t duties primarily to his guild, or immediate
social group, and through this to the larger social group which
constituted the civic society. Consequently, every townsman felt a
kind of _esprit de corps_ with his fellow-citizens, akin to that, say,
which is alleged of the soldiers of the old French "foreign legion"
who, being brothers-in-arms, were brothers also in all other
relations. But if every citizen owed duty and allegiance to the town
in its corporate capacity, the town no less owed protection and
assistance, in every department of life, to its individual members.

As in ancient Rome in its earlier history, and as in all other early
urban communities, agriculture necessarily played a considerable part
in the life of most mediaeval towns. Like the villages, they possessed
each its own mark, with its common fields, pastures, and woods. These
were demarcated by various landmarks, crosses, holy images, etc.; and
"the bounds" were beaten every year. The wealthier citizens usually
possessed gardens and orchards within the town walls, while each
inhabitant had his share in the communal holding without. The use of
this latter was regulated by the Rath or Council. In fact, the town
life of the Middle Ages was not by any means so sharply differentiated
from rural life as is implied in our modern idea of a town. Even in
the larger commercial towns, such as Frankfurt, Nuernberg, or Augsburg,
it was common to keep cows, pigs, and sheep, and, as a matter of
course, fowls and geese, in large numbers within the precincts of the
town itself. In Frankfurt in 1481 the pigsties in the town had become
such a nuisance that the Rath had to forbid them _in the front_ of the
houses by a formal decree. In Ulm there was a regulation of the
bakers' guild to the effect that no single member should keep more
than twenty-four pigs, and that cows should be confined to their
stalls at night. In Nuernberg in 1475 again, the Rath had to interfere
with the intolerable nuisance of pigs and other farm-yard stock
running about loose in the streets. Even in a town like Muenchen we are
informed that agriculture formed one of the staple occupations of the
inhabitants, while in almost every city the gardeners' or the
wine-growers' guild appears as one of the largest and most
influential.

It is evident that such conditions of life would be impossible with
town-populations even approaching only distantly those of to-day; and,
in fact, when we come to inq