A further instance of want of personal liberty in Barbarossa's days is shown by his contempt for commerce and for the trader's knowledge of the commercial value of his goods. Thus he decreed that a merchant selling his wares in camp must offer them at the price fixed by the field-marshal, and if the owner asked more than was deemed just by this functionary, who probably knew as much of the value of goods as his trusty lance, he lost not only his market rights and his wares, but was whipped into the bargain, his head shorn and his cheek branded with a red-hot iron. At home his choice of dwelling-houses, of trade, even of marriage was interfered with. Is it astonishing, then, that with so little personal liberty at home, so much abroad, the townsmen aspired to change this state of things, and aided by political events did change them, and rapidly too? [Illustration: ITINERANT MERCHANTS.] Nor was it only the merchants returning from abroad who stirred the legitimate longings of their stay-at-home brethren. A liberating influence came from yet another side; from that very land of Italy, for whose sake the German rulers had suffered their own country to endure neglect. Travelling Italian merchants on their road to Flanders passed through Central Germany, and as they halted in the cities they would recount in the long evenings those travellers' tales eagerly listened to in days when reading for the most part was an unknown accomplishment, and when all information was acquired by ear. "... I spoke of most disastrous chances; Of moving accidents by flood and field; * * * * * And portance in my travel's history: Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle; Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven It was my hint to speak."[5] These Lombards told of the prosperity of their cities and the liberties they enjoyed, narrations that sounded like fairy tales in the ears of the Northmen. And when the Crusades broke out, and many of them saw with their own eyes the glories of the southern cities, when German merchants who had followed in the train of the emperor's Roman campaign returned, confirming all they had heard from the Italians about commercial liberties and privileges, their determination not to be left behind was strengthened. Freiburg (Free City) was the first town founded as the outcome of the new liberty, an enlightened prince lending his help and means to that end.