Of course its strength and power of emancipation must not be exaggerated. _Compagnonnage_ remained bound by the customs and liable to the vices of the guild system. If it escaped from the restraining spirit it did not escape from the corporate spirit; it jealously closed its ranks, and would only admit certain crafts; it was divided into hostile rites or _devoirs_ which took for patrons Solomon, Maître Jacques, or Père Soubise. Violence was frequent (_topage_ for instance), and bloody battles for the monopoly of work in a particular town often took place. Besides, it only included a privileged minority who ill-treated and despised not only those who were outside their ranks but even those who aspired to enter them. It was on the whole a fighting league, and imposed conditions on certain masters; but it was far from being a combination of the whole of the working classes against the masters. Centuries were yet to pass before the development of "great" industry, by constantly increasing the number employed, by turning the suburbs of great cities and the black country into seething human anthills, forced all these multitudes of workers, in spite of wide differences of occupation, to unite into a great army. As has been said, the division of society into guilds is vertical; it only becomes horizontal when the conditions common to the great army of wage-earners blot out all differences of craft and origin. 2. _The change in intellectual conditions. The Renaissance and the Reformation._--We have summed up the effects produced on the guilds by the enlargement of the environment in which they developed. This environment, however, changed not only in extent but also in character. Without going into the details of the changes they passed through, we can see that three great events stand out in the history of Europe from the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, and it is impossible that they should have failed to react on the system we are studying; these are the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the increase in the powers of the State.