In spite of these petty and irritating impediments, the commerce of France
extended throughout the whole world.
[Illustration: Fig. 197.--View of Lubeck and its Harbour (Sixteenth
Century).--From a Copper-plate in the Work of P. Bertius, "Commentaria
Rerum Germanicarum," in 4to: Amsterdam, 1616.]
The compass--known in Italy as early as the twelfth century, but little
used until the fourteenth--enabled the mercantile navy to discover new
routes, and it was thus that true maritime commerce may be said regularly
to have begun. The sailors of the Mediterranean, with the help of this
little instrument, dared to pass the Straits of Gibraltar, and to venture
on the ocean. From that moment commercial intercourse, which had
previously only existed by land, and that with great difficulty, was
permanently established between the northern and southern harbours of
Europe.
|