Identifier: modernhistoryeur00west (find matches)
Title: Modern history; Europe
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: West, Willis Mason, 1857- (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: Boston, Allyn and Bacon
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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ere were no street lights at night, no city water supply, no sewerage, no street-cleaning, no paving. Dead animals rotted in the streets and narrow lanes; and the story is told that on one occasion in the fifteenth century a German emperor, warmly welcomed in a loyal city, was almost swallowed up, horse and rider, in the bottomless filth, as he entered the city gate. Frankfort, in 1387, found it necessary to forbid the building of pig-sties in the public streets, and Ulm a little later was troubled by swine running loose. With indoors, too, the material prosperity was not for all. Says Dr. Jessop, The sediment of the town population was a dense 1 Milan, in Italy (§ 80), counted some three hundred thousand inhabitants and some of the largest German cities numbered perhaps fifty thous and; but in general the towns were small. — from three thousand to six thousand people. Up to the year 1500, England had only three cities with over twelve thousand inhabitants. 118 WESTERN EUROPE, 1100-1520. (§107
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Old Street in Rouen, present condition. The Cathedral is visible at the opening of the street into the square. Probably the appearance of the street has changed little since the fourteenth century. §108) SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RISE OF THE TOWNS. 119 slough of stagnant misery, squalor, famine, loathsome disease, and dull despair. There was no adequate police system, and street fights were constant. At night, no well-to-do citizen stirred abroad without his armor and a guard of stout apprentice lads, and he was always compelled to fortify and guard his house. 108. The Political Change. — The change was political also. The townsmen became the third estate (§ 105). The importance of the political change, however, great as it was, is easily overstated. The townsmen were not the people V of a nation, in the modern sense. They were only one more class risen from the unreckoned mass, to stand beside the two smaller but higher classes previously recognized. Society continued for centuries to be organiz

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