and drunkenness. The predisposition to sickness and
death that flowed from such habits of life, manifested itself strongly
in the numerous pest-like diseases that raged during the Middle Ages. In
the interval between 1326 to 1400, there were thirty-two; from 1400 to
1500, forty-one; and from 1500 to 1600, thirty years of pestilence.[43]

Swarms of women roamed along the highways as jugglers, singers and
players in the company of strolling students and clericals; they flooded
the fairs and markets; they were to be found wherever large crowds
gathered, or festivals were celebrated. In the regiments of
foot-soldiers they constituted separate divisions, with their own
sergeants. There, and quite in keeping with the guild character of the
age, they were assigned to different duties, according to looks and age;
and, under severe penalties, were not allowed to prostitute themselves
to any man outside of their own branch. In the camps, they had to fetch
hay, straw and wood; fill up trenches and ponds; and attend to the
cleaning of the place along with the baggage lads. In sieges, they had
to fill up the ditches with brushwood, lumber and faggots in order to
help the storming of the place. They assisted in placing the field
pieces in position; and when these stuck in the bottomless roads, they
had to give a hand in pulling them out again.[44]

In order to counteract somewhat the misery of this crowd of helpless
women, so-called "Bettinen houses" were instituted in many cities, and
placed under municipal supervision. Sheltered in these establishments,
the women were held to the observance of a decent life. But neither
these establishments, nor the numerous nunneries, were able to receive
all that applied for succor.

The difficulties in the way of marriage; the tours undertaken by
Princes, and by temporal and spiritual magnates, who with their retinues
of knights and bondmen, visited the cities; even the male youth of the
cities themselves, the married men not excluded, who, buoyant with life
and unaffected by scruples, sought change in pleasures;--all this
produced as early as in the Middle Ages the demand for prostitution. As
every trade was in those days organized and regulated, and could not
exist without a guild, it so was with prostitution also. In all large
cities there were "houses of women"--municipal, prince or Church
regalities--the net profits of which flowed into the corresponding
treasuries. The women in these ho