Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

arts under the mediaeval guild system is the best proof that the system was no hindrance to individual initiative.^ The fact is, that the mediaeval guild, like the mediaeval parish, "street," or "quarter," was not a body of citizens, placed under the control of State function- aries ; it was a union of all men connected with a given trade : jurate buyers of raw produce, sellers of manufactured goods, and artisans — masters, " com- paynes," and apprentices. For the inner organization of the trade its assembly was sovereign, so long as it did not hamper the other guilds, in which case the matter was brought before the guild of the guilds — the city. But there was in it something more than that. It had its own self-jurisdiction, its own military force, its own general assemblies, its own traditions of strug- gles, glory, and independence, its own relations with other guilds of the same trade in other cities : it had, in a word, a full organic life which could only result from the integrality of the vital functions. When the town was called to arms, the guild appeared as a separate company (Schaar), armed with its own arms (or its own guns, lovingly decorated by the guild, at a subsequent epoch), under its own self-elected com- manders. It was, in a word, as independent a unit of the federation as the republic of Uri or Geneva was fifty years ago in the Swiss Confederation. So that,

1 Adam Smith and his contemporaries knew well what they were condemning when they wrote against the State interference in trade and the trade monopolies of State creation. Unhappily, their fol- lowers, with their hopeless superficiality, flung mediaeval guilds and State interference into the same sack, making no distinction between a Versailles edict and a guild ordinance. It hardly need be said that the economists who have seriously studied the subject, like Schon- berg (the editor of the well-known course of Political Economy), never fell into such an error. But, till lately, diffuse discussions of the above type went on for economical "science."

to compare it with a modern trade union, divested of all attributes of State sovereignty, and reduced to a couple of functions of secondary importance, is as unreasonable as to compare Florence or Brugge with a French commune vegetating under the Code Napoleon, or with a Russian town placed under Catherine the Second's municipal law. Both have elected mayors, and the latter has also its craft cor- porations ; but the difference is — all the difference that exists between Florence and Fontenay-les-Oies or Tsarevokokshaisk, or between a Venetian doge and a modern mayor who lifts his hat before the sous-prife( s clerk.

The mediaeval guilds were capable of maintaining their independence ; and, later on, especially in the fourteenth century, when, in consequence of several causes which shall presently be indicated, the old municipal life underwent a. deep modification, the younger crafts proved strong enough to conquer their due share in the management of the city affairs. The masses, organized in " minor " arts, rose to wrest the power out of the hands of a growing oligarchy, and mostly succeeded in this task, opening again a new era of prosperity. True, that in some cities the up- rising was crushed in blood, and mass decapitations of workers followed, as was the case in Paris in 1306, and in Cologne in 1371. In such cases the city's liberties rapidly fell into decay, and the city was gradually subdued by the central authority. But the majority of the towns had preserved enough of vitality to come out of the turmoil with a new life and vigour.^ A new

^ In Florence the seven minor arts made their revolution in 1270- 82, and its results are fully described by Perrens {Histoire de Florence, Paris, 1877, 3 vols.), and especially by Gino Capponi (Storia della period of rejuvenescence was their reward. New life was infused, and it found its expression in splendid architectural monuments, in a new period of prosperity, in a sudden progress of technics and invention, and in a new intellectual movement leading to the Renaissance and to the Reformation.

The life of a mediaeval city was a succession of hard battles to conquer liberty and to maintain it. True, that a strong and tenacious race of burghers had developed during those fierce contests ; true, that love and worship of the mother city had been bred by these struggles, and that the grand things achieved by the mediaeval communes were a direct outcome of that love. But the sacrifices which the communes had to sustain in the battle for freedom were, nevertheless, cruel, and left deep traces of division on their inner life as well. Very few cities had succeeded, under a concurrence of favourable circumstances, in obtaining

repubbtica di Mrenze, zda edizione, 1876,!. 58-80; translated into German). In Lyons, on the contrary, where the movement of the minor crafts took place in 1402, the latter were defeated and lost the right of themselves nominating their own judges. The two parties came apparently to a compromise. In Rostock the same movement took place in 1313 ; in Ziirich in 1336; in Bern in 1363 ; in Braun- schweig in 1374, and next year in Hamburg ; in Liibeck in 1376-84; and so on. See Schmoller's Strassburg zur Z^it der Zunftkdmpfe and Strassbur^s Bliithe ; Brentano's Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1871-72 ; Eb. Bsm's Merchant and Craft Guilds, Aberdeen, 1887, pp. 26-47, 75) etc. As to Mr. Gross's opinion relative to the same struggles in England, see Mrs. Green's remarks in her Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, ii. 190-217 ; also the chapter on the Labour Question, and, in fact, the whole of this extremely interesting volume. Brentano's views on the crafts' struggles, expressed especially in §§ iii. and iv. of his essay " On the History and Development of Guilds," in Toulmin Smith's English Guilds, remain classical for the subject, and may be said to have been again and again confirmed by subsequent research.

