The Hansa Towns
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Title: The Hansa Towns
Author: Helen Zimmern
Release date: May 10, 2012 [eBook #39664]
Language: English
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The Story of the Nations.
THE HANSA TOWNS.
* * * * *
THE STORY OF THE NATIONS.
_Large Crown 8vo, Cloth, Illustrated, 5s._
_Presentation Edition, Gilt Edges, 5s. 6d._
1. =ROME.= ARTHUR GILMAN, M.A.
2. =THE JEWS.= Prof. J. K. HOSMER.
3. =GERMANY.= Rev. S. BARING-GOULD, M.A.
4. =CARTHAGE.= Prof. A. J. CHURCH.
5. =ALEXANDER'S EMPIRE.= Prof. J. P. MAHAFFY.
6. =THE MOORS IN SPAIN.= STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
7. =ANCIENT EGYPT.= Canon RAWLINSON.
8. =HUNGARY.= Prof. A. VAMBERY.
9. =THE SARACENS.= A. GILMAN, M.A.
10. =IRELAND.= Hon. EMILY LAWLESS.
11. =CHALDAEA.= Z. A. RAGOZIN.
12. =THE GOTHS.= HENRY BRADLEY.
13. =ASSYRIA.= Z. A. RAGOZIN.
14. =TURKEY.= STANLEY LANE-POOLE.
15. =HOLLAND.= Prof. J. E. THOROLD ROGERS.
16. =MEDIAEVAL FRANCE.= Prof. GUSTAVE MASSON.
17. =PERSIA.= S. G. W. BENJAMIN.
18. =PHOENICIA.= Canon RAWLINSON.
19. =MEDIA.= Z. A. RAGOZIN.
20. =THE HANSA TOWNS.= By HELEN ZIMMERN.
London:
T. FISHER UNWIN, 26, Paternoster Square, E.C.
* * * * *
[Illustration: VIEW OF HAMBURG.]
THE HANSA TOWNS
by
HELEN ZIMMERN
Author of "A Life of Lessing," "Heroic Tales from Firdusi," etc.
London
T. Fisher Unwin
26 Paternoster Square
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons
MDCCCLXXXIX
Entered at Stationers' Hall
By T. Fisher Unwin
Copyright by G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1889
(For the United States of America).
PREFACE.
In bringing before the public what I believe to be the first History of
the Hanseatic League, it gives me pleasure to think that the impetus to
write it came from the United States. The work was suggested to me
by my valued friend, Mr. G. H. Putnam, of New York, a citizen of
the country in which the principle of federation is best understood
and most thoroughly carried out. The Hansa was one of the earliest
representatives of that federal spirit which will, beyond doubt, some
day help to solve many of the heavy and grievous problems with which we
of the Old World are struggling; but that day is not yet, and meantime
we have much to learn both from the successes and failures of the past.
I have, of course, assumed in my readers some knowledge of German
History, such as they can derive from Professor Bryce's inimitable "Holy
Roman Empire," or from Baring-Gould's "Story of Germany," one of the
earlier volumes of this series.
In conclusion, I desire to express my very cordial thanks to Dr. Otto
Benecke, Keeper of the State Archives of the city of Hamburg, and to my
uncle, Dr. Carl Leo, Syndic of the same town, for the generosity with
which they have accorded me valuable assistance in the preparation of
this volume. I have further to thank Miss L. Toulmin Smith for help in
revision of the MS., and for many useful suggestions. To my sister, Miss
Alice Zimmern, and to Dr. Richard Garnett, of the British Museum, I am
indebted for aid in proof-reading.
HELEN ZIMMERN.
FLORENCE,
_March 1, 1889_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE vii
PROEM 1-7
_PERIOD I._
I.
THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRADE GUILD 11-20
Teutonic Merchants, 15--Travelling in Early Times, 17--Origin
of the Guilds, 19.
II.
FEDERATION 21-29
The Story of "Winetha," 23--The Island of Gothland, 25--"Salt
Kolberg," 27--Unhansing, 29.
III.
FOREIGN TRADE 30-47
Social Conditions, 31--Enslavement of the Middle Class,
35--Italian Influences, 37--Burgher Home Rule, 43--League of
the Baltic Towns, 45--The Title "Hansa," 47.
IV.
THE HANSA FIGHTS 48-69
The Herring Fisheries, 49--Waldemar, 51--The First Attack,
53--Sack of Wisby, 55--Copenhagen Plundered, 57--Punishment
of Wittenborg, 59--The Cologne Federation, 61--Growing
Strength of the League, 63--Flight of Waldemar, 65--Treaty
of Stralsund, 67--A Curious Chapter in History, 69.
_PERIOD II._
THE HISTORY OF THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE,
FROM 1370 TO THE PUBLIC PEACE OF 1495,
DECREED IN GERMANY BY MAXIMILIAN I.
I.
LUEBECK RECEIVES AN IMPERIAL VISITOR 73-81
Hesitation of Luebeck, 75--Procession from St. Gertrude's
Chapel, 77--Luebeck Hospitality, 79--Records of the Visit,
81.
II.
THE TOWNS IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 82-125
The Ban of the Hansa, 83--Submission of Brunswick,
85--Prominence of the Cities, 87--Population of Luebeck,
89--Characteristics of the Germans, 91--Independence of the
Towns, 93--The Maritime Ports, 95--Exports of the Hansa,
97--Conditions of Trade, 101--Specie, Credit, and Bills,
103--The Extent of Mediaeval Trade, 105--The Churches and
Religious Buildings, 107--Hanseatic Architecture and Art,
109--Science and Literature, 111--The May Emperor,
113--Customs, Restrictions, and Regulations, 117--Luxury in
Dress, 119--The Town Council, 121--The Town-hall,
123--Mediaeval Patriotism, 125.
III.
THE VICTUAL BROTHERS 126-136
Plunder of Bergen, 127--Stortebeker, 129--Simon of Utrecht,
131--Execution of Stortebeker, 133.
IV.
THE FACTORY OF BERGEN 137-147
History of Bergen, 139--Shoemaker's Alley, 141--Constitution
of the Factory, 143--Barbarous Practices, 147.
V.
THE HANSEATIC COMMERCE WITH DENMARK,
SWEDEN, AND RUSSIA 148-162
Skanoe and Falsterbo, 149--The Pious Brotherhood of Malmo,
151--The Hansa at Novgorod, 153--The Court of St. Peter,
155--Furs, Metals, Honey, and Wax, 157--The Lombards
_versus_ the Hansa, 159--Ivan the Terrible Sacks Novgorod,
161.
