States without a king: principalities and city republics

In his history of Frederick Barbarossa’s deeds, Bishop Otto of Freising includes an account of the Italian city republics as the introduction to Frederick’s first expe­dition to Italy in 1154—55 in order to receive the imperial crown.²⁶ Socially and politically, the Italians are widely different from other peoples, preferring elected consuls for short periods to princes and strong government, so that the whole country is divided into city states.

Frederick eventually discovered that it was not easy to suppress the rebellious Italians. Otto’s successor, Rahewin lets Frederick express himself in more diplo­matic terms to the Italians;²⁸ and in the end (1177 and 1183), Frederick had to conclude a peace treaty with them, which largely accepted their right to govern themselves.

While the European system of kingdoms in mutual competition over a long period of time seems to be exceptional in a global context, similar claims can be made about the European town. The Arab and Ottoman Empires, as well as China, were more urbanized than Europe in the Middle Ages and trade and manufacture were equally important or even more so, but towns as organized and largely self-governed communities mostly seem to have been specific to Europe. Their independence was particularly strong between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, to the extent that many of them can be regarded as states. We thus have to deal with a third category of political units in addition to the Church and the kingdoms.

From the Roman expansion into the Eastern Mediterranean in the second cen­tury bc until the Arab invasions from the 630s, the Mediterranean or most of it had been part of one empire and served as the main artery for trade and communica­tion within it. The Arabs managed to conquer the largest part of the area, includ­ing the wealthiest countries, Syria and Egypt. They also conquered many of the islands. However, the Byzantine Empire continued to exist and various western rulers held parts of Italy, from which a western revival began in the eleventh cen­tury, but in the form of independent city states rather than a great empire. These cities once more united the Mediterranean and controlled the trade between east and west. Admittedly, the difference from Roman conditions was less than it would immediately seem. The Roman Empire was less centralized than its Chinese counterpart and the cities retained much of their independence.²⁹ Nevertheless, trade was to a considerable degree controlled by the Empire and the urban elites were mostly landowners rather than merchants.

A new European Sea developed north of the Alps, consisting of the North and Baltic Seas with the Low Countries as its centre. This latter area had the advantage of rich soil which could support a large population, proximity to the wealthy kingdoms of England and France and communication with the inner parts of the Continent on the great rivers which had their estuaries there, including the Rhine. Later, new centres emerged along the Baltic Sea with the European expansion there.

Both the Low Countries and Northern Italy belonged to the central kingdom formed through the division of the Carolingian Empire in 843, but while the rest of it was included in either France or Germany, these areas maintained a con­siderable degree of independence. Both had good natural conditions for becoming centres of trade and manufacture, but their political independence probably owes much to the division of the Carolingian Empire. Their independence was impor­tant for their commercial success.

The Italian cities were the largest and most important in Europe. Of the five largest cities around 1300, four were in Italy, namely, Genoa, Venice, Milan and Florence. The fifth was Paris. These five may have had as many as 100,000 inhabitants each before the Black Death. The wealth of the cities made them strong enough to be independent, while independence in turn contributed to wealth. They could conduct a policy that served the interests of the merchants without paying taxes to any external authority. They could raise armies, often larger than those of the kingdoms; they had an elaborate political organization and independent courts of law. They suppressed feuds and solved conflicts between their inhabitants. Most of them were republics in the beginning, although many eventually came to be ruled by a lord, normally a member of some aristocratic family, who managed to suppress the republican institutions.

The most important Italian cities became centres of relatively large territories, but did not develop into homogeneous states; their republican constitution was not extended to the countryside or the dependent towns. This meant less stability and loyalty from the subordinate population. With the exception of Venice, the cities often experienced rebellions, coups and changes of constitution. The lords of the cities usually tried to establish dynasties, but generally had less success in this than the kings and were more often overthrown or murdered. In many ways, the Italian cities served as models of administration and finance for the kings north of the Alps, who often recruited Italian experts, but the states themselves proved to be vulnerable to foreign invasion to which most of them succumbed during the first half of the sixteenth century.