liberty at one stroke, and these few mostly lost it equally easily ; while the great number had to fight fifty or a hundred years in succession, often more, before their rights to free life had been recognized, and another hundred years to found their liberty on a firm basis — the twelfth century charters thus being but one of the stepping-stones to freedom.^ In reality, the mediaeval city was a fortified oasis amidst a country plunged into feudal submission, and it had to make room for itself by the force of its arms. In con- sequence of the causes briefly alluded to in the pre- ceding chapter, each village community had gradually fallen under the yoke of some lay or clerical lord. His house had grown to be a castle, and his brothers-in- arms were now the scum of adventurers, always ready to plunder the peasants. In addition to three days a week which the peasants had to work for the lord, they had also to bear all sorts of exactions for the right to sow and to crop, to be gay or sad, to live, to marry, or to die. And, worst of all, they were continually plundered by the armed robbers of some neighbouring lord, who chose to consider them as their master's kin, and to take upon them, and upon their cattle and crops, the revenge for a feud he was fighting against their owner. Every meadow, every field, every river, and road around the city, and every man upon the land was under some lord.

The hatred of the burghers towards the feudal barons has found a most characteristic expression in 1 To give but one example — Cambrai made its first revolution in 907, and, after three or four more revolts, it obtained its charter in 1076. This charter was repealed twice (1107 and 1138), and twice obtained again (in 1127 and 1180). Total, 223 years of struggles before conquering the right to independence. Lyons — from 1195 to the wording of the different charters which they compelled them to sign. Heinrich V. is made to sign in the charter granted to Speier in 1 1 1 1 , that he frees the burghers from " the horrible and execrable law of mortmain, through which the town has been sunk into deepest poverty" (von dem scheusslichen und nichtswurdigen Gesetze, welckes gemein Budel genannt wird, Kallsen, i. 307). The coutume of Bayonne, written about 1273, contains such passages as these : " The people is anterior to the lords. It is the people, more numerous than all others, who, desirous of peace, has made the lords for bridling and knocking down the powerful ones," and so on (Giry, Etablissements de Rouen, i. 117, quoted by Luchaire, p. 24). A charter submitted for King Robert's signature is equally characteristic. He is made to say in it : "I shall rob no oxen nor other animals. I shall seize no merchants, nor take their moneys, nor impose ransom. From Lady Day to the All Saints' Day I shall seize no horse, nor mare, nor foals, in the meadows. I shall not burn the mills, nor rob the flour. ... I shall offer no protection to thieves," etc. (Pfister has published that document, reproduced by Luchaire). The charter "granted " by the Besan^on Archbishop Hugues, in which he has been compelled to enumerate all the mischiefs due to his mortmain rights, is equally characteristic.^ And so on.

Freedom could not be maintained in such surround- ings, and the cities were compelled to carry on the war outside their walls. The burghers sent out emissaries to lead revolt in the villages ; they received villages 1 See Tuetey, "Etude sur le droit municipal ... en Franche- Comte," in Mimoires de la Socitt'e d"emulation de Montbeliard, 2° sdrie, ii. 129 se^. into their corporations, and they waged direct war against the nobles. It Italy, where the land was thickly sprinkled with feudal castles, the war assumed heroic proportions, and was fought with a stern acrimony on both sides. Florence sustained for seventy-seven years a succession of bloody wars, in order to free its contado from the nobles ; but when the conquest had been accomplished (in 1181) all had to begin anew. The nobles rallied ; they constituted their own leagues in opposition to the leagues of the towns, and, receiving fresh support from either the Emperor or the Pope, they made the war last for another 130 years. The same took place in Rome, in Lombardy, all over Italy.