VI.
THE COMMERCE OF THE LEAGUE WITH THE
NETHERLANDS AND SOUTHERN EUROPE 163-178
The Flemish Trade Guilds, 165--Hansa Factory at Bruges,
167--Suspension of Trade with Flanders, 169--Trade with
Antwerp, 171--Relations with France, 173--The Hansa in
Portugal and Italy, 175--Italian Culture in South Germany,
177.
VII.
THE STEELYARD IN LONDON 179-201
The Hanseatic Rothschilds, 181--Hanseatics Hated by the
People, 183--Rupture with England, 185--The Key to the
City's Commerce, 187--Description of the Steelyard,
189--Inner Life of the Factory, 191--The English
Conciliated, 193--Depots throughout England, 195--The
Hansa's Part in Ceremonies, 199--Religion of the English
Hanseatics, 201.
VIII.
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE 202-208
The Diets, 203--Minutes of the Diet's Proceedings, 205.
_PERIOD III._
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE HANSA.
INTRODUCTION 211-216
Decay of the Feudal System, 213--The Thirty Years' War, 215.
I.
STORM CLOUDS 217-235
Charles V. of Germany, 219--Gustavus Appeals to Luebeck,
223--Cruelty of Christian II., 225--Gustavus Lands in
Sweden, 227--Luebeck Aids Gustavus, 229--Christian II.
deposed, 231--Christian II. Abjures Lutheranism,
233--Christian's Memory, 235.
II.
KING FREDERICK AND KING GUSTAVUS VASA 236-239
"Put not thy trust in Princes," 237--Gustavus Quarrels with
Luebeck, 239.
III.
WULLENWEBER 240-282
The Religious Movement, 241--Luebeck Espouses Lutheranism,
243--Max Meyer, 245--Capture of Spanish Ships,
247--Christopher of Oldenburg, 251--Congress at Hamburg,
253--Wullenweber's Projects, 255--Disorder in Luebeck,
257--Hostilities in Denmark, 259--Escape of Max Meyer,
261--Battle of Assens, 263--Cologne's Reproach,
265--Nicholas Broemse, 267--Resignation of Wullenweber,
269--Imprisonment of Wullenweber, 271--The Rack, 275--Unfair
Trial, 277--Execution of Wullenweber, 279.
IV.
THE HANSA LOSES ITS COLONIES 283-305
Emancipation of Sweden, 285--New Route to Russia,
287--History of Livonia, 289--Livonia Repudiates the Hansa,
291--Ivan Seizes Livonia, 293--Stupefaction of Germany,
295--War Against Sweden, 297--Warning of the Duke of Alva,
299--Bornholm Ceded to Denmark, 301--Embassy to the
Muscovite Court, 303--The League Dissolves, 305.
V.
THE LEAGUE IN THE NETHERLANDS 306-323
Causes of Failure in the West, 307--Dissension Among the
Towns, 309--Depot Established at Antwerp, 311--Dangerous
Innovations, 315--General Insecurity of Commerce,
317--Insubordination of the Hanseatics, 319--The Antwerp
Factory in Danger, 321--Trade with the Low Countries, 323.
VI.
THE END OF THE HANSA'S DOMINION IN
ENGLAND 324-353
Restrictions on the English Trade, 325--Complaints of the
Londoners, 329--Trade Regulations Broken, 331--Queen Mary
Favours the Hansa, 333--English Grievances,
335--Negotiations with Elizabeth, 337--Internal Disunion,
339--The Steelyard Insubordinate, 341--Hamburg Adjusts its
Policy, 343--The Good Old Privileges, 345--Conservative
Luebeck, 347--Seizure of Hanseatic Vessels, 349--Expulsion of
Hanseatics from England, 351--The Steelyard Property, 353.
VII.
THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR KILLS THE LEAGUE 354-364
Gustavus Adolphus, 355--Wallenstein's Project, 357--Imperial
Graciousness, 359--The War Storm Breaks, 361.
VIII.
THE SURVIVORS 365-378
"Sic transit gloria mundi," 369--Napoleon and the Three
Cities, 371--Note, 375.
EPILOGUE 379-386
INDEX 387
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
VIEW OF HAMBURG _Frontispiece_
IMPERIAL CROWN OF GERMANY 4
COIN OF CHARLEMAGNE 7
PIRATES 13
NORMAN VESSEL FROM BAYEUX TAPESTRY 20
HIGHROAD 33
ITINERANT MERCHANTS 36
SALTERS' HALL, FRANKFORT 39
MEDIAEVAL CITY 41
ROBBER KNIGHTS 44
RATH-HAUS, COLOGNE 62
RATH-HAUS, TANGERMUNDE 66
SHIPPING HOUSE, LUEBECK 76
GROCERS' HALL, BREMEN 84
RATH-HAUS, BRUNSWICK 86
MUEHLENTHOR, STARGARD 88
BURGHERS AT TABLE 91
GERMAN TRADE LIFE 94
RENSLAU GATE 97
CROSSBOW 99
HOHE-THOR, DANZIG 108
HOLSTENTHOR, LUEBECK 110
CHILDREN'S SPORTS 115
DOMESTIC MUSIC 118
MIDDLE-CLASS OCCUPATIONS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 122
SHIP-BUILDING IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 128
HELIGOLAND 132
TOMB OF SIMON OF UTRECHT, HAMBURG 135
JUSTICE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 142
SHIP AT THE END OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 145
SEAL OF NOVGOROD 162
STADT-HAUS, BRUGES 164
RHINE BOAT, COLOGNE 167
THE PIED PIPER'S HOUSE, HAMELIN 172
FONTEGO DEI TEDESCHI, VENICE 176
THE STEELYARD, LONDON 180
BARDI PALACE, FLORENCE 182
STEELYARD WHARF, LONDON 187
THE TRIUMPH OF RICHES, BY HOLBEIN 197
SEAL OF LUEBECK 205
PETERSEN-HAUS, NUREMBURG 207
CHARLES V. 218
CHRISTIAN II. 221
HENRY VIII. 249
SCENE BEFORE A JUDGE 273
THE RACK 281
THE HANSA FACTORY, ANTWERP 313
SIR THOMAS GRESHAM 327
RATH-HAUS, MUENSTER 363
RATH-HAUS, LUEBECK 367
RATH-HAUS, BREMEN 373
* * * * *
[Of the architectural views reproduced in this volume some
have been copied from prints in the British Museum, others
from drawings and photographs in possession of the
authoress, and the remainder from various German
authorities. The illustrations of German life and manners
are taken from Otto Henne am Rhyn's "Cultur Geschichte des
deutschen Volkes," to the publisher of which volume our
best thanks are due.
