of cloth, tuns of wine, by the hundred, who have under
their orders a whole corps of factors or "sergents" (_servientes_,
_valets_, etc.), whose letters of credit are negotiated in the fairs of
Champagne, and who make loans amounting to several thousands of livres
to princes, monasteries, and cities in need of money. To cite here
merely a few figures, let us recall that in 1273 the company of the
Scotti of Piacenza exports wool from England to the value of 21,400
pounds sterling, or 1,600,000 francs (metallic value);[18] in 1254
certain burgesses of Arras furnish 20,000 livres to the Count of Guines,
prisoner of the Count of Flanders, to enable him to pay his ransom.[19]
In 1339 three merchants of Mechlin advance 54,000 florins (700,000
francs) to King Edward III.[20]

Extensive however as capitalistic commerce has been since the first half
of the thirteenth century, it no longer enjoys the freedom of
development which it had before. As we advance toward the end of the
Middle Ages, indeed, we see it subjected to limitations constantly more
numerous and more confining. Henceforth, in fact, it has to reckon with
municipal legislation. Every town now shelters itself behind the
ramparts of protectionism.