Prodigies of valour, audacity, and tenaciousness were displayed by the citizens in these wars. But the bows and the hatchets of the arts and crafts had not always the upper hand in their encounters with the armour-clad knights, and many castles withstood the ingenious siege-machinery and the perseverance of the citizens. Some cities, like Florence, Bologna, and many towns in France, Germany, and Bohemia, suc- ceeded in emancipating the surrounding villages, and they were rewarded for their efforts by an extraordinary prosperity and tranquillity. But even here, and still more in the less strong or less impulsive towns, the merchants and artisans, exhausted by war, and mis- understanding their own interests, bargained over the peasants' heads. They compelled the lord to swear allegiance to the city ; his country castle was dis- mantled, and he agreed to build a house and to reside in the city, of which he became a co-burgher (coin-bourgeois, con-cittadino) ; but he maintained in return most of his rights upon the peasants, who only

won a partial relief from their burdens. The burgher could not understand that equal rights of citizenship might be granted to the peasant upon whose food supplies he had to rely, and a deep rent was traced between town and village. In some cases the peasants simply changed owners, the city buying out the barons' rights and selling them in shares to her own citizens.^ Serfdom was maintained, and only much later on, towards the end of the thirteenth century, it was the craft revolution which undertook to put an end to it, and abolished personal servitude, but dispossessed at the same time the serfs of the land.^ It hardly need be added that the fatal results of such policy were soon felt by the cities themselves ; the country became the city's enemy.

The war against the castles had another bad effect. It involved the cities in a long succession of mutual wars, which have given origin to the theory, till lately in vogue, namely, that the towns lost their independence through their own jealousies and mutual fights. The imperialist historians have especially supported this theory, which, however, is very much undermined now by modern research. It is certain that in Italy cities fought each other with a stubborn animosity, but nowhere else did such contests attain the same proportions ; and in Italy itself the city wars,

1 This seems to have been often the case in Italy. In Switzerland, Bern bought even the towns of Thun and Burgdorf. 2 Such was, at least, the case in the cities of Tuscany (Florence, Lucca, Sienna, Bologna, etc.), for which the relations between city and peasants are best known. (Luchitzkiy, "Slavery and Russian Slaves in Florence," in Kieff University Izvestia for 1885, who has perused Rumohr's Ursprung der Besitzlosigkeit der Colonien in Toscana, 1830.) The whole matter concerning the relations between the cities and the peasants requires much more study than has hitherto been done.

especially those of the earlier period, had their special causes. They were (as was already shown by Sis- mondi and Ferrari) a mere continuation of the war against the castles — the free municipal and federative principle unavoidably entering into a fierce contest with feudalism, imperialism, and papacy. Many towns which had but partially shaken off the yoke of the bishop, the lord, or the Emperor, were simply driven against the free cities by the nobles, the Emperor, and Church, whose policy was to divide the cities and to arm them against each other. These special circum- stances (partly reflected on to Germany also) explain why the Italian towns, some of which sought support with the Emperor to combat the Pope, while the others sought support from the Church to resist the Emperor, were soon divided into a Gibelin and a Guelf camp, and why the same division appeared in each separate city.-^

The immense economical progress realized by most Italian cities just at the time when these wars were hottest,^ and the alliances so easily concluded between towns, still better characterize those struggles and further undermine the above theory. Already in the years ii 30-1 150 powerful leagues came into exist- ence ; and a few years later, when Frederick Barba- rossa invaded Italy and, supported by the nobles and some retardatory cities, marched against Milan, popular enthusiasm was roused in many towns by popular

* Ferrari's generalizations are often too theoretical to be always correct ; but his views upon the part played by the nobles in the city wars are based upon a wide range of authenticated facts. 2 Only such cities as stubbornly kept to the cause of the barons, like Pisa or Verona, lost through the wars. For many towns which fought on the barons' side, the defeat was also the beginning of liberation and progress^ preachers. Crema, Piacenza, Brescia, Tortona, etc., went to the rescue ; the banners of the guilds of Verona, Padua, Vicenza, and Trevisa floated side by side in the cities' camp against the banners of the Emperor and the nobles. Next year the Lombardian League came into existence, and sixty years later we see it reinforced by many other cities, and forming a lasting organization which had half of its federal war-chest in Genoa and the other half in Venice.^ In Tuscany, Florence headed another powerful league, to which Lucca, Bologna, Pistoia, etc., belonged, and which played an important part in crushing down the nobles in middle Itcdy, while smaller leagues were of common occurrence. It is thus certain that although petty jealousies undoubtedly existed, and discord could be easily sown, they did not prevent the towns from uniting together for the common defence of liberty. Only later on, when separate cities became little States, wars broke out between them, as always must be the case when States struggle for supremacy or colonies.

