The commerce in silk bore doubly hard upon Europe, both on account of the value of the material and of the great use which was made of it. Persia was the emporium, and had the monopoly of this merchandise. The Emperor Justinian I., who reigned at Constantinople from A.D. 527 to 565, tried all the means within his power of freeing his States from this ruinous tyranny, when a circumstance occurred, very fortunately for the national commerce, which brought about the introduction into Europe of sericulture, or the cultivation of silk.
Two monks of the order of St. Basil, in their ardour for the propagation of the faith, had pushed forwards into China. There they had been initiated into the operations which furnished the fabric so highly prized. On their return to Constantinople, and hearing of the project that Justinian entertained of depriving the Persians of the monopoly in silk, the two monks proposed to the Emperor to enrich his state by introducing the art of fabricating this material. The proposition was greedily accepted, and the two monks returned again to China, with the object of procuring the eggs of the insect. Having arrived at the end of their journey, they succeeded in getting possession of a quantity of silkworms' eggs. They hid them between the knots of their sticks, and started back to their native country, without being once interfered with. Two years afterwards they re-entered Constantinople with their precious booty. [56] The larva were fed on mulberry leaves. Immediately afterwards began the rearing of the worms and the preparation of the silk, according to the instructions given by these courageous travellers. The first broods succeeded perfectly, and so plantations of mulberry trees were seen to multiply and spread through the whole extent of the Eastern Empire. It was, above all, in Southern Greece that this branch of industry assumed an immense importance. It was then the Pelopon nesus lost its old name, and was called the Morea, from the Latin name for "mulberry," morus. [57]
Constantinople and Greece, during centuries, furnished the whole of Europe with silkworms. This diffusion, however, was effected very slowly. The Greeks attached great importance to retaining the monopoly, and the emperor Justinian had caused to be established at Constantinople itself silk manufactories, where the most skilful artificers of Asia, who were forbidden to reveal the various processes to strangers, worked.
Towards the beginning of the eighth century the Arabs introduced the silkworm into Spain. But this industry remained confined within narrow limits. It was in fact not till after the twelfth century that sericulture began to spread throughout Europe. Roger, King of the Two Sicilies, possessing a navy that commanded the Mediterranean, employed it chiefly in making excursions and conquests. He ravaged Greece, and, not satisfied with the booty he carried away from that unfortunate country, wished still further to deprive them, for the good of his own kingdom, of the silk monopoly, the source of their riches. Roger carried away into Sicily and Naples a great number of prisoners, amongst whom were some weavers and men who had devoted themselves to the rearing of silkworms. In 1169 he established these workmen in houses adjoining his own palace at Palermo. There they dyed the silk of different colours, and mixed it with gold, pearls, and precious stones.
From Sicily the art of preparing silk spread over the rest of Italy. In 1204 the workers in silk constituted themselves into a syndicate at Florence. It is not, however, till 1423—more than two hundred years after the introduction of this branch of industry into Italy—that we find the first mention of the cultivation of the mulberry tree in Tuscany. In 1440 each Tuscan peasant was forced to plant at least five mulberry trees on the land he cultivated. In 1474 the commerce in silk fabrics with all parts of the world had become extremely prosperous at Florence. In 1314 the Venetian manufactures began to assume much importance. Three thousand workers in silk were then established in Venice.
Without dwelling longer on the propagation of the silk trade in Italy, let us pass on to its establishment in France. It was in 1340 that some French gentlemen, who had stayed some time in Naples, planted in Avignon the first mulberry trees. [58] According to Olivier de Serres, it was not introduced till much later into Dauphiné. It was not introduced into Alan, near Montelimart, till 1495, by the Seigneur Guyape de Saint-Aubain. [59] Louis XI. made great efforts to develop the silk trade in France, by inviting over Italian workmen; and they began under his reign to fabricate silks in Touraine and Lyons. Francis I. greatly developed the trade of Lyons. In 1554, under Henry II., the masters and men employed in the manufacture of gold, silver, and silk in Lyons were twelve thousand in number. Under Henry II. were planted the mulberry trees of Bourdezière, Tours, Chenonceaux, Toulouse, and Moulins. These plantations, however, were of very small extent. They were not the result of a general and truly popular effort; moreover, civil war came very soon, and turned men's minds away from the isolated attempts of some few private individuals. Sericulture, in fact, did not assume any great importance in France till the reign of Henry IV.
