It was already a flourishing
town in the thirteenth century. Ludovico Guicciardini, in his work on
the Low Countries, adduces a proof of the wealth of the city in the
sixteenth century, saying that in one year nine hundred houses that
had been destroyed by fire were rebuilt. Bentivoglio, in his history
of the war in Flanders, calls it "the largest and most mercantile of
the lands of Holland." But its greatest prosperity did not begin until
1830, or after the separation of Holland and Belgium, when Rotterdam
seemed to draw to herself everything that was lost by her rival,
Antwerp.
Her situation is extremely advantageous. She communicates with the sea
by the Meuse, which brings to her ports in a few hours the largest
merchantmen; and by the same river she communicates with the Rhine,
which brings to her from the Swiss mountains and Bavaria immense
quantities of timber--entire forests that come to Holland to be
transformed into ships, dikes, and villages. More than eighty splendid
vessels come and go, in the space of nine months, between Rotterdam
and India.
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