Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/416

 366 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE when he took any important action affecting Flanders as a whole. Before the twelfth century was over, the lower classes in Ghent had expressed their discontent with the rule of the richer citizens by uprisings. Toward the close of the thirteenth century, out of 9300 burghers listed in Bruges, 8000 were artisans who had little share in the government. Before 1100 the Flemings had a fair of their own at Thu- rout, and went beyond their borders as far as Coblenz on Foreign t ^ ie R mne to secure wool for their cloth manu- tradeof factures. Early in the twelfth century Italians were found in Ypres, and by the close of that century a flourishing trade went on with England, France, Spain, and Portugal. In the case of the three last-named countries the trade chiefly followed land routes. The most frequented path led from Bruges by old Roman roads via Tournai, Douai, and Arras to Bapaume. This town, to-day an insignificant little place, was then the chief center for the collection of customs duties between Flanders and the rest of France, owing to its situation at the crossing of two ancient Roman roads from Arras to Rheims and from Cambrai to Amiens. From Bapaume the route proceeded through Peronne, Roye, Compiegne, Paris, Orleans, where Joan of Arc later saved France, Tours, with its shrine of St. Martin, Poitiers, where the oldest Christian church in France stands, Limoges, famous since the twelfth century for its enamels, Bordeaux, and Bayonne to Pampeluna, the capital of Navarre. There two routes branched off to Burgos and Lisbon and to Barcelona and Valencia, respec- tively. This trade developed from pilgrimages to the shrine of St. James at Compostella in northern Spain, and as a result of the part taken by the Flemish in expeditions of 1 147 and 1 1 89 to aid the Portuguese and Castilians against the Moslems of Spain. The thirteenth century saw com- merce by sea between Flanders and Spain and southwestern France, and Spanish merchants were then permanently established in some of the towns of the Low Countries. There was free trade between the northern part of Germany and the Flemish cities, with the result that the products of