ight result in the partial
destruction at least of this once prosperous city. And indeed, the
inhabitants of Frankfort could plead some excuse for their
boisterousness. Temporarily, at any rate, all business was at a
standstill. The skillful mechanics of the town had long been out of
work, and now to the ranks of the unemployed were added, from time to
time, clerks and such-like clerical people, expert accountants,
persuasive salesmen, and small shopkeepers, for no one now possessed the
money to buy more than the bare necessities of life. Yet the warehouses
of Frankfort were full to overflowing, with every kind of store that
might have supplied the needs of the people, and to the unlearned man it
seemed unjust that he and his family should starve while granaries were
packed with the agricultural produce of the South, and huge warehouses
were glutted with enough cloth from Frankfort and the surrounding
districts to clothe ten times the number of tatterdemalions who clamored
through the streets.

The wrath of the people was concentrated against one man, and he the
highest in the land; to blame, of course, in a secondary degree, but not
the one primarily at fault for this deplorable state of things. The
Emperor, always indolent from the time he came to the throne, had grown
old and crabbed and fat, caring for nothing but his flagon of wine that
stood continually at his elbow. Laxity of rule in the beginning allowed
his nobles to get the upper hand, and now it would require a civil war
to bring them into subjection again. They, sitting snug in their
strongholds, with plenty of wine in their cellars and corn in their
bins, cared nothing for the troubles of the city. Indeed, those who
inhabited either bank of the Rhine, watching from their elevated castles
the main avenue of traffic between Frankfort and Cologne, her chief
market, had throughout that long reign severely taxed the merchants
conveying goods downstream. During the last five years, their exactions
became so piratical that finally they killed the goose that laid the
golden eggs, so now the Rhine was without a boat, and Frankfort without
a buyer.

For too long Frankfort had looked to the Emperor, whose business it was
to keep order in his domain, and when at last the merchants, combining
to help themselves, made an effort towards freedom, it was too late. The
result of their combination was a flotilla of nearly a hundred boats,
which, gathering at Frankfort and M