great trading center. There the partially civilized Christian knight
"spent splendidly," and the Bohemian, German, and Hunnish lords came [30]
to buy such of the luxuries of the East as they could afford. By 1100
Venice was a free City-State, the mistress of the Adriatic, and the trade
of the East with Christian Europe passed over her wharves. From the
Crusades she profited greatly, carrying knights eastward in the great
fleet she had developed, and carpets, fabrics, perfumes, spices, dyes,
drugs, silks, and precious stones on the return voyage. From Tana and
Trebizond her traders penetrated far into the interior. Her ships and
merchants "held the Golden East in fee." By 1400 she was the wealthiest
and most powerful city in Europe.

[Illustration: FIG. 60. TRADE ROUTES AND COMMERCIAL CITIES]

Genoa in time became the great rival of Venice. Marseilles also developed
a large trade in the Mediterranean and with the north. From these three
cities trade routes ran to the cities of Flanders, England, and Germany,
as is shown in the map below. By the thirteenth century, Augsburg,
Nuremburg, Magdeburg, Hamburg, Luebeck, Bremen, Antwerp, Ghent, Ypres,
Bruges, and London were developing into great commercial cities. Despite
bad roads, bad bridges, [31] bad inns, "robber knights" and bandits, the
commerce once carried on by Rome with her provinces was reviving. Great
fairs, or yearly markets, came to be held in the large interior towns, to
which merchants came from near and far to display and exchange their
wares, and, still more important, from the standpoint of advancing general
education, to exchange ideas and experiences. The "luxuries" displayed at
these markets by traveling merchants from the south--salt, pepper, spices,
sugar, drugs, dyestuffs, glass beads, glassware, table implements,
perfumes, ornaments, underwear, articles of dress, silks, velvets,
carpets, rugs--dazzled and astounded the simple townspeople of western