On that long area of land reaching from the southern slope of the Cevennes to the Apennines, the hand of the barbarian had weighed much less heavily than on the rest of Europe.  In those favoured provinces where Roman organization had outlived Roman patronage, it seems as if ancient splendour had never ceased to exist, and the elegance of customs re-flourished amidst the ruins.  There, a sort of urban aristocracy always continued, as a balance against the nobles, and the counsel of elected prud’hommes, the syndics, jurors or capitouls, who in the towns replaced the Roman honorati and curiales, still were considered by kings and princes as holding some position in the state.  The municipal body, larger, more open than the old “ward,” no longer formed a corporation of unwilling aristocrats enchained to privileges which ruined them.  The principal cities on the Italian coast had already amassed enormous wealth by commerce, and displayed the most remarkable ardour, activity, and power.  The Eternal City, which was disputed by emperors, popes, and barons of the Roman States, bestirred itself at times to snatch at the ancient phantom of republicanism; and this phantom was destined soon to change into reality, and another Rome, or rather a new Carthage, the lovely Venice, arose free and independent from the waves of the Adriatic (Fig. 34).

In Lombardy, so thickly colonised by the German conquerors, feudalism, on the contrary, weighed heavily; but there, too, the cities were populous and energetic, and the struggle for supremacy continued for centuries in an uncompromising manner between the people and the nobles, between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines.

In the north and east of the Gallic territory, the instinct of resistance did not exist any the less, though perhaps it was more intermittent.  In fact, in these regions we find ambitious nobles forestalling the action of the King, and in order to attach towns to themselves and their houses, suppressing the most obnoxious of the taxes, and at the same time granting legal guarantees.  For this the Counts of Flanders became celebrated, and the famous Heribert de Vermandois was noted for being so exacting in his demands with the great, and yet so popular with the small.

[Illustration:  Fig. 34.—­View of St. Mark’s Place, Venice, Sixteenth Century, after Cesare Vecellio.]

The eleventh century, during which feudal power rose to its height, was also the period when a reaction set in of the townspeople against the nobility.  The spirit of the city revived with that of the bourgeois (a name derived from the Teutonic word burg, habitation) and infused a feeling of opposition to the system which followed the conquest of the Teutons.  “But,” says M. Henri Martin, “what reappeared was not the Roman municipality of the Empire, stained by servitude, although surrounded with glittering pomp and gorgeous arts, but it was something coarse and almost semi-barbarous in form, though strong and generous at core, and which, as far as the difference of the times would allow, rather reminds us of the small republics which existed previous to the Roman Empire.”