This king saw with grief considerable sums of money leaving France each year for the purchase of raw silk or of silk stuffs. Two men marvellously furthered his project of encouraging the silk trade. One of these men was Barthelemy Laffemas, called Beausemblant. For a long time he had been writing memoir upon memoir, to demonstrate the advantages to be derived from the plantation of the mulberry tree in France; and he tells us that silkworms were then raised with success at Nantes, at Poissy, and even at Paris. The second supporter whom Henry IV. found in the propagation of sericulture was a man distinguished in a very different way from that of M. Laffemas. This was Olivier de Serres, the author of the "Théâtre de l'Agriculture;" he whom Henry IV. called his lord and master in agriculture. Olivier de Serres was the first among his countrymen who had published instructions regarding the cultivation of mulberry trees and the rearing of silkworms. Henry IV., who had noticed his writings, called him to Paris; and, on his solicitation, caused twenty thousand mulberry trees and a great quantity of silkworms' eggs, of which a distribution was made over the whole of France, to be imported from Italy. From that moment, sericulture was propagated rapidly in the Cévennes, in Provence, in Languedoc, in Touraine, and many other provinces. Mulberry trees were planted at Fontainebleau, in the royal park of Tournelles, and even in the Tuileries, where an Italian lady, named Julle, reared silkworms for Henry IV.
Notwithstanding this great impulse, sericulture dwindled away on the death of that king. It received a fresh impulse under Colbert, the great minister, who succeeded in creating the spirit of commerce and trade in France. New manufactories were established, and plantations of mulberry trees formed in many of the provinces. All this progress was suddenly brought to a standstill by the iniquitous revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which deprived France of her leading commercial men. Driven from their own country, the Protestant families of the Cévennes established abroad silk manufactories, the fabrics of which rivalled those of French production.
In the eighteenth century the intendants of the provinces tried, but with very slight success, to give a fresh impetus to sericulture in France. The Abbé Boissier de Sauvages published, about 1760, some works, which prove him to have been a patient observer, an accurate reasoner, and a clever rearer of silkworms. Boissier de Sauvages is the father of modern silk-culture. During the first Revolution, men's minds were occupied with graver subjects than the cultivation of the mulberry tree. But, on the return of peace, they got to work again on all sides. In 1808, the minister Chaptal estimated the weight of the cocoon harvest at between five or six thousand kilogrammes; whilst the invention of the Jacquard loom gave an immense impulse to the weaving of silk stuffs. Amongst those who introduced and benefited the art of sericulture, we must not forget Dandolo. Dandolo, who was born at Venice in 1758, and died in 1819, was the first who, at the beginning of this century, applied himself seriously to the amelioration of the processes employed in the cultivation of silk. He endeavoured to regulate the temperature, to introduce more order into the distribution of the food to the worms, to have more spacious premises, and to have these properly ventilated.
Now we are on this subject, we must mention the names of those who at the present day have rendered important services to sericulture—such as M. Camille Beauvais, who raised silkworm rearing from the inactivity into which it had been plunged; M. Eugène Robert, who founded in the south of France the first successful silkworm nursery; M. Guérin-Méneville, who has devoted his life to the study of the same question, and to whom Europe owes the introduction and the acclimatisation of some species which will render us, perhaps, one day very great services; and lastly, M. Robinet, who has elucidated several practical questions in the art of sericulture. In bringing to a close this rapid historical epitome, we will state that France consumes annually 30,000 kilogrammes of silkworms' eggs, each kilogramme being at the present time worth from 300 to 500 francs, and even more. The value of manufactured silks represents annually about 8,000,000 francs; and we find by official statistics that France exported in 1863 silk stuffs to the value of 384,000,000 francs. This immense trade shows how much silk is now-a-days everywhere appreciated; in those numerous tissues called taffeta, satin, and velvet, each of which seems to have a charm—a peculiar attraction. The consistency of the stuff, the smoothness, the softness of surface, the manner in which silk receives colours, the brightness, fineness, power of reflecting, the rustling, the light or heavy folds,—all these are beauty, elegance, and luxury, in whatever way these words are understood.