T. FISHER UNWIN,
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.]
[Illustration: DOMINION OF THE HANSA
XIII-XV CENTURIES
T. FISHER UNWIN, 26, PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON, E.C.]
STORY OF THE HANSA TOWNS.
PROEM.
There is scarcely a more remarkable chapter in history than that which
deals with the trading alliance or association known as the Hanseatic
League. The League has long since passed away, having served its time
and fulfilled its purpose. The needs and circumstances of mankind have
changed, and new methods and new instruments have been devised for
carrying on the commerce of the world. Yet, if the League has
disappeared, the beneficial results of its action survive to Europe,
though they have become so completely a part of our daily life that we
accept them as matters of course, and do not stop to inquire into their
origin. To us moderns it seems but natural that there should be security
of intercourse between civilized nations, that highways should be free
from robbers, and the ocean from pirates. The mere notion of a different
state of things appears strange to us, and yet things were very
different not so many hundred years ago.
In the feudal times the conditions of life on the continent of Europe
seem little short of barbarous. The lands were owned not only by the
kings who ruled them with an iron despotism, but were possessed besides
by innumerable petty lordlings and princelets, who on their part again
exercised a rule so severe and extortionate that the poor people who
groaned under it were in a condition little removed from slavery. Nay,
they were often not even treated with the consideration that men give
their slaves, upon whom, as their absolute goods and chattels, they set
a certain value. And it was difficult for the people to revolt and
assert themselves, for however disunited might be their various lords,
in case of a danger that threatened their universal power, they became
friends closer than brothers, and would aid each other faithfully in
keeping down the common folk. Hand in hand with princes and lords went
the priests, themselves often worldly potentates as well as spiritual
rulers, and hence the very religion of the carpenter's son, which had
overspread the civilized world in order to emancipate the people and
make men of all nations and degrees into one brotherhood, was--not for
the first time in its history--turned from its appointed course and used
as an instrument of coercion and repression.
Such briefly was the celebrated feudal system--a system whose initial
idea that the rich man should protect the poor, that the lord should be
as a father to his vassals, is wise and good, but which in practice
proved itself untenable. Even to-day, after many centuries and
generations, the only European nations that have wholly succeeded in
casting off the feudal yoke are those in whose history an entirely
subversive revolution, like the French, has taken place. In others,
notwithstanding years of struggle and revolt, not only its memory, but
some of its customs, still survive; for systems and institutions die
hard, and continue to exercise mischievous power long after their
original force is spent. To this survival can be traced a large number
of the evils that are agitating contemporary Europe; for example, the
wretched state of Ireland.
That the people of Germany, the country with which we have chiefly to
deal in treating of the Hanseatic League, was not wholly enslaved and
crushed out of all individual existence by the state of things that
reigned from the Baltic to the Alps in the early years of its history is
due to the two great factors of memory and heredity. Memory, because
when Tacitus, that most dramatic of historians, wrote his famous book on
Germany, one of the chief points he noted in this land was that there
existed an equality among the freeborn, an absence of rank and
concentration of power. Heredity, because a love of individual freedom
appears as an inherent quality in the Teutonic race from their first
appearance in historic legend.
"Though the mills of God grind slowly
Yet they grind exceeding small,"
sings the poet, and all the ages have confirmed the experience that
might is not suffered to be right for ever, that vengeance falls and
justice asserts itself, even though the wrong be not righted, or the
evil avenged for many a long year after the sin has been committed.
"Whom the gods would destroy they first strike with madness," says the
Latin proverb. It was so with the ambitious rulers of Germany. They were
not content to be sovereigns of their own empire, they desired also to
hold in their hand the reins of Italy; the bestowal of the title Holy
Roman Emperor by the Pope Leo III. upon Charlemagne moved their longing
and cupidity, so that gradually they grew more occupied with the
business of the fair peninsula, "the garden of the Empire," as Dante
calls it, than with the condition of their own ruder and sterner
fatherland. Added to this they took to fighting among themselves, being
divided into two rival factions which elected opposing rulers, the
result being that often no one knew who was head or who was subject.
[Illustration: IMPERIAL CROWN OF GERMANY.]
Frederick Barbarossa was the last to uphold the real authority and power
of Germany. He was a true hero of romance, one of the noblest
expressions of the mediaeval character. When he died the real empire
fell. What remained was but a semblance and a ruin, and it is little
wonder that Germany plunged henceforth into yet greater anarchy,
invented the legend that peace and prosperity would not return to her
until Frederick Red Beard should come back to rule, that giant among
men, falsely reported dead, but who, in truth, was merely resting, sunk
in enchanted sleep among the mountains of Bavaria. There he was waiting
the hour when the ravens should cease to hover around the cloud-capped
peak to emerge surrounded by the trusty Crusaders who shared his
slumbers and restore to Germany the golden age of peace and strength.
It is claimed by some that Barbarossa has so returned, that he came back
as recently as 1870, but whether this be fact or no does not concern us
here. What does concern us is, that in the reign of Frederick Barbarossa
we find mentioned, for the first time as a power in the State, a few of
the many German cities that had arisen under the fostering protection of
Henry the Fowler. Barbarossa found it useful to encourage the growth of
that third estate so needful to the healthy existence of the body
politic. Thus he could pit them against the nobles when it pleased him
to harass his sometime allies; he could also draw from them the moneys
that are the sinews of war. In return for such loyal aid the emperor
freely granted municipal institutions, rights and privileges, exemptions
and favours, little realizing that in so doing he was creating in his
own land that very spirit of independence, that breath of modern
individual freedom, to quench which he was spending his best years and
strength beyond the barrier Alps.
The policy therefore of the "imperial knights" and "knightly emperors"
who preceded and followed Frederick, while in one way it tended to
destroy the unity of Germany as a political state, in the other was the
means by which the cities of Germany, as well as those of Northern
Italy, acquired that remarkable independence, that rapid, splendid
commercial and intellectual development that raised them to the
condition of almost autonomous communities, and made them the wonder,
glory, and pride of the Middle Ages. Citizens and burghers became
freemen, and enjoyed the privileges that fell to this lot. Hence men
loved to crowd into the towns, and these grew up and flourished apace,
until they acquired such power and assumed such proportions as their
first promoters little contemplated.
