Lastly, the city either defends itself against aggressors and wages its own stubborn wars against neighboring feudal lords, nominating each year one or rather two military commanders of its militias, or else accepting a "military defender"—a prince or duke—who is chosen by the city for a year, and whom it can dismiss when it pleases. It usually delivers up to this military defender the produce of judicial fines for the maintenance of his soldiers; but it forbids him to interfere with the business of the city. Or lastly, too feeble to emancipate itself entirely from its neighbors, the feudal vultures, the city will retain, as a more or less permanent military protector, a bishop or a prince of some family—Guelf or Ghibelline in Italy, from the family of Rurik in Russia or of Olgerd in Lithuania. But it will watch with jealousy that the bishop's or prince's authority shall not extend beyond the soldiers encamped in the castle. It will even forbid them to enter the town without permission. You no doubt know that even at the present day the Queen of England cannot enter the City of London without the Lord Mayor's permission.
I should like to speak to you at length about the economic life of cities in the Middle Ages; but I am obliged to pass it over in silence. It was so varied that it would need rather full development. Suffice it to remark that internal commerce was always carried on by the guilds, not by isolated artisans, the prices being fixed by mutual agreement; that at the beginning of that period, external commerce was carried on exclusively by the city; that commerce only became the monopoly of the merchants' guild later on, and still later of isolated individuals; that never was any work done on Sunday, or on Saturday afternoon (bathing day); lastly, that the city purchased the chief necessaries for the life of its inhabitants—corn, coal, etc.—and delivered these to the inhabitants at cost price. (This custom of the city making purchases of grain was retained in Switzerland till the middle of our century.) In fact, it is proved by a mass of documents of all kinds that hupianity has never known, either before or after, a period of relative well-being as perfectly
