it seems not to have
been pressing. Imports from the Orient were nearly balanced by exports
to Syria, for which the crusading movements and the Kingdom of Jerusalem
created an abnormal demand. The rise of trade in the West was
accompanied by an expansion of the credit system centering in the
banking houses of Florence; while the supply of metals was more than
maintained by the plunder of Asiatic cities, paid over by crusaders in
return for supplies and munitions of war, or brought home by returning
princes and nobles, by priests and merchants, by Knights of St. John or
of the Temple. Between 1252 and 1284, the ducat and the florin and the
famous gold crowns of St. Louis made their appearance,--the sure sign of
an increased gold supply, rising prices, and flourishing trade.

But in 1291 the Kingdom of Jerusalem was overthrown; successful
crusading ceased, and the plunder of Syrian cities was at an end. Yet
the volume of Oriental trade was undiminished; normal exports were
insufficient to pay for imports; and from the end of the thirteenth to
the middle of the fifteenth century the drain of precious metals from
Europe was followed by the inevitable appreciation of gold. Prices fell;
many communes were bankrupt; kings, in desperate straits, debased the
coinage and despoiled the Church. It was in 1291 that Edward I forced
his "loan" from the churches; and Philip IV, in 1296 forbidding the
export of gold and silver from France, set about with unparalleled
cunning and cruelty to destroy the Templars in order to appropriate the
wealth which they had accumulated in the Holy Land.

It was in this very fourteenth century, when gold was appreciating and
prices were falling, that the immense wealth of the Orient was first
fully revealed to Europeans. All the commodities which Arab traders sold
at high prices to Venetian merchants in the Levant were now known to be
of little worth in the markets of India. In that country, all the
reports agreed, "they have every necessity of life very cheap"; and
every luxury as well--forty pounds of "excellent fresh ginger for a
Venice groat"; "three pheasants for an asper of silver"; five grains of
silver buying one of gold; three dishes, "so fine that you could not
imagine better," to be had for less than half a shilling. It was the
Arab middlemen that made the difference: the enemies of Christendom,
intrenched in Jerusalem and Egypt, guarded the easy highways to the East
and took rich toll of a