It was the Lombard league of cities that broke the might of the Holy
Roman Emperors, as the rulers of Germany loved to style themselves, as
they styled themselves, indeed, long after the Empire, to quote
Voltaire, was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.
Ignominiously driven forth from Italy, the German kings at last turned
their steps homeward, where they looked to reign with their old strength
and might, even though the range of their rule had been circumscribed.
They came back to find that long absences, internal and external feuds,
pretenders and usurpers, had so weakened their prestige that their
subjects had learnt to trust to themselves rather than to their
sovereign heads. And when they did return, at last, it was to find
themselves confronted with such another league of cities, as had wrecked
their power abroad, a federation founded for mutual protection and
defence, under whose aegis alone could peace or shelter be found.
This was the irony of fate indeed. To be sovereigns of the world, the
German emperors had staked their national existence; staked and lost.
On a murky and disturbed horizon had arisen a brilliant star, the star
of municipal liberty, helping men to hope for and aspire towards those
better things, to which it alone could lead them. The political anarchy
of Germany, increased by forty years' interregnum, not only had given
birth but strength to the confederation of cities directed against the
brigandage of the princes and nobles, which we first meet with under the
name of Hansa, in the year 1241, at a time when both the Papal and
Imperial thrones were vacant, when in France St. Louis wielded the
sceptre and was strengthening the power of nobles and the church; when
in England Henry III. had enraged the barons by his fondness for foreign
favourites, and when that outburst was preparing which led to the
formation of a popular faction and upraised the patriot, Simon de
Montfort; a time, in short, when the long struggle even now waging
between the people and their rulers was first begun in modern Europe.
[Illustration: COIN OF CHARLEMAGNE.]
PERIOD I.
I.
THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRADE GUILD.
Whether it be that our forefathers were not so prompt to put pen to
paper as we are, or that they purposely avoided written words and
inclined to silence from motives of that combined prudence and love of
mystery-making that distinguished the Middle Ages, the fact remains that
of the real origin and founding of that great federation of industry and
intelligence known to after-years as the Hanseatic League, we have no
accurate knowledge.
We see the tree in full growth, with its widespreading boughs and
branches; of the modest seedling whence it sprung we are in ignorance.
We only know most surely that some such seed there must have been, and
in this case may with certainty infer that the main causes of this
unique combination were the alliance of the North German cities among
themselves, and the protective and social alliances formed by German
merchants who met in foreign parts.
It is obvious that there must have been much commerce, and that it must
have played an important part before either of these circumstances
could have arisen. Therefore in order fully to understand the importance
and bearing of the League we must begin our story earlier than its
history proper would seem to warrant; only thus can we thoroughly
comprehend why the Hanseatic alliance in fostering its own interests, in
aggrandizing and enriching itself, was working also for all humanity,
since it created and enlarged the idea of public right, and thus sowed
the seeds of principles then novel, but on which our modern civilization
is largely founded and with which we are now so familiar that it is
difficult to realize how matters could ever have been otherwise. Can we
grasp, for example, a state of things when wrecking was considered a
legitimate occupation; when the merchandise thus thrown on land became
the possession of the strand dwellers and the ship's crew their
legitimate slaves; when barons who deemed themselves noblemen lay in
wait within their strong castles to pounce on luckless traders, and
either deprived them wholly of their wares or levied black mail under
the name of toll; in short, when humanity towards the weak and
unfortunate was a word of empty sound? Yet so strongly is the love of
enterprise implanted in the Northman's breast that even these obstacles
did not deter him from the desire to enlarge his experience and to widen
the field of his energies. He was the kinsman of those adventurous
Angles and Saxons who had not feared to cross the boisterous German
Ocean and to subjugate Great Britain to themselves; in his veins ran the
blood of those Normans, the scourge and terror of European coasts,
against whom the peoples knew no better protection than the prayer
addressed to Heaven in their despair--"_A furore Normanrorum libera nos
Domine_," a clause that survived in their litanies some time after the
cause was no longer to be feared.
[Illustration: PIRATES.]
Indeed it is not easy to distinguish the earliest traders from corsairs.
It would seem that as occasion served they employed their long narrow
rowing ships to scour the ocean or to carry the produce of the north,
above all the much prized amber. It is thought that they bore it down
even to the Bay of Biscay, nay, perhaps yet further within the Roman
Empire.
Under the intelligent rule of Charles the Great the activity of the
Northman assumed a more pacific character, and we meet with the idea of
merchant and trade guilds, though the latter were not much encouraged by
the emperor, who feared lest they should contain in themselves elements
of corporate union and political revolt. But he fostered the growth of
cities; and in those days trade and commerce filled up even more than at
the present day the daily life of a citizen. In the Middle Ages the
expression "merchant" (_mercator_, negotiator) was on the Continent
actually held as identical with townsman.
It is curious that the early Teuton regarded manual labour as unworthy a
free man, but did not extend this feeling to commerce, and trading
became more and more the occupation of the third estate. We find them on
horseback or in ships traversing many regions to bring their wares to
market and to enlarge their sphere of action, and gradually as their
numbers increased they would meet each other at the various foreign
ports, exchange news, perhaps even wares, and hold together in that
brotherly spirit that men of one nation and one tongue are wont to feel
towards each other on foreign soil. Disputes and difficulties with the
natives must also have been of frequent occurrence, for though the
merchant, as bringer of news and novelties, was usually a welcome
visitor at a time when intercourse between nations can hardly be said to
have existed, yet, on the other hand, he had to reckon with the
prejudice that regards what is strange as equivalent to what is hostile.
Hence the merchants very naturally combined among themselves at the
different ports to protect their common interests, and endeavoured by
all means in their power to enlist in their favour their own sovereigns
and those of the lands they visited.
Thus in the lawbook of London, under the reign of Ethelred II. the
Unready (978), we come across the phrase, "the people of the Emperor
have been judged worthy of the good laws, like to ourselves." This
phrase meant that, in cases of wrong done to the foreigner by the
native, the foreigner should enjoy the protection of the native laws as
though he were a citizen, instead of being treated as heretofore like an
alien. "The people of the Emperor" meant in this case the Teutonic
merchants who traded on the banks of the Thames long before the German
cities had combined to form their famous league, long before they had
founded their factories in Russia, Scandinavia, and Flanders.
