were
then used to carry the wheat of northern and central Russia to southern
and western Europe. On the return voyage they brought spices and silks
and carpets and Oriental rugs from Venice and Genoa to Bruges and
Hamburg and Bremen.

Out of such simple beginnings there developed an important system of
international trade which reached from the manufacturing cities of
Bruges and Ghent (where the almighty guilds fought pitched battles with
the kings of France and England and established a labour tyranny which
completely ruined both the employers and the workmen) to the Republic
of Novgorod in northern Russia, which was a mighty city until Tsar Ivan,
who distrusted all merchants, took the town and killed sixty thousand
people in less than a month's time and reduced the survivors to beggary.

That they might protect themselves against pirates and excessive
tolls and annoying legislation, the merchants of the north founded a
protective league which was called the "Hansa." The Hansa, which had
its headquarters in Lubeck, was a voluntary association of more than
one hundred cities. The association maintained a navy of its own which
patrolled the seas and fought and defeated the Kings of England and
Denmark when they dared to interfere with the rights and the privileges
of the mighty Hanseatic merchants.

I wish that I had more space to tell you some of the wonderful stories
of this strange commerce which was carried on across the high mountains
and across the deep seas amidst such dangers that every voyage became a
glorious adventure. But it would take several volumes and it cannot be
done here.

Besides, I hope that I have told you enough about the Middle Ages to
make you curious to read more in the excellent books of which I shall
give you a list at the end of this volume.

The Middle Ages, as I have tried to show you, had been a period of very
slow progress. The people who were in power believed that "progress"
was a very undesirable invention of the Evil One and ought to be
discouraged, and as they hap-pened to occupy the seats of the mighty, it
was easy to enforce their will upon the patient serfs and the illiterate
knights. Here and there a few brave souls sometimes ventured forth
into the forbidden region of science, but they fared badly and were
considered lucky when they escaped with their lives and a jail sentence
of twenty years.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the flood of international
commerce s