The most important trading towns in Italy were all in the north or middle of the country.³⁰ The little town of Amalfi in the south became an important centre of trade at the same time as Venice, but later lagged behind. Capitals like Naples and Palermo remained important but less so than the northern towns. As subjects to the Norman Kingdom and its successors, their merchants had to pay taxes and tolls to the king and risked blockades or confiscations when he was at war with their trading partners. By contrast, the independent towns could conduct their own policy in accordance with their mercantile interests. At the same time, they had to develop a strong military power to protect their trade, keep their enemies out of the market and secure their interests in negotiations with their trading partners. For this purpose, the two most important actors in the Mediterranean trade, Venice and Genoa, formed regular trading empires.

Today Venice is crowded by tourists, a favourite place for cruises, honeymoons and film festivals, full of luxurious and expensive hotels and restaurants, cold and foggy in winter, too hot in summer, but incredibly beautiful on a sunny day when rising over the golden sea and with the ancient buildings reflected in the canals.

In contrast to most Italian cities, Venice did not exist in Roman times.³¹ It was founded on some islands in the lagoon by refugees from the troubled conditions on the mainland after the fall of the Roman Empire and was in the beginning subject to the Byzantine Emperor. Eventually, it became an important partner in the trade between Byzantium and the West, later also on the trade routes with the east. The relationship to the emperor deteriorated in the twelfth century, and in 1204, Venice struck back, diverting the Fourth Crusade from the Holy Land and orchestrating the sack of Constantinople. The spoils from this victory consisted of three-eighths of the city of Constantinople and a series of trading posts on the way between this city and Venice. Venice, together with Genoa, formed the first example of the trading empires later developed on other continents by the Portu­guese, the Dutch and the British.

From far back in classical antiquity, various caravan routes linked East and West and served to bring attractive commodities, like silk and spices, to Europe. In the early Middle Ages, the trade on the Mediterranean between Western Europe and the East had declined, mainly because poverty in the West reduced the demand for luxury goods from the East. The trade that did exist was mainly carried out by Jewish and Arab merchants. From the tenth and eleventh centuries onwards, population increase and greater wealth made the West a more important market and the trade was increasingly carried on European ships, mainly Italian ones. This eventually also led to European military superiority at sea. Char­acteristically, the army of the First Crusade went over land through Asia Minor, whereas most of the later Crusades went by sea.

Venice and Genoa played a leading part in the trade on the Mediterranean between East and West, transporting their merchandise from Constantinople, Cairo, Damascus, later also from the Black Sea, to Italy or to northern Europe. The luxury goods from these areas was paid for by timber, metals, weapons and slaves from the northern shores of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. In addition, wine, grain and salt were transported between various Mediterranean ports. Sicily and Puglia in southern Italy, later also the Black Sea coasts, were important sup­pliers of grain to Venice and other Italian cities.³² With population growth and greater wealth among the elites north of the Alps, trade between North and South increased. In addition to the luxury commodities from the East, the Italians exported textiles, glass and arms to the North in return for metals, furs and wool, which were more abundant in the North. The Italians also produced valuable merchandise themselves, fine cloth of wool or silk and products of metal, including arms. The general pattern was raw material from the North in return for manu­facture from the South, with the textile production in Florence as the main example. There was also an increased import from the Far East in the thirteenth century, because the Mongol Empire, covering most of Asia, had eased the com- munication³³ and several Europeans had visited China in the thirteenth and four­teenth centuries, including Marco Polo, whose report from his twenty-seven years in China in the late thirteenth century has been preserved.

The character of trade changed from the thirteenth century onwards.³⁴ Origin­ally, most merchants travelled in person to the markets and sold their commodities; great fairs, such as the one in Champagne in northern France, were centres of this trade. Eventually, when contacts had been established and communications had become somewhat better and safer, the goods were transported by professional transporters and contact with the customers was kept in writing. This also led to the introduction of double-entry book-keeping from around 1300. Finally, single merchants were to some extent replaced by trading companies, often with perma­nent representatives abroad. Thus, a step was taken in the direction of the modern firm. Admittedly, most companies were family-based, but they might have numerous partners and last over several generations. Moreover, there were some possibilities to attract capital from passive partners. The Venetian commenda gave wealthy people the opportunity to invest in trade by letting poorer partners do the travelling. The stationary partner invested the capital in return for % of the profit, while the traveller received %. Moreover, in 1408, a Florentine statute allowed the creation of a società in accomandita in which dormant partners were liable only to the extent of their investment.