London was their earliest foreign settlement, and already in the tenth
century we find that the Germans enjoyed the same rights when their
ships entered British ports as those possessed by the English. In return
for this they had at Easter and Christmas to make a donation of two
pieces of grey and one of brown cloth, ten pounds of pepper, five pairs
of men's gloves, and two barrels of vinegar. The fact that they thus
paid toll in kind and not in money is entirely in accordance with the
ancient usage of guilds and corporations, and the conditions of mediaeval
tenures. Gloves as tokens of good faith and submission, and pepper,
probably because of its rarity as an Eastern product, were forms of
payment frequent in early days.
After this first mention we find that year by year the privileges of the
German were extended in England. The kings desired that they should be
treated as subjects and friends, and after Henry the Lion had married a
daughter of Henry II. of England, the alliance grew yet closer. Thus
special privileges were accorded to them with regard to the sale of
Rhine wine, of the importation of which into Great Britain we now hear
for the first time. It is evident that the commerce of England was
largely in the hands of these foreigners, a circumstance the more
remarkable when we consider that the English have now for some centuries
been the great traders of the world.
What hindered the rise of the British in early days was the feudal
system against which the Germans had rebelled. It was a system
incompatible with burgher life, with independent industry and
enterprise. For many years the English trade was practically restricted
to the exportation of wool, skins, lead, and tin. For where there is no
middle class there can be no real commerce, and this fact explains the
widespread power of the German merchants in England. The lessons they
learnt here they carried farther afield; appearing now as the vanguard
of civilization, now as the pioneers of Christianity, everywhere as
traders desirous to fill their coffers, bearing in mind the maxim that
"union is strength," and clinging closely to one another for mutual
protection and defence. We must remember that travelling in the tenth,
eleventh, and twelfth centuries was not what it is to-day. Dangers
lurked on all sides for the bold mariner who ventured forth in ships of
small size devoid of compass, load-line, chart, and chronometer. It was
slow work to make headway under the difficulties put in the mariner's
path by the elements alone, such as the darkness of night, fogs and
storms, shoals, quicksands, and rocks, to say nothing of the peril from
pirates. The fact, too, that, owing to the want of maps, they kept as
close as possible to land, increased the risks they ran. Arrived at his
destination, the trader would often have to wait long ere he could find
a purchaser for his wares, for in those days the merchant himself
carried his wares to market; there were no commission agents at the
various ports; there were no posts, nor was the art of remitting money
understood. In the stormy winter-time, moreover, neither sailors nor
merchants cared to venture upon the ocean; and owing to the brevity of
the northern summer it often became needful for them to pass the bad
season at whatever place they happened to be. Indeed the hazards
connected with a winter voyage were so great, that in the very earliest
days of union it was determined by common consent that no merchants
should send their ships to sea after St. Martin's Day (November 11th),
and that they should endeavour as far as possible to be in port by
Michaelmas (September 29th). "To sail after Martinmas is to tempt God,"
writes an old chronicler. With the 11th of November the winter season
commenced for the Baltic trading fleet.
Curiously enough a similar custom obtains in Greece to this day. The
Greek coasters do not sail on the seas from December 6th till after the
New Year; during this time the ocean is hallowed for new trips.[1] The
Hanseatics, of course, had to extend the time of exemption in the
northern seas. In the year 1391 a Hanseatic Diet ordained that no
Hanseatic merchant should sail forth from a western to an eastern, or
from an eastern to a western harbour between Martinmas and Candlemas
(November 11th-February 2nd). The climatic conditions of certain ports
obliged this rule to be extended to St. Peter in Cathedra (February
22nd), if they were carrying "precious goods."
It is amusing, however, to find in the older records an exceptional
clause to the effect that herrings and beer, two of the most important
exports of the coast towns, could not possibly be subjected to these
restrictions. The herring, that much prized fasting dish, to the
preparation and distribution of which the Hansa attached such value, had
necessarily to be despatched before February 22nd in order that it might
arrive at its destination before Lent. A no less important reason
determined the transport of beer, which was brewed in most of the export
towns, and which might easily spoil in a more advanced season of the
year. These reasons caused the cities to decide that a ship laden with
beer, herrings, or dried cod, might go to sea on St. Nicholas Day
(December 6th) if it were ready laden by that date.
But this was the exception. The rule was for the trader to winter
wherever he happened to be. In the long, cheerless evenings men liked to
associate with compatriots who spoke the same tongue, and had the same
interests and customs. These men of the Middle Ages were specially
distinguished by their social instincts. They were bound together also
by the element of a common religion, by the desire to worship together,
to fulfil, perchance, some holy vow made in an hour of great danger, to
bury, with the familiar rites of his own Church and country, some less
fortunate comrade who had expired on foreign soil. Thus were formed
those Guilds, or Hanse, as they were called, of merchants on alien soil,
clustering, as a rule, around a church erected by them, and having
besides a general living and storehouse for the safe custody of their
goods. There is nothing strange in the fact that such settlements should
have been formed; what is strange is the power they acquired in the
course of time, until at last, in some places, they dictated terms to
the natives of the country; nay, they even made and unmade their
rulers, until in the end their sway extended from Bergen in the north to
Venice in the south, from Novgorod and Smolensk in the east to York and
London in the west.
[Illustration: NORMAN VESSEL FROM BAYEUX TAPESTRY.]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] [Greek: he thalassa hagiazetai].
II.
FEDERATION.
The free ocean, owned by no king or ruler, has from earliest times been
the highroad of nations, and in the life and movement of the last
eighteen hundred years the Baltic takes a scarcely less important place
than the lovelier, more poetical, and oft-sung Mediterranean. Even
to-day it is more frequented than most of the seas; the traffic through
the Sound being second to that of no other strait.
The Baltic has had its singers too. We need only turn to the strong,
rugged Norse Saga to find that sea extolled as the nurse of mighty
heroes, or the scene of giant combats; and the wilder element that
pervades these heroic tales is in keeping with the rugged iron-bound
coasts that skirt its waters, which do not invite the cooing of idyls,
nor lap the fantasy in luscious dreams. Here all is stern life and
movement; here man must fight hand to hand with nature if he would
extort from her even the bare necessities for his daily nourishment.
The contrast between the North and the South is nowhere more strikingly
seen than in the different characteristics of the two seas, and the
races they have produced. Nor could these characteristics be better
illustrated than by a comparison between the great commercial Republics
of Italy and the Hanseatic federation of Germany. The former, though
individually great, never became a corporate body. Jealousy and rivalry
were ever rife among them, and in the end they destroyed themselves.