Similar leagues were formed in Germany for the same purpose. When, under the successors of Conrad, the land was the prey of interminable feuds between the nobles, the Westphalian towns concluded a league against the knights, one of the clauses of which was nev.er to lend money to a knight who would continue to conceal stolen goods.^ When " the knights and the nobles lived on plunder, and murdered whom they chose to murder," as the Wormser Zorn complains, the cities on the Rhine (Mainz, Cologne, Speier, Strasburg, and Basel) took the initiative of a league which soon

numbered sixty allied towns, repressed the robbers, and maintained peace. Later on, the league of the towns of Suabia, divided into three " peace districts " (Augsburg, Constance, and Ulm), had the same pur- pose. And evefi when such leagues were broken, ^ they lived long enough to show that while the supposed peacemakers — the kings, the emperors, and the Church — rfofflfented discord, and were themselves helpless against the robber knights, it was from the cities that the impulse came for re-establishing peace and union. The cities — not the emperors — were the real makers of the national unity. ^

Similar federations were organized for the same purpose among small villages, and now that attention has been drawn to this subject by Luchaire we may expect soon to learn much more about them. Villages joined into small federations in the. contado oi Florence, so also in the dependencies of Novgorod and Pskov. As to France, there is positive evidence of a federation of seventeen peasant villages which has existed in the Laonnais for nearly a hundred years (till 1256), and has fought hard for its independence. Three more peasant republics, which had sworn charters similar to those of Laon and Soissons, existed in the neighbour- hood of Laon, and, their territories being contiguous, they supported each other in their liberation wars. Altogether, Luchaire is of the opinion that many such federations must have come into existence in France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but that docu- ments relative to them are mostly lost. Of course,

1 For Aachen and Cologne we have direct testimony that the bishops of these two cities — one of them bought by the enemy — opened to him the gates. 2 See the facts, though not always the conclusions, of Nitzsch, iii. 133 seq. ; also Kallsen, i. 458, etc. being unprotected by walls, they could easily be crushed down by the kings and the lords ; but in certain favourable circumstances, when they found support in a league of towns and protection in their mountains, such peasant republics became independent units of the Swiss Confederation.^

As to unions between cities for peaceful purposes, they were of quite common occurrence. The inter- course which had been established during the period of liberation was not interrupted afterwards. Sometimes, when the scabinioi a German town, having to pronounce judgment in a new or complicated case, declared that they knew not the sentence {des Urtheiles nicht weise zu sein), they sent delegates to another city to get the sentence. The same happened also in France ; ^ while Forli and Ravenna are known to have mutually naturalized their citizens and granted them full rights in both cities. To submit a contest arisen between two towns, or within a city, to another commune which was invited to act as arbiter, was also in the spirit of the times. -^ As to commercial treaties between cities, they were quite habitual.^ Unions for regulating the production and the sizes of casks which were used for

1 On the Commune of the Laonnais, which, until Melleville's researches {Histoire de la Commune du Laonnais, Paris, 1853), was confounded with the Commune of Laon, see Luchaire, pp. 75 seq. For the early peasants' guilds and subsequent unions see R. Wilman's "Die landlichen Schutzgilden Westphaliens," in Zeitschrift filr Kul- turgeschichte, neue Folge, Bd. iii., quoted in Henne-am-Rhyn's Kulturgeschichte, iii. 249. * Two important cities, like Mainz and Worms, would settle a political contest by means of arbitration. After a civil war broken out in Abbeville, Amiens would act, in 1231, as arbiter (Luchaire, 149) ; and so on.

the commerce in wine, " herring unions," and so on, were mere precursors of the great commercial federa- tions of the Flemish Hansa, and, later on, of the great North German Hansa, the history of which alone might contribute pages and pages to illustrate the federation spirit which permeated men at that time, -fit hardly need be added, that through the Hanseatic unions the mediaeval cities have contributed more to the development of international intercourse, naviga- tion, and maritime discovery than all the States of the first seventeen centuries of our eraj-

In a word, federations between small territorial units, as well as among men united by common pursuits within their respective guilds, and federations between cities and groups of cities constituted the very essence of life and thought during that period. The first five of the second decade of centuries of our era may thus be described as an immense attempt at securing mutual aid and support on a grand scale, by means of the principles of federation and association carried on^ through all manifestations of human life and to all possible degrees. This attempt was attended' with success to a very great extent. It united men formerly divided ; it secured them a very great deal of freedom, and it tenfolded their forces. At a time when particu- larism was bred by so many agencies, and the causes of discord and jealousy might have been so numerous, it is gratifying to see that cities scattered over a wide continent had so much in common, and were so ready to confiederate for the prosecution of so many common aims. ^TThey succumbed in the long run before power- ful enemies ; not having understood the mutual-aid principle widely enough, they themselves committed fatal faults ; but they did not perish through their own

