of Flanders failed to repay.60 In 1224-5, a group of Sienese merchants at the
Champagne fairs refused to lend 3000 livres to an abbey without a guarantee from the
count.61 The period between 1210 and 1250 saw numerous loans issued at the
Champagne fairs by foreign merchants to princes, nobles and religious houses in
which the count of Champagne used his political power to guarantee repayment.62
A final reason for the success of the Champagne fair-cycle was that it offered an
almost continuous market for merchandise and financial services throughout the year,
like a great trading city, but without the most severe disadvantage of medieval cities -
special privileges for locals that discriminated against foreign merchants.63 As Alengry
points out, had the Champagne fair-towns had strong communal privileges favouring a
local patriciate of rich commercial families, ‘the clientele of the Champagne fairs
would certainly not have benefited: the comital authorities were independent because
they were disinterested from any business rivalry, by contrast with townsmen who,
whether or not they were local merchants, were competitors against the fair-
clientele’.64 This lack of discrimination in favour of locals arose partly from the fact
that the four Champagne fair-towns were not great centres of international trade before
the fairs arose, and thus did not have powerful groups of indigenous merchants
lobbying for privileges.65 But it was also caused by the fact that the counts of
Champagne refrained from granting such privileges even once the fairs began to
operate as continuous international markets. Bourquelot and Alengry ascribe this
policy to the general weakness of ‘communal’ privileges in the Champagne region,
especially compared to neighbouring France.66 But such weakness was surely
endogenous, and Chapin probably gets closer to the truth by pointing out that the fairs
made the counts wealthy, freeing them from the need to sell privileges to the fair-
towns and their elites.67 For whatever reason, at least under the counts the Champagne
fairs offered the unique combination of a continuous international trading forum with
60 Bourquelot (1865), I:194.
61 Arbois de Jubainville and Pigeotte (1859-66), V:221.
62 Bassermann (1911), 55; Arbois de Jubainville and Pigeotte (1859-66), V:136-7, 143, 169, 171-2, 177,
221, 260, 458; Evergates (2010), 107, 110, 111, 135, 136, 267.
63 Alengry (1915), 39.
64 Alengry (1915), 37.
65 Terrasse (2005), 30, 110, 136, 232.
66 Bourquelot (1865), 197-212.
67 Chapin (1937).
10