Where nature is kind men can better afford to be cruel, and need not
hold together in such close union. Thus it was here.
But if the Baltic is at a disadvantage compared with the Mediterranean
in climate as well as in size, it is not inferior in wealth and variety
of its produce. Mighty rivers, watering many lands discharge themselves
into its bosom, and produce upon their banks rich and needful products,
such as wheat and wool. In the earth are hidden costly metallic
treasures, while the sea itself is a well of opulence from the number
and diversity of the fish that breed in its waters.
It has been well said that since the days of the Hansa, possession of
the Baltic and dominion of the sea are synonymous terms. The Hansa, the
Dutch, and the English have necessarily played the first _role_ in the
Baltic trade. But the trade dates from an even earlier time. Thanks to
coins accidently dropped, and after long years unearthed, we learn that
by way of the Volga the Northmen brought to their distant home the
treasures of the far East--spices, pearls, silks, furs, and linen
garments; and that following the course of the Dwina, the Dnieper, and
the Oder, they found their way to Constantinople, the Black Sea, and
even the Caspian.
Canon Adam, of Bremen, a chronicler of the eleventh century, in one of
those farragoes of fact and fiction in which our forefathers read
history, tells of a great trading city at the month of the Oder, "Julin,
the greatest town of heathen Europe."[2] "It is a famed meeting-place
for the barbarians and Greeks[3] of the neighbourhood, inhabited by
Slavs and other barbarians. Saxons, too, may live there if they do not
declare themselves Christians; for the town is rich in the wares of all
Eastern peoples, and contains much that is charming and precious."
This town of Winetha, of whose exact site we are no longer sure, since
it has been destroyed by the encroachment of the Baltic, was, and is
still, a favourite theme of song and legend with German writers. It is
fabled that it was destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrha, because of its
sins; for its inhabitants had grown hard and proud and disdainful,
trusting in wealth, and despising God. On fine and calm days mariners
can, it is said, behold the city, with its silver ramparts, its marble
columns, its stirring, richly-dressed population, leading, beneath the
ocean, the life which they led while their city was still on firm
ground. Every Good Friday this splendid city, with its towers, palaces,
and walls, is permitted to rise from the ocean, and sun itself in the
daylight, to be again submerged on Easter Day, by this annual fall
recalling to all who might else forget it the severe justice of God.
The extract given above from the old writer impresses on us a fact we
must bear well in mind, namely, that the Baltic mainland littoral at the
time the Teutonic merchants began to ply their trade upon its coast was
not a German possession, but inhabited and owned by a Slavonic people,
who clung to their pagan creed long after their neighbours in the East
and West had become converted to the new religion. And, as usual to this
day, it was the trader who preceded the missionary, and gave the natives
the first idea of a different code of ethics and morality. In the
missionary's track, as at this day, followed the soldier, enforcing by
the sword the arguments that reason had failed to inculcate. It was thus
that German merchants had founded on Slavonic soil the various cities
and ports that were later to be the pride and strength of the Hanseatic
Union. Nor did they rest content with the coast that bounded their own
lands. They traversed the narrow ocean, touching Finland, Sweden, and
Russia, and they established on the isle of Gothland an emporium, which,
in the first Christian centuries, became the centre of the Baltic trade,
and in which "people of divers tongues," as an old writer calls these
visitors, met to exchange their products.
A glance at the map will show why this island assumed such importance.
At a time when the mariner was restricted to short passages, not liking
for long to lose sight of the shore, this spot naturally made a most
favourable halting-place on the road to Finland, Livonia, or Sweden. It
is evident from the chronicles that the Germans soon acquired and
exercised great power in this island, and that they were accorded
special privileges. Thus Pope Honorius II. granted them his protection
for their town and harbour of Wisby, in acknowledgment of the part they
had played in the conversion of the pagan nations.
There are many testimonies to the ancient wealth and commercial
importance of the island of Gothland; among them the amount of Roman,
Byzantine, Anglo-Saxon, and German coins still found on its soil, as
also the number of ruined churches, many of them of great size and
architectural beauty, dotted over its area. To this day the island,
impoverished and depopulated, owns a church to every six hundred
inhabitants. The churches have fallen into sad decay, but yet remain to
testify of past prosperity and glory.
As the number of travelling merchants from various cities increased on
its shores, it was natural that they should hold together more and more
in a tacit offensive and defensive alliance against the aliens, and that
when they returned home from their voyages they should speak of the
mutual benefits rendered and the help that lay in union. Some
influential persons among them doubtless brought pressure to bear upon
the rulers and magistracies of the various cities to give their informal
union an official character. Thus much is certain, that after a time the
merchants from various cities who traded with the Baltic had united
into a federation having a common seal and conforming to a common law,
so that by the middle of the thirteenth century the Hanseatic League was
practically consolidated, although this name for the association only
occurs later.
So far, however, the Union only exercised rights abroad. It was from
Wisby also that the reaction was to come for union at home; but this was
a little later, when its strength was well matured and established.
What really, in the first instance, led the Germans from their inland
towns to the shores of the Baltic was the desire to benefit by the great
wealth that lay hidden in its waters in the form of fish, which could be
obtained in return for the mere labour of fishing. At a time when all
Europe was Catholic, or of the Greek Church, and fasts as well as feasts
strictly observed, the sale of fish was an important industry, and,
above all, of salted fish, since our forefathers were ignorant of the
art of preserving these creatures fresh by means of ice. Now, from the
beginning of the twelfth century until the beginning of the fifteenth,
when they once more altered their course, each spring and autumn the
migratory fish, and especially that most prolific and valued of fish,
the herring, came in great shoals to the shores of Scania,[4] the isle
of Ruegen, and the coasts of Pomerania, tempting the inhabitants of the
strand and near inland hamlets out on to the waters to secure these
treasures. Nor had nature herewith ceased her bounties. At certain
points of the littoral there were salt springs, in which the precious
draught could at once be pickled; and it is certain that the art of
preserving the gifts of the ocean from decay was familiar to the Slav
inhabitants of these districts long before it was known to those of the
German Ocean. Already, in the eleventh century, "salt Kolberg" was famed
as an emporium for salted herrings; and the words of a Polish poem of
rejoicing at a victory won over its inhabitants in 1105 are extant to
this day. It has more historical than literary value. "Formerly," so
jubilantly sang the conquerors of the harbour, "they brought us salt and
stinking fish, now our sons bring them to us fresh and quivering."
