Prisoners of war, representing different nations at
different times, according to the direction which the love of piracy
and conquest took, were exposed at those great periodical sales of
merchandise to the buyers who flocked from every land. The Northern
cities around the Baltic have the distinction of displaying these
human goods quite as early as Venice or any commercial centre of the
South: the municipal privileges and freedom of those famous cities
were thus nourished partly by a traffic in mankind, for whose sake
privilege and right are alone worth having. Seven thousand Danish
slaves were exposed at one fair held in the city of Mecklenburg at the
end of the twelfth century. They had the liberty of being ransomed,
but only distinguished captives could be saved in that way from being
sold. The price ranged from one to three marks. It is difficult to
tell from this how valuable a man was considered, for the relation of
the mark to other merchandise, or, in other words, the value of the
currency, cannot be represented by modern sums, which are only
technically equivalent,--as a mark, for instance, was then held equal
to eight ounces of silver.[7] That was not exorbitant, however, for
those times, and shows that men were frequently exposed for sale.
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