jealousies, and their errors were not a want of federa- tion spirit among themselves.^ The results of that new move which mankind made in the mediaeval city were immense. At the beginning of the eleventh century the towns of Europe were small clusters of miserable huts, adorned but with low clumsy churches, the builders of which hardly knew how to make an arch ; the arts, mostly consisting of some weaving and forging, were in their infancy ; learning was found in but a few monasteries. Three hundred and fifty years later, the very face of Europe had been changed. The land was dotted with rich cities, surrounded by immense thick walls which were embellished by towers and gates, each of them a work of art in itself The cathedrals, conceived in a grand style and profusely decorated, lifted their bell-towers to the skies, displaying a purity of form and a boldness of imagination which we now vainly strive to attain. The crafts and arts had risen to a degree of perfection which we can hardly boast of having superseded in many directions, if the inventive skill of the worker and the superior finish of his work be appreciated higher than rapidity of fabrication. The navies of the free cities furrowed in all directions the Northern and the Southern Mediterranean ; one effort more, and they would cross the oceans. Over large tracts of land well-being had taken the place of misery ; learning had grown and spread. The methods of science had been elaborated ; the basis of natural philosophy had been laid down ; and the way had been paved for all the mechanical inventions of which our own times are so proud. Such were the magic changes accomplished in Europe in less than four

hundred years. |And the losses which Europe sustained through the loss of its free cities can only be under- stood when we compare the seventeenth century with the fourteenth or the thirteenth. The prosperity which formerly characterized Scotland, Germany, the plains of Italy, was gone. The roads had fallen into an abject state, the cities were depopulated, labour was brought into slavery, art had vanished, commerce itself was decaying.^ / £j[f the mediseval cities had bequeathed to us no written documents to testify of their splendour, and left nothing behind but the monuments of building art which we see now all over Europe, from Scotland to Italy, and from Gerona in Spain to Breslau in Slavo- nian territory, we might yet conclude that the times of independent city life were times of the greatest development of human intellect during the Christian era down to the end of the eighteenth century. <! On,, looking, for instance, at a mediaeval picture represent- ing Nuremberg with its scores of towers and lofty spires, each of which bore the stamp of free creative art, we can hardly conceive that three hundred years before the town was but a- collection of miserable hovels. And our admiration grows when we go into the details of the architecture and decorations of each of the countless churches, bell-towers, gates, and com- munal houses which are scattered all qver Europe as far east as Bohemia and the now dead towns of Polish Galicia. Not only Italy, that mother of art, but all

1 Cosmo Innes's Early Scottish ffistory and Scotland in Middle Ages, quoted by Rev. Denton, I.e., pp. 68, 69 ; Lamprecht's Deutsche! ■wirthschaftliche Leben im Mittelalter, review by SchmoUer in his Jahrhuch, Bd. xii. ; Sismondi's Tableau de Pagriculture toscane, pp. 226 seq. The dominions of Florence could be recognized at a glance through their prosperity. Europe is full of such monuments. The very fact that of all arts architecture — ^a social art above all — had attained the highest development, is significant in itself. To be what it was, it must have originated from an eminently social life.

Mediaeval architecture attained its grandeur — not only because it was a natural development of handi- craft ; not only because each building, each architectural decoration, had been devised by men who knew through the experience of their own hands what artistic effects can be obtained from stone, iron, bronze, or even from simple logs and mortar ; not only because each monument was a result of collective experience, accumulated in each " mystery " or craft ^ — it was grand because it was born out of a grand idea. Like Greek art, it sprang out of a conception of brother- hood and unity fostered by the city. It had an audacity which could only be won by audacious struggles and victories ; it had that expression of vigour, because vigour permeated all the life of the city. A cathedral or a communal house symbolized the grandeur of an organism of which every mason and stone-cutter was the builder, and a mediaeval building appears — not as a solitary effort to which

1 Mr. John J. Ennett (Six Assays, London, 1891) has excellent pages on this aspect of mediaeval architecture. Mr. Willis, in his appendix to Whewell's History of Inductive Sciences (i. 261-262), has pointed out the beauty of the mechanical relations in mediaeval buildings. " A new decorative construction was matured," he writes, " not thwarting and controlling, but assisting and harmonizing with the mechanical construction. Every member, every moulding, becomes a sustainer of weight; and by the multiplicity of props assisting each other, and the consequent subdivision of weight, the eye was satisfied of the stability of the structure, notwithstanding curiously slender aspects of the separate parts." An art which sprang out of the social life of the city could not be better character- ized.