Salted herrings became an acknowledged form of tax or tribute, as also a
medium of exchange for inland produce, and it was the value of these
small fish that really first roused the cupidity of the inland dweller
and caused them to compete with and finally oust the pagan Slav. And
Wisby for a time was their great emporium, whence they extended their
power, founding among other towns Novgorod on the Lake of Olm. It was to
Wisby that association dues were paid; it was in Wisby that common money
was deposited. They were kept in the German Church of Our Lady Maria
Teutonicorum. For the churches in those times were buildings as much
secular as religious, being not only places of worship, but also banks,
storehouses, market-places, and sanctuaries. Four aldermen, selected
from important cities of the League, namely, Wisby, Luebeck, Soest, and
Dortmund, had each a key to the common treasure. The rules laid down in
common council, over which these aldermen presided, and whose execution
they enforced, were stringent in the extreme. For example, according to
an old principle of Teutonic laws, a city was made responsible if a
trader suffered malignant shipwreck or was robbed of his goods within
its domain, and if these things occurred they were bound to help the
sufferers to recover their goods or safety.
That it was not always an easy task for the towns to execute this
command may be gathered from the fact that in the earliest times even
the Church looked on flotsam and jetsam as its legitimate dues; indeed,
the revenues of some monasteries and churches were distinctly founded on
this. Even Papal authority, even excommunication in later days, could not
for a long while break the force of a barbarous and cruel custom. All
the booty the waves cast on the shore was designated by the
well-sounding term of _strandgut_ (property of the shore), and was
regarded as a gift from Providence. The dwellers on the Baltic shore
held so naive a belief with respect to this matter that in their daily
prayers they innocently asked God to give them a good harvest of
_strandgut_.
Luebeck in 1287, demanding from Reval, on the basis of its treaties, the
restitution of stranded property, is told frankly by the governor of
the city that "however many and long and large letters they may send him
across the seas," yet his vassals would hold to the rights of their
land, and "if," he adds, "on your letters or your prayers your goods are
restored to you, I will suffer my right eye to be put out."
Still by steady persistence the German cities got their will, and of
course they exercised it first on members of their union. The defaulting
city had to pay a fine of something like two to three hundred pounds of
our money to the common fund of the Union, and, in event of a
recurrence, was threatened with expulsion from the community. This
punishment was called _unhansing_, and it was inflicted several times,
and was only atoned for by the heaviest penalties not only of money
tributes, but often of pilgrimages to some distant sacred shrine, to
wipe out the disgrace that the city had drawn down, not on itself alone,
but also on its brethren of the League, by the fact that there could be
such a black sheep among them.
Such, briefly, was the empire that, by the middle of the thirteenth
century, was exercised by a community of German men of commerce, who had
their seat of control, not at home, but on a foreign soil. Such,
briefly, was the rise of these powerful merchants who not only dared to
dictate terms to distant cities, but were absolutely obeyed. Such,
briefly, was the transformation of bands of pirates and adventurous
traders into a peace-loving and industrious association.
Let us now take a rapid glance at what had occurred meantime in the Holy
Roman Empire and the towns.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Julin in Danish, Wolin in Sclavonic, Winetha in Saxon. A learned
author, pointing out the community of origin of the Venetians of the
Adriatic, and the Venedes or Vends of the Baltic, draws a parallel
between the Venice of the Adriatic, and the Venice (Winetha) of the
north. "Singular destiny," he writes, "this of the two commercial
cities, which seem the issue of one trunk, that grew up at the same time
in the Adriatic and the Baltic, almost under the same name, the one to
arrive at the greatest splendour, enriched by the trade of the East, the
other to serve as a starting-point for the commerce of the north."
[3] Under the term of Greeks, Adam, and other writers of the period,
include the Russians, on account of their adhesion to the Greek form of
the Catholic Church.
[4] It is worth mentioning that on the coast of Scania, once so rich in
herring fishery, this industry is now almost extinct. The fish rarely
come into these waters, owing perhaps to the increase of traffic in the
Sound (for herrings, as is well known, dislike noise and movement and
seek out quiet seas); or because the great whale fisheries of Greenland
have altered their course, for whales now pursue less often than
formerly the shoals of herrings that were thus forced to take refuge in
the Sound; or this may be simply due to the diminution of the crustacean
called _Astacus harengum_, on which the fish so largely feeds--the fact
in any case remains.
III.
FOREIGN TRADE.
It is of importance to the study of the Hanseatic confederation to
remember that the settlements made by the German merchants in their
various foreign and distant ports, though permanent in themselves, were
inhabited almost exclusively by a floating and ever-changing population.
True, the traders who had done good business in this spot would return
season after season. But they did not form an established colony, they
did not take up their permanent abode abroad, and hence the connection
with their native towns was never broken; they remained ever in touch
with home. Now the pettiest trader of one of the German cities enjoyed
in the Steelyard in London, in the St. Peter's Court of Novgorod, in the
factory of Bergen, in the church of Wisby, and many other places, a
measure of personal freedom, a number of privileges such as were
frequently absolutely denied him in his fatherland, or doled out
grudgingly by his territorial lord.
When the merchants had first appeared abroad they were protected more or
less by their suzerains. Thus Barbarossa had given them the assistance
of his strong name, and extorted for them certain important privileges
from the King of England. The same holds good with regard to the Duke of
Saxony. But as the emperors grew to care less and less for purely German
affairs, as the Saxon ducal power was broken, as the German-speaking
lands became the camp of anarchy, confusion, and lordlessness, where
rightful and unlawful sovereigns quarrelled with each other, where ruler
fought ruler, noble robbed noble, where, in short, the game of "devil
take the hindmost" was long played with great energy, the towns that had
silently and gradually been acquiring much independent strength,
perceived that if they would save their prosperity, nay, their very
existence, they must take up a firm position against the prevailing
social conditions.
