People flocked there from all quarters.
'Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies;
Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.'
We read of 150 ships entering in one day, and of German merchants
buying 2,600 pieces of cloth, made by Flemish weavers, in a morning's
marketing. A citizen of Bruges was always at the head of the Hanseatic
League, and maintained the rights of that vast commercial society
under the title of 'Comte de la Hanse.' Merchant princes, members
of the Hanse, lived here in palaces. Money-changers grew rich.
Edward III. borrowed from the Bardi at Bruges on the security of
the Crown jewels of England. Contracts of insurance against maritime
risks were entered into from an early period, and the merchant
shipping code which regulated traffic by sea was known as the 'Roeles
de Damme.'[*] There were twenty consulates at one time in Bruges,
and the population of the town is said, though it is difficult to
believe that this is not an exaggeration, to have been more than
200,000 before the middle of the fourteenth century.
[Footnote *: Gilliodts van Severen, _Bruges Ancienne et Moderne_,
p. 14.]
Six years after the Battle of Sluis, Louis of Nevers was killed at
Crecy, and his son, Louis of Maele, reigned in his stead as Count
of Flanders.
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