The Venetian Empire reached its climax in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. In the first half of the fifteenth century, it also became a leading power on the Italian mainland with the conquest of a large part of Northern Italy. Venice, Genoa and other Italian cities had in the previous period profited from political division and weak rulers in the Eastern Mediterranean. Although the Byzantine Empire was restored after the sack of 1204 and even reconquered the old capital in 1261, it never regained its old strength, and a disastrous civil war in the mid-four­teenth century reduced it to a petty principality. Eventually, however, it was replaced by a far stronger power, the Ottoman Empire, which conquered Con­stantinople in 1453 and in the following period also most of the Middle East — Egypt fell in 1517 — and then expanded into Eastern Europe, conquering most of Hungary and besieging Vienna in 1529. The Ottomans also developed a strong sea power and conquered several Venetian possessions in the Mediterranean, including Cyprus (1569) and Crete (1669). Admittedly, the Ottomans had the same interest in trade between East and West as their predecessors in the area, but it was of course more difficult to negotiate with a strong trading partner than with a weak one.

Venice is the most state-like of the medieval city states. It was ruled by the doge (from Latin dux = leader; cf. duke in English), whose power was eventually severely limited by other institutions. The city developed a very elaborate con­stitution, which remained almost unchanged from around 1300 to the fall of the republic in 1797. A stroll in the city gives an impression of its constitutional arrangements. Its centre, in the past as well as in the present, is the enormous square of St Mark, surrounded by numerous public buildings, including the cathedral, the Doge’s palace and a number of other buildings, today mostly muse­ums but earlier housing various offices of the state. Not far from St Mark’s Square is the Arsenal, where the galleys of the republic were built and maintained. They could be rowed as well as sailed but because of their large crews, they were expensive to run and thus mainly used for transporting precious goods. In addition, they were used for military purposes until the early sixteenth century, when the use of cannons made them obsolete.³⁵ The rest of the city seems like a labyrinth where tourists can easily get lost, but the narrow streets are regularly interrupted by squares which formed centres for trade as well as for local government.

The main ‘street’ of the city, the Canal Grande, is surrounded on both sides by the palaces of the merchant aristocracy in different styles, from Gothic to Baroque. An address at Canal Grande was essential for aristocratic status; poor members of the aristocracy would sacrifice much before they gave up this. The names of the palaces are those of the ancient families of the city whose members often served as doges: Contarini, Dandolo, Loredan, Mocenigo, Vendramin-Calergi. Of course, all medieval and early modern cities were ruled by some kind of aristocracy but the Venetian one was nevertheless more dominant and more stable than those of others and the political institutions more developed and more permanent.

Venice was exceptional in being almost a monarchy from the beginning. The office of doge goes back to 697, and 120 men held the office until it was abolished in 1797. The doge was elected for life but the office was not hereditary. Conse­quently, there was the same problem as with the papacy about succession, but the Venetians seem to have been more successful in solving it than the clergy and people of Rome. Although there were a number of disputed successions and kill­ings or depositions of doges in the eighth and ninth centuries, this became an exception in the following period, when only 4 of 102 were deposed. The greater stability reflects a clearer limitation of the doge’s power as well as the consolidation of the ruling class of Venice in the constitution that was developed after the serrata (closure) in 1297, when membership to the Great Council was limited to men belonging to 200 families. The Great Council was not a particularly important body in itself, but it was essential to belong to it because all officials in the service of the republic were elected from its members. In addition, members of the council also enjoyed trade privileges. From now on, the doge had to share his power with various elected bodies, the most important of which was the Council of Ten, which could veto the doge’s decisions and in addition had wide powers to prevent conspiracies against the constitution, including the right to arrest, depose and execute the doge. Outside the Doge’s Palace an opening in the wall is still to be seen with the inscription that anonymous letters accusing people of conspiring against the constitution can be posted there.

The constitutional reform of 1297 and the following years created a remarkable stability but at a price; international trade largely became a privilege for the nobility and free competition was reduced. In addition, the state interfered more in trade and economic exchange in Venice than in other places. Favouring economic lib­eralism, Acemoglou and Robinson describe the development of Venice under the headline ‘How Venice became a museum’.³⁶ Eventually, this did happen, but not until the second half of the seventeenth century. Until then, Venice was not the most economically dynamic of Italian cities, nor were the greatest fortunes created there — both Genoa and Florence were more successful in this respect — but, as a state, it survived much longer than both these rivals. Internally, it not only mana­ged to create peace between the members of the aristocracy, not an easy task under medieval and early modern conditions, but also to keep the rest of the popu­lation reasonably satisfied through effective jurisdiction and a certain amount of welfare provisions. Externally, it managed to hold together its Mediterranean Empire despite some substantial losses, as well as survive the struggle for Italy between the European great powers in the sixteenth century, even keeping intact its early fifteenth-century conquest of part of the Po Valley on the Italian mainland. Despite the fact that its military power was weaker than that of its main competitors, notably the Ottoman Empire, it had experienced politicians and was the first European state to develop a professional diplomatic service. Reports from Venetian diplomats have for a long time been an important source for historians working on international relations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

By contrast, Genoa’s economic dynamism corresponded to almost constant internal struggles. Its defeat against Venice in 1381 proved a turning-point. Soon afterwards, it came under French domination and was then conquered by Milan. From the sixteenth century onwards, it was under Spanish suzerainty, although with considerable internal independence and profited greatly from the Spanish conquest of America. The general point is therefore that what is good for trade is not necessarily good for society as a whole and that some balance between reg­ulation and liberty needs to be found. Moreover, although Venice did not allow free competition among its citizens, this hardly means that its merchants did not face competition on international markets.

Finally, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Venice became an important centre of art, painting, architecture, music and opera. Titian was the favourite painter of the Habsburgs and his paintings, together with those of Veronese, Tintoretto and Tiepolo, are in all the great museums of Europe, while the music of Monteverdi and Vivaldi has a similar status. And for those who could not afford the greatest masters, there is always a Canaletto — is there any English country-house without one? Renaissance architecture came late to Venice but one of the most famous architects of the period, Andrea Palladio (1508—80) worked there. His works, notably his villas, including the Villa Rotonda in Vicenza, became a model for the Renaissance north of the Alps (‘Palladian style’), in England through Inigo Jones and his Banqueting House in Whitehall in London (1619—22). Venice also became one of the most impor­tant centres of book printing in Europe, both because of competent technicians and because it for a long time was a centre for relative religious tolerance and free thinking in a country increasingly dominated by the intolerance of the Counter-Reformation. The University of Padua, under Venice since 1405, became the great intellectual centre of Italy until the first half of the seven­teenth century, sought by students from all over Europe, regardless of confes­sion, and known particularly for its studies of medicine and the natural sciences. Galileo was a professor there until 1610 when he left it for a better offer from Florence, his native town.

Moving from Venice to Florence, we are in a different world.

And when the plebs entered the palace, one Michele di Lando, a wool carder, had in his hands the ensign of the Gonfalonier of Justice. This man, barefoot and scantily clothed, climbed up the stairs with the whole mob behind him, and as soon as he was in the audience chamber, he said, ‘You see: this palace is yours and this city is in your hands. What do you think should be done now?’ To which all replied that they wanted him to be Gonfalonier and lord, and to govern them and the city however seemed best to him.³⁷

In this way, Machiavelli describes the turning-point in the Ciompi rebellion in Florence. The ciompi, the unskilled textile workers who carded the wool before it was spun and woven into textiles, worked in large factories with low salaries and under bad conditions — the first industrial proletariat in Europe. In 1378, they rebelled against the government, together with other labourers, and in a short time managed to take control of the city. Machiavelli makes a point of the total collapse of the government and the power vacuum resulting from this, which made it possible for anyone to take control, including a half-naked proletarian who turned out to be a better ruler than the numerous wealthy, well-educated and experienced members of the elite. Although Machiavelli exaggerates Michele’s inexperience as well as the breakdown of the Florentine government, he does describe a situation that would hardly have occurred in Venice. Florence was more dynamic as well as more democratic than Venice but also more unstable. A series of rebellions and changes of government took place between the formation of the Florentine Republic in the early thirteenth century and its fall in the early sixteenth century.

Florence’s rise to one of the greatest and wealthiest cities in Europe began in the second half of the thirteenth century, when Florentine merchants became collec­tors of papal taxes of ecclesiastical revenues in Europe north of the Alps. The sub­stantial surplus from this business was then invested in textile production. Wool was bought in Flanders, England and, to some extent, Spain — although the best quality wool comes from countries with a cold and wet climate. The wool was then brought to Florence where it was prepared, woven and coloured to be used as clothes for wealthy people all over Europe. The fourteenth century was a period of more luxurious dress and faster shifts in fashion than had been the case previously, which of course made textile production even more profitable. Florence also became a centre for the production of other commodities: silk, metal, arms, etc. but cloth was the most important and the guild of the cloth merchants and pro­ducers (Arte della Lana) was the most powerful of the originally seven guilds that formed the basis of the Florentine constitution.

In contrast to Venice before the fifteenth century, Florence was an inland city with some control over the surrounding countryside.³⁸ This meant that there was also a nobility with landed estates, although these nobles were often also engaged in business. The formation of a city republic dates back to the first half of the twelfth century, when consuls are mentioned for the first time. During most of the thirteenth century, the main political division was between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the adherents respectively of the pope and the emperor, both led by nobles. In 1267, the Guelphs came to power, after the defeat of the Staufen Manfred by Charles of Anjou in the previous year. In the following period, a new division emerged, between the nobles and the ‘people’, the latter dominated by great merchants. In the 1290s, strict rules forbidding feuds and barring the nobles from holding public office were introduced under the leadership of Giano della Bella, himself a noble. A new constitution was also introduced, based on the seven major guilds. The constitution underwent some revision in the following period, including participation by the fourteen lesser guilds in 1343. Most officials were elected by lots, in order to prevent particular people or factions from monopolizing power, but the sortation was preceded by scrutiny of the candidate’s qualifications. Most offices were held only for a short time without possibility of immediate re-election. It has been suggested that as much as one-third of the adult male population of the city held some office in the course of their lifetime. Informally, how­ever, the members of the mercantile elite had considerable influence.

Formally, this constitution existed until 1537, but eventually, one family, the Medici, emerged as the leaders of the republic. Cosimo di Medici gained power by a coup in 1434 and his descendants ruled the city until 1494, although formally maintaining the republican constitution. The Medici were expelled in 1494 but returned in 1512 with Spanish aid. Except for a brief republican interlude in 1527—30, they ruled the city in the following period, from 1537 as dukes. When the Medici became extinct in 1737, Florence was taken over by the Habsburgs.

A visit to the old centre of Florence gives an impression of a medieval or Renaissance city in the same way as in Venice but one with a different character. Take the political centres of the two cities: the Doge’s Palace in Venice, finished in 1419, is in late Gothic but with clear associations to the Orient. It is not fortified and has no sign of military purposes. The Palazzo Vecchio or Palazzo della Signoria in Florence is older, built around 1298—1314, also in the Gothic style, and has the character of a fortress, with high walls, small windows only in the upper stories and an enormous tower, so that it might easily be defended, although the Ciompi managed to conquer it in 1378. Most of the private palaces were changed or rebuilt in the Renaissance style in the fifteenth century but earlier, they were strongly fortified to protect the family in internal struggles.

The two cathedrals are equally different. That of Venice, San Marco, dating from the eleventh century (consecrated 1094), is built in the Byzantine style and decorated with mosaics inside, also in the Byzantine style, although dating from various periods of the Middle Ages. The cathedral of Florence was begun in 1296 and took 150 years to complete. Most of it is in the Gothic style. Its most characteristic feature is the cupola, which is enormous, the largest until then in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Its size was planned already in the fourteenth century, although nobody then knew how to construct such a large cupola; no beam would be big enough to support it during the building process. The architect Filippo Brunelleschi solved the problem, not by long beams but by arranging the stones so that they balanced until finally the whole cupola was covered. In 1436, the present cupola was in place, as the main monument of the Renaissance in art as well as in learning which at the time had its centre in Florence.

The new style in painting, sculpture and architecture was inspired by classical art and aimed at clarity and simplicity. Painting aimed at precise representation of the external world, notably through anatomically correct representations of the human body and the introduction of the central perspective which gave the illusion of three dimensions in a painting. Psychology and the representation of emotions were also important, combined with austerity in colours and use of detail. Portraits, particularly from the early fifteenth century, were inspired by Roman republican art. Politicians and intellectuals were portrayed in a straightforward, matter-of-fact way, showing precise individual detail and emphasizing republican virtue through simplicity in dress and faces expressing intelligence and determination. Finally, the new architecture expressed in the Renaissance churches of San Lorenzo (the Medici’s parish church) and Santo Spirito, combined symmetrical and harmonious forms with extreme simplicity and lack of decoration. Both were designed by Brunelleschi but not finished until after his death in 1446. The style of palaces developed at the same time emphasized the same qualities. Characteristically, when Venice became a centre of painting in the late Renaissance, the style was far more lavish, above all in Veronese and Tintoretto but also in Titian.

Common to Venice and Florence as well as a number of other towns, particu­larly Italian ones, is the greater use of art and architecture for secular purposes. Of course, there are plenty of churches, which, however, were mostly erected at the initiative of the city or some of its prominent inhabitants, but there are also a number of monumental secular buildings. In addition to the many patrician pala­ces, there are the monumental town halls, which are also to be found in the lead­ing cities of the North. They are often combined with large and well-planned squares, as in both Venice and Florence. The Italian cities also developed a political iconography. A famous early example is the Buon Governo (the Good Government) in the town hall of Siena from 1338, depicting the peace, concord and prosperity resulting from a good government and the disasters resulting from a bad one.

A considerable urbanization also took place in the rest of Europe from the twelfth century onwards as the consequence of increased population and clearing of new land and increased wealth among the landowners. The majority of the new towns were small and mostly centres of local trade. Only Paris, which was the capital of the largest kingdom in Europe, could compete in size with the largest Italian cities. Other large and important cities were London, Cologne, Bruges, Ghent and later Antwerp and further east and along the Baltic coast among others Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck, Gdansk (Danzig), Riga and Tallin (earlier Reval). The main areas for distant trade were the Low Countries, the Baltic coast and cities along the main trade routes between North and South, such as the Rhine. Most important northern cities were in the beginning governed by bishops. This was also the case with the Italian cities, but Italian bishops were weaker than their coun­terparts north of the Alps, so there the cities easily managed to gain independence, with a few exceptions, such as Rome. North of the Alps, bishops were stronger and wealthier and the cities therefore often had to fight hard for their indepen­dence. In 1074, such a struggle broke out in Cologne, one of the richest and most important cities along the Rhine, and was shortly afterwards reported by the chronicler Lampert of Hersfeld.39

Archbishop Anno of Cologne’s servants laid hold of a ship belonging to a wealthy merchant to serve the archbishop’s guest, the bishop of Münster, as transport on his journey home. This action led to a general rebellion in the city. The mob attacked the archbishop’s palace, took the archbishop himself captive, and detained him in the church of St Peter, while they plundered the palace and its chapel, not even respecting the altars and the sacred ornaments. The arch­bishop was saved from death at the last moment, being smuggled out of the church in disguise at night through a narrow passage. These events shocked the whole province, where the archbishop’s saintly life and kindness to the poor were well known. An army was quickly gathered, and already on the fourth day, the archbishop was outside the gates of the city. The burghers surrendered, and the saintly archbishop was willing to forgive them, only imposing ecclesiastical penance on them. However, some of the richest burghers secretly escaped to the king, asking him to intervene, while the rest failed to appear before the arch­bishop, even after three days of waiting. This exhausted the patience of the archbishop’s men and, without his consent, they took up arms to punish the rebels. Despite his respect for the archbishop’s clemency, Lampert is not without sympathy for this action: ‘a more serious illness demands a more serious medi­cine’. Lampert ends his account of the rebellion in Cologne by pointing to the subsequent decline of the city, and by describing the portents before the events which indicate that the city has been delivered to the Devil but been liberated thanks to the intervention of St George.

Lampert was a monk in the wealthy and aristocratic monastery of Hersfeld and sympathized with the aristocratic rebellion against the Emperor Henry IV. Actu­ally, his detailed description of the rebellion in Cologne is probably intended to show the contrast between a just rebellion, that of the Saxon nobles, and an unjust one, that of the burghers who have to respect the authority of their lord, who, in addition, is Lampert’s great hero. While modern readers would tend to sympathize with the merchant who suddenly finds his ship being requisitioned for the sake of the archbishop’s guest, to Lampert, such an action is obviously the archbishop’s right. Who are these merchants to complain when their betters require what they need for their comfort?

The archbishop of Cologne was one of the two most high-ranking and powerful prelates in Germany and the city of Cologne was the largest and wealthiest in the country. The conflict in 1074 was neither the first nor the last between the two parties. The result, however, was mainly in favour of the city, which became lar­gely independent with its own government. The archbishop was even allowed to enter the city only on special occasions. Instead, he founded his own capital in Bonn nearby, where his palace, built in the eighteenth century, is now the university.

Northern cities also differed from their Italian counterparts in not becoming centres of larger territories and generally achieving less independence. On the other hand, once they became independent or almost independent, they were governed by burghers, as the nobles here lived in the countryside, not in towns.

The relative weakness of the northern cities made it more natural for them to join each other in leagues. There may also have been a financial reason for this. The northern cities mostly traded in bulky commodities that gave little profit, which meant that they might increase prices by organizing in leagues. By con­trast, the Italians had less incentive to this because their merchandise was more costly.⁴⁰ The best-known of the leagues is the Hanseatic one, which consisted of a large number of towns and merchant communities from Novgorod in the east to Bruges and London in the west.⁴¹ The League established and eventually dominated a large trade network from Flanders and England in the west to Novgorod in the east, with links to Scandinavia in the north. In this way, its merchants could profit from transporting the widely different commodities pro­duced in the whole area to the markets. Already at this time, there was a dif­ference between products of handicraft and industry in the West, notably textiles, and raw materials and agricultural products from the East and North, grain and timber from the Baltic area and fish, butter and hides from Scandinavia. The League was loosely organized; the various towns had various forms of connection with it and they did not always stand together; they might even wage war between them. The League was not intended as a kind of state; it existed to protect the commercial interests of its members. But it was powerful enough to fight against kings and princes; one of its greatest triumphs was the victory over the Danish King Valdemar IV in the war of 1367—70.⁴²

The Hanseatic League was strongly involved in the conquest of the Baltic Area from the twelfth century onwards. The new towns founded in this area were populated by German merchants. Germans also played an important part in the territorial expansion. German farmers received land in the conquered areas and above all, German nobles created estates and principalities with the local population as serfs and labourers. Politically, the first phase of the conquest, from 1150, led to the formation of Pomerania and Mecklenburg, two of the larger German princi­palities. The next phase, from around 1200, was dominated by the German Order, whose territory covered most of the coastal area between Pomerania and Nov­gorod. This was a military order, consisting of armed monks who were supposed to fight for Christianity during the Crusades. The order was founded in the Holy Land, but moved to the Baltic area in 1230. Its power was reduced after its defeat against the Polish-Lithuanian Union at Tannenberg (Grünwald) in 1410.

Leagues of towns were common also elsewhere in the North. Cities along the Rhine, with Cologne as the most important, formed the Rhine League, and there was a union of the Flemish cities. Flanders was the most important trading area north of the Alps and included a number of important towns, in particular, Bruges and Ghent, later also Antwerp. The German emperor interfered little in the area after the thirteenth century, but the French influence was felt more strongly. The king of France claimed suzerainty over Flanders. There was frequent rivalry between the towns and the count of Flanders, who usually appealed to the king of France for aid. During the Hundred Years War, the towns mostly sided with the English, while the count supported the French.

The development of stronger states from the sixteenth century onwards led to the decline of many smaller principalities and city republics. In particular, Italy succumbed to a military revolution to which it had itself made a major contribu­tion. Of the more important city states, only Venice survived intact until 1797. The most successful cities in the early modern period, however, became united in the Dutch Republic which will be dealt with in greater detail below.