Founded upon trade, with trade as their vital element, it was natural
that traders also should have a mighty voice in the councils of these
towns. The councillors indeed were chosen chiefly from among the leading
merchants, most of whom had been abroad at some time or other of their
career, and tasted the sweets of wider liberty. None of these were
insensible to the pressure put upon them by their returning fellow
citizens that they should struggle in their common interests to maintain
a position of strength at home, a position which could not fail to
increase the security of their settlements abroad. For owing to this
long period of political chaos, the merchants abroad noticed or fancied
that the name of the Holy Roman Empire no longer carried the same weight
as formerly; that to threaten those who overstepped their licenses
towards them with the empire's power had ceased to have any serious
effect. Yet unless there was some real power at their back, how, at this
lawless time, could the Germans feel sure that the treaties they had
made with the aliens would be upheld? Well then, urged the foreign
traders, what our emperors cannot or will not do for us, busy as they
are with Italian matters, or with self-destruction, we must do for
ourselves.
And quietly, unobtrusively, but very securely, they formed among
themselves that mutual offensive and defensive alliance of whose exact
date and origin we are ignorant, but of whose great power in later times
the world was to stand in awe and admiration. The purpose of the union
was to uphold the respect for the German name abroad by a strong
association of cities willing and able, if need were, to enforce its
demands by force of arms.
Mutual protection, moreover, was needed as much, if not more, at home.
The highroads, never too safe from plundering barons, had grown yet less
so during the lawless and fighting period that followed the fall of the
Hohenstauffen dynasty. These, too, must be guarded, or how could
merchandize be brought from place to place. Peace and security of
property, being the very corner-stones of commerce, did the merchant
seek above all to secure, and since nothing in this life can be obtained
without a struggle, these cities had to fight hard, not only with moral
force, but often with the sword, in order to extort from their rulers
these elementary rights of civilization.
[Illustration: HIGHROAD.]
Thus the Hansa from its earliest origin, though organized for the ends
of peace, was from its commencement and throughout its existence a
militant body, ever watchful to punish infringement of its rights, ever
ready to extend its authority, ever prompt to draw the sword, or send
forth its ships against offenders.
It is indeed a significant fact, that never once in the whole course of
its history did it draw the sword aggressively, or against its own
members. In its domestic disputes it never needed to exercise other than
moral pressure. But the cities as they grew in power almost assumed the
proportions of small democracies, and it is well-known that democracies,
save for purposes of self-defence, are not so ready to rush into wars as
monarchies. War is the pastime of kings and statesmen; of men who have
nothing to lose, and perchance much to gain in this pursuit; of men who
do not stake life and limb, health and home and trade. The wars waged by
the Hansa were never in one single instance aggressive. Like all
confederations, whose life nerve is commerce, the Hansa ever sought to
avoid war, and only seized the sword as _ultima ratio_. It is noteworthy
that its ships were designated in its acts as "peace ships"
(_Friedenschiffe_), and even the forts it built for protection were
described as "peace burgs" (_Friedeburgen_).
The germ of manly independence once awakened in the burghers grew apace,
and as they felt the benefits of this new spirit they learnt that with
it they could cow their would-be despotic lordlings, and exact from them
respect and even aid. Cologne was the first among the older cities to
emancipate itself. It is hard for us to realize the enslavement of the
middle class in former days. For example, a merchant might not wear
arms, no luxury, but an absolute necessity in those wild times.
Frederick Barbarossa permitted him to carry a sword, but in order that
there might be no confusion of social castes, he decreed that "the
travelling merchant shall not gird his sword, but attach it to his
saddle, or lay it on his cart, so that he may not wound the innocent,
but yet may protect himself against robbers." The inference in this
clause, that only a member of the third estate would be likely to hurt
an innocent person, is amusing in its _naivete_. As for the peasant, if
he were found with arms upon him, a lance or a sword, he had to suffer
severe punishment. The knightly weapon was broken across the back of any
serf who dared to carry it.
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.
Further individual aid was given to the new idea of personal liberty for
all conditions of men by an apostle of freedom, Arnold of Brescia. This
eloquent pupil of the French monk Abelard, the enlightened philosopher,
the lover of Heloise, himself a priest, was the most powerful opponent
of the clerical ideas in the twelfth century, which tried to keep down
the people in order that through their ignorance and dependence they
might be ruled with absolute and unquestioned sway--ideas by no means
wholly extinct to this day among this class of men. Banished by the Pope
as a political and ecclesiastical heretic, Arnold fled to Southern
Germany, where he preached his doctrines to eager ears, and roused an
enthusiasm that laid the train for a later Church reformation, and
helped towards the development of a new social state. He awakened or
fostered the thought of personal liberty, a liberty not only consistent
with corporate union, but part and parcel of the same; a condition alone
worthy a rational human being, who, while doing whatever pleases him
best, never loses sight of the fact that he has only a right to follow
this desire so long as his liberty does not trench upon that of his
neighbour and brother man.
[Illustration: SALTERS' HALL, FRANKFORT.
(_From an engraving in the British Museum._)]
John Stuart Mill had not yet defined the meaning of the much abused
term, liberty; Madame Roland had not yet ejaculated upon the scaffold
her true and piteous cry, "Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy
name!" but Arnold of Brescia understood the meaning of the word, and
what was equally important, he made his hearers understand it too. He
did not merely preach vague doctrines, he preached sound political
economy and social ethics.
And thus the Germans learnt from the Italians both the true meaning of
liberty and the virtue of municipal institutions, which latter had, in
the first instance, sprung up in Lombardy from a Germanic root; its
essential features being a free choice of the civic rulers from the
fittest elements, a right to govern themselves, and if need be to form
alliances, and the right to tax themselves. Further, they learnt to
recognize the principle that the final decision should not rest with one
person, but with the mass of the inhabitants. This autonomy in all inner
affairs, founded on Italian models, became in the course of several
generations the most cherished possession of all those German cities
whence sprang the Hanseatic League. There was, however, this difference
that, unlike the Lombard cities, the Germans ever acknowledged the
supremacy of the emperor, and never developed either into complete
oligarchies or democracies, though in their statutes when they were at
the height of their power, it was distinctly stated that decisions in
important matters did not rest "with the general council, but with the
people."
[Illustration: MEDIAEVAL CITY. (_From a drawing by Albert Duerer._)]
In the thirteenth century municipal privileges grew and extended, for
though the townsfolk were supposed only to elect their own magistrates
under the sanction of the bailiffs of their respective territorial
lords, these functionaries, who generally lived in a strong castle
within the city or just upon its walls, became only too ready to be
bribed into compliance with the burgher will as the distresses of the
empire caused their lords to require more and more of the hard cash and
other solid assistance which the rapid progress of the cities in wealth
could furnish. Of course circumstances were not the same in all places.
In many there was open warfare between the lordlings and the townsmen,
and many a sacked and gutted castle remained to testify to the successