Wealth of Flanders, and extent of its manufactures and commerce.
Some idea may be formed of the importance of Flanders and the Low Countries, and how they then surpassed all the other nations of northern Europe in wealth and commercial enterprise, from the fact that Ghent had no less than forty thousand looms constantly at work in the manufacture of cotton and woollen cloths. She likewise supplied in great abundance, and of superior quality, serges, fustians, and tapestries. Courtray possessed, in the sixteenth century, six thousand weavers’ looms; Ypres, four thousand, which produced very fine cloths, especially those of the scarlet colour so frequently specified in the tariffs of the countries of the South and East; while the Cloth Hall of that place was considered one of the most beautiful edifices of all Flanders. Oudenarde supplied tapestries which rivalled those of Arras: Tournay was famed for a peculiar description of serges. Louvain, though somewhat injured by the growth of other places, had employed in the fourteenth century four thousand looms; Mechlin, three thousand four hundred; and Brussels was, even at that early period, renowned for its woollen fabrics.[574]
Middleburgh, in Zealand, had then attracted to its market the merchants of Italy, Spain, and Portugal, who trafficked in its manufactures as well as in the productions generally of the country. Haarlem wove in its looms an extraordinary quantity of fine cloth and velvets much in request by the wealthy and prosperous Italian republics. The Low Countries received in return from Venice, spices, drugs, perfumes, cotton-prints, and silk stuffs. Genoa, Florence, Ancona, and Bologna, despatched also to Holland their silks, cloths of gold and silver, corselets, pearls, cotton, silk twist, alum, oils, and other articles of manufacture and produce. France sent to her ports the fine cloths of Paris and of Rouen, the common velvets of Tours, and the linen yarns of Lyons, besides wines in great abundance.
Special privileges to her merchants.
About this period the merchants of Brabant, Flanders, Zealand, and Holland, obtained from the king of France the privilege of establishing agencies in her chief commercial cities. Spain was likewise then largely engaged in over-sea commerce, and competed with the merchants of France and Italy in importing to the North sugar, cotton, dye-woods, and other articles of foreign growth; but it appears that they were so much molested by pirates, especially by the English, that in 1340 the cities of Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges, were obliged to seek and obtain from Edward III. a safe conduct[575] for the merchant shipping of Catalonia, Castille, and Majorca. In spite, however, of the king’s protection, so daring and regardless of all law were these marauders, that a few years afterwards two vessels laden with valuable cargoes, and sent by the merchants of Barcelona and Valencia for Flanders, were captured by pirates from Bayonne, and carried into an English port.[576]
Progress of the Hanseatic League, and its system of business.
The Hanseatic League having now become by far the most important commercial association in Europe, its merchants entered with zeal into the rich and prosperous trade which made Flanders and the Low Countries so conspicuous in the annals of the commercial history of the period. More than seventy cities and towns were associated with the League. Its chief agencies, firmly established at Bruges in Flanders, at Bergen in Norway, and at Novgorod in Russia, entirely monopolized for many years the trade of these countries. Its agents and factors, all of whom were mercantile men, were guided by rules and instructions emanating from head-quarters at Lubeck, and from these they had no power to deviate unless under extraordinary circumstances. They were not permitted to have any common interest with strangers, or to trust their goods on board any other merchant ships than those belonging to the places with which the association was in league. Wholly occupied in extending their own privileges and in securing for themselves the business of any place where they had established themselves, they soon became obnoxious to their rivals, and their counting-houses were frequently exposed to popular fury. When unable to obtain redress for the outrages thus committed against it, the League closed its warehouses, and its members withdrew from the place. They could inflict no more severe punishment for the wrongs they had sustained; indeed, the withdrawal of their trade was often considered so great a calamity to the inhabitants, that large concessions were made and new privileges granted to induce their return. More than once the League transferred their quarters from Bruges to Dordrecht in Holland, and, on each occasion, obtained fresh grants before they agreed to resume business in the former city.
Its power too frequently abused.
But the League was unable to obtain at Bruges the power and influence it too frequently exercised at other places; for it had there to contend with men of business habits and of considerable wealth, whose firms had long conducted business with distant countries, and who held large stocks of the same description of merchandise from which the League itself derived its chief profits. Moreover, the Flemings of Bruges imported in their own ships, or in those of the nations with whom they were in direct correspondence, the products of the East, the manufactures of Italy, and the wines of the South. At other places, however, and especially in the North, where the League had comparatively few competitors and none whom it could not crush when necessary, it exercised, at times, an overbearing dominion. Arrogant and despotic, it even claimed the right of having submitted for its sanction the question of the succession of the Danish princes to the throne. At Bergen it persecuted with inveterate rancour any foreigner who attempted to oppose it in trade; and, at Novgorod, it behaved in such a manner as more than once to arouse the severe displeasure of the Russian government. Nor did it hesitate, when it suited its purpose, to carry on maritime wars, frequently exercising the power of an European sovereign; and more than one potentate of the North experienced the terrible ravages caused by the fleets of this powerful and haughty commercial association.[577]