Despite the hostility of emperor and princes, the towns more than held their own. Great changes were coming over the commercial relations of Europe. The volume of trade was much greater, and now flowed in channels which gave Germany a larger share of the world’s traffic. The rich products of the East now came from Venice over the Brenner, and either went down the Lech to Augsburg and Nürnberg or descended the Rhine to marts like Cologne, where the traders of the north and south met together, and the cloth of Flanders or the wool of England, and the wood, iron, and coarse products of the Baltic were bartered for the more costly articles of luxury that had come over the Alps. Safe behind their strong walls, the citizens could hold their own against prince or emperor, while their interest in the maintenance of the public peace and the safety of the roads and waterways attracted them to the side of any powerful and peace-loving ruler. A few strong princes could keep better order than a mass of robber-nobles levying endless tolls and exactions on all goods passing through their territories. Even before the fall of the Hohenstaufen the towns had not only escaped the direct rule of the Emperor, but had gradually withdrawn themselves from the authority of the neighbouring lords. The extension of the German race and power to the East opened up for them new avenues for trade. [Sidenote: Law.] The development of local authorities was marked by the growth of local codes of laws. The earliest code of German customary law, the _Sachsenspiegel_, was drawn up before the fall of Henry VII., and prepared the way for a series of similar collections of customs in the second half of the thirteenth century. The towns followed the same process, and it became the ideal of each community to attain the laws which a more ancient and better established community already enjoyed. For the East the customs of Magdeburg, for the North the laws of Lübeck, which themselves were derived from those of Soest in Westphalia, became the model on which the newer towns based their constitutions. [Sidenote: Literature.]