When trades increased in the cities, each trade managed its own affairs by an organization called a _guild_. The guilds in the course of time obtained a share in the government of the towns; and it was the regenerating power of these guilds which brought about this great movement. With their simple ideals of truth, sincerity, and justice, they were the storehouses of that power which is the real life of a nation. As well expect a tree to flourish when its sap is not permitted to rise, or a man to be well when the blood is obstructed in his veins, as to look for healthful growth and expansion in a nation from which the life of its common people is excluded! Among these early guilds, that of the Meistersingers, which was chartered in 1340, was of vast importance in the development of the German people. It was composed of artisans and governed by the strict, pedantic rules then existing in the arts of musical and literary composition. The prizes did not confer as great an honor as those bestowed at Olympia two thousand years before, but they were sought with an intense enthusiasm. The soul of the Teuton was by nature set to music. For him that art was not a luxury reserved for the rich and cultured, but the daily food which nourished the life of the most untutored. Within this musical and literary guild the two arts of music and poetry for centuries existed in their most elementary form, and were the soil out of which later came such marvelous blossom and fruit. CHAPTER VII. Germany, which had always been a loosely compacted mass, was at the close of the Hohenstaufen dynasty composed of 60 independent cities, 116 priestly rulers, and 100 reigning dukes, princes, counts, and barons, always rivals and usually at war with each other, in perpetually changing combinations for attack or defense. Lying beneath this body of small and struggling sovereigns was a people in whom was the first dawning consciousness of human rights; which consciousness was gradually extending to that helpless mass underlying the whole--the peasantry. In 1273 the German princes succeeded in electing an Emperor; and the Great Interregnum was over. It is a curious fact that the two names _Hapsburg_ and _Hohenzollern_ should have appeared simultaneously in German history. Rudolf, Count of Hapsburg, through the influence of his brother-in-law Frederick of Hohenzollern, Count of Nuremburg, was chosen to fill the vacant throne. It was during the reign of Albert, son of this first Hapsburg, that the Swiss first revolted against imperial authority. Gessler, who had been sent by Albert to subdue the refractory Alpine shepherds, so exasperated them by his atrocities that he was shot by William Tell. It was a long way from Tell to Swiss freedom and independence. But the people from that hour never wavered in their determination not to be serfs to the house of Hapsburg.