2. _Division between the craft guilds._--One is sometimes tempted to say that the guild system had no worse enemies than the guilds themselves, so much bitterness did they display in their quarrels and recriminations. Town fought with town, and in spite of the efforts made by the central authority to unite them they had no idea whatever of agreeing or combining among themselves. Every one has heard of the interminable disputes which dragged on between the Hanses of Paris and Rouen concerning the navigation of the Seine.[130] Each had, within its own region, the monopoly of the transport industry, one from the bridge of Charenton to that of Nantes, the other, from the latter point to the mouth of the river. The fight between the two powerful companies lasted several hundred years, till at last the day arrived when the two monopolies were impartially suppressed by the Crown. In each town, as the line drawn between two crafts was often vague and purely conventional, the guilds were more rivals than allied neighbours. Lawsuits resulted which, on account of their length and the expense of legal proceedings, were absolutely ruinous to both parties. They are mentioned at Poitiers, which was at law for a century.[131] At Paris, the lawsuit between the wine-merchants and the Six Guilds lasted a hundred and fifty years. The founders within a few years[132] entered into actions "against the edge-tool makers to prevent them from making fire-dogs; against the needle and awl makers to contest their right of selling thimbles other than those of Paris; against the gilders to claim from them the exclusive right of founding, working up, and repairing copper goods; against the makers of weights and measures to claim equal rights with them in selling half-pound weights;[133] against the pin-makers, makers of kitchen utensils, button-makers, and sculptors." In England, the bow-makers might not make arrows, and the right was reserved to a special class of arrow-makers. Legal expenses for the Paris guilds alone amounted to nearly a thousand a year towards the middle of the eighteenth century. From a sense of _esprit de corps_, however, they persisted in wasting their substance, to the benefit of the legal profession which made enormous profits, and they defied royal edicts which attempted to restrain their zeal in litigation. They were far from putting into practice the motto of the Six Guilds, _Vincit concordia fratrum_; far from realizing that solidarity which was the very object of the guild system.