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Rh to secure their early and rapid development, but the main cause of their prosperity was their trade with the East, and the enormous impulse given to this commerce by the Crusades.

With wealth came power, and all the chief Italian cities became

distinct, self-governing states, with just a nominal dependence upon the pope or the emperor. Towards the close of the thirteenth century, Northern and Central Italy was divided among about two hundred contentious little city-republics. Italy had become another Greece.