TROYES.—This town (one of the cities in Champagne) was noted in the middle ages for its great fairs, of which there were two—one being fixed to the Monday after the Second Sunday in Lent; the other commencing on 1st September. Philip of Valois granted the privileges of these fairs. A lasting record of the importance of the dealings thereat is handed down to us in the form of “Troy (Troyes) weight,” used in connection with dealings in the precious metals. It is said that this system of weights was brought from Cairo by the crusaders, and was first and permanently adopted as the standard of weight in the dealings of the fairs of Troyes. Hence it may be inferred that the trading was largely in the precious metals, in spices, and in drugs.[9] Goods sold at these fairs were exempted from all customs outwards, local dues excepted, under certain restrictions. It is recorded especially of these fairs, that they had a staff of notaries for the attestation of bargains, courts of justice, police officers, sergeants for the execution of the market judges’ decrees, and visitors—the _prud’hommes_—whose duty it was to examine the quality of goods exposed for sale, and to confiscate those found unfit for consumption. The confiscation required the consent of five or six representatives of the merchant community at the fair. Sismondi, in his “History of the Italian Republics,” writing of the events of the thirteenth century, says: The Tuscan and Lombard merchants however trafficked in the barbarous regions of the West, to carry there the produce of their industry. Attracted by the franchises of the Fairs of _Champagne_ and of _Lyons_, they went thither, as well to barter their goods _as to lend their capital at interest to the nobles, habitually loaded with debt_; though at the risk of finding themselves suddenly arrested, their wealth confiscated by order of the King of France, and their lives too sometimes endangered by sanctioned robbers, under the pretext of repressing usury. Industry, the employment of a superabundant capital, the application of mechanism and science to the production of wealth, secured the Italians a sort of monopoly through Europe: they alone offered for sale what all the rich desired to buy; and notwithstanding the various oppressions of the barbarian kings, notwithstanding the losses occasioned by their own oft-repeated revolutions, their wealth was rapidly renewed.