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 THE MUNICIPAL ORGANIZATION time of disturbance unfavourable to trade. The peace of Torun in 1466 ends the most glorious period of Cracow commerce. The leading part in Poland's commerce was now taken by the Prussian towns, Danzig above all.

The victorious progress of the Ottoman power, manifested in the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, cuts off all connection with the East. There is a revival of the Cracow market in the fifteenth century, as it enters into new commercial relations with the Franconian merchants, those of Nuremberg taking the part of mediators between the East and the West. The discovery of America in 1492 brings about a thorough revolution in the world's commerce; colonial produce enters on the market, and the modern development of prices sets in. Polish commercial policy did not prove sagacious enough to meet these new conditions, and thus led to the decline of commerce and of the general prosperity of the towns.