briefly in taking over the Florentine government and permitting some new guilds to
form there. But the movement soon splintered, and, strapped for money, it resorted
to forced loans, an expedient that backfired. By 1382, the old elite was back in
power, determined not to let the lower classes rise again; in the next century, the
Florentine republic gave way to rule by a powerful family of bankers, the Medici.
ECONOMIC CONTRACTION
While the Black Death was good for the silk trade, and the Hundred Years’ War
stimulated the manufacture of arms and armor, in other spheres economic contraction
was the norm. After 1340, with the disintegration of the Mongol Empire, easy trade
relations between Europe and the Far East were destroyed. Within Europe, rulers’
war machines were fueled by new taxes and loans—some of them forced. At times,
rulers paid back the loans; often they did not. The great import-export houses, which
loaned money as part of their banking activities, found themselves advancing too
much to rulers all too willing to default. In the 1340s the four largest firms went
bankrupt, producing, in domino effect, the bankruptcies of hundreds more.
War did more than gobble up capital. Where armies raged, production stopped.
Even in intervals of peace, Free Companies attacked not only the countryside but
also merchants on the roads. To ensure its grain supply, Florence was obliged to
provide guards all along the route from Bologna. Merchants began investing in
insurance policies, not only against losses due to weather but also against robbers and
pirates.
Meanwhile, the plague dislocated normal economic patterns. Urban rents fell as
houses went begging for tenants, while wages rose as employers sought to attract
scarce labor. In the countryside, whole swathes of land lay uncultivated. The
monastery of Saint-Denis, so rich and powerful under Abbot Suger in the twelfth
century, lost more than half its income from land between 1340 and 1403. As the
population fell and the demand for grain decreased, the Baltic region—chief supplier
of rye to the rest of Europe—suffered badly; by the fifteenth century, some villages
had disappeared.
Yet, as always, the bad luck of some meant the prosperity of others. While
Tuscany lost its economic edge, cities in northern Italy and southern Germany gained
new muscle, manufacturing armor and fustian (a popular textile made of cotton and
flax) and distributing their products across Europe. The center of economic growth
was in fact shifting northwards, from the Mediterranean to the European heartlands.
