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A History of Feudalism, British and Continental
A History of Feudalism British and Continental Author:Andrew Bell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3ftE-FOUNDATION OF CITIES AND TOWNS AS FEUDAL BOROUGHS. The earliest great urban communities recreated under feudal sway, were those of Italy. The towns of that peninsula were previously... more » much more numerous than in Gaul, Britain, or Spain; and the Roman municipal system there survived to a great extent. The Italian lands, too, had been mostly cleared and cultivated; and that which made them more valuable in themselves, actually diminished their attractions to barbarians, who preferred forests and wildernesses stocked with the game they loved to pursue, and preferred to subsist upon. The preponderance of sway, instead of passing to the Italian country districts, as in Germany and Gaul, at first inclined to, and then settled in the towns. Barbarian nobles and men of the superior caste, gradually throwing off their feudal habits, found their wealth augmented, and their consequence increased, in becoming chief burgesses of towns. At length they and their retainers swelling town populations, the conquerors and the conquered commingling within their walls, had no rural feudal master near the gates to contend with; an advantage of vast consequence, long unknown elsewhere. In some cases, as those of Florence, Venice, Genoa, and c., the leading citizens, whose prescriptive privileges had a feudal origin at first, became the chiefs of so-called trading republics, but which were really commercial aristocracies. So potent did the oligarchy of Venice become, though possessed of scarcely any territory at all, that it was able to make head against the whole power of several feudal monarchs and Roman pontiffs.* The League of Cambray, in 1508, manifested the truth of the above observation. This singular event was a confederacy which was instigated by the Pope Julius II., and which gained the concurrence of the Emperor Max...« less