an Name of St.
Salvador.--From a Stamp engraved on Copper by Th. de Bry, in the
Collection of "Grands Voyages," in folio, 1590.]

At a very early period, and especially when the Jews had been absolutely
expelled, the advantage of exclusively trading with and securing the rich
profits from France had attracted the Italians, who were frequently only
Jews in disguise, concealing themselves as to their character under the
generic name of Lombards. It was under this name that the French kings
gave them on different occasions various privileges, when they frequented
the fairs of Champagne and came to establish themselves in the inland and
seaport towns. These Italians constituted the great corporation of
money-changers in Paris, and hoarded in their coffers all the coin of the
kingdom, and in this way caused a perpetual variation in the value of
money, by which they themselves benefited.

In the sixteenth century the wars of Italy rather changed matters, and we
find royal and important concessions increasing in favour of Castilians
and other Spaniards, whom the people maliciously called _negroes_, and who
had emigrated in order to engage in commerce and manufactures in
Saintonge, Normandy, Burgundy, Agenois, and Languedoc.

About the time of Louis XI., the French, becoming more alive to their true
interests, began to manage their own affairs, following the suggestions
and advice of the King, whose democratic instincts prompted him to
encourage and favour the bourgeois. This result was also attributable to
the state of peace and security which then began to exist in the kingdom,
impoverished and distracted as it had been by a hundred years of domestic
and foreign warfare.

From 1365 to 1382 factories and warehouses were founded by Norman
navigators on the western coast of Africa, in Senegal and Guinea. Numerous
fleets of merchantmen, of great size for those days, were employed in
transporting cloth, grain of all kinds, knives, brandy, salt, and other
merchandise, which were bartered for leather, ivory, gum, amber, and gold
dust. Considerable profits were realised by the shipowners and merchants,
who, like Jacques Coeur, employed ships for the purpose of carrying on
these large and lucrative commercial operations. These facts sufficiently
testify the condition of France at this period, and prove that this, like
other branches of human industry, was arrested in its expansion by the
political troubles which followed in the fou