that led to the Champagne fairs, French-speaking Flanders was henceforth the barrier
which prevented access to them.’100
The attractiveness of the Champagne fairs to their other major clientele, the Italian
merchants, was also gradually diminished by French royal policy. In 1274 and 1277,
before Champagne became part of France, the French king had arrested all ‘Lombard’
(north Italian) merchants trading in France and only released them after extorting
heavy tax-payments.101 By 1291, when the French king again deployed this fiscal
tactic, Champagne had become part of France so that Italian merchants trading at the
Champagne fairs were directly affected.102 The French authorities only freed Italian
merchants and permitted them to continue trading in France (including Champagne)
when they agreed to pay large sums to the royal exchequer as a sort of ransom.103 One
Italian victim of this arbitrary royal attack wrote in 1291 to a correspondent in
England, ‘We have been and we are strongly tormented when we think of the difficult
situation and damage which can result from this event for our merchandise, our
capital, and what we possess in Flanders and in Champagne.’104 It seems likely that
these adverse policy shifts on the part of the French crown lay behind Lombard
merchants’ 1295 offer of money to the count of Flanders in return for permission to
establish headquarters in Ghent and conduct wholesale commerce in Flanders, shifting
their trade away from the Champagne fairs.105 Over the years after the 1291 arrests -
in 1292, 1295, 1297, 1303, and 1311 - Italian merchants were repeatedly obliged to
make substantial payments to the French crown as the price of being allowed to
continue trading in French territory.106
Italian merchants’ incentives to avoid French territory intensified from 1303 onwards,
when Philip IV imposed a prohibition on the export of wool and cloth from France.
Since the twelfth century, merchants from Florence and other Italian towns had bought
raw wool and unfinished cloth in France, to be finished in Florence and then re-
exported. This competition from the Florentine wool-finishing industry led to pressure
100 Laurent (1935), 150.
101 Boutaric (1867), I:179 (#1948E), 180 (#1970), 195 (#2110); Laurent (1935), 118.
102 Schulte (1900), 344-5; Alengry (1915), 75-6.
103 Laurent (1935), 118.
104 Alengry (1915), 75.
105 Bourquelot (1865), I:186.
106 Strayer (1969), 115-17; Laurent (1935), 119-20; Alengry (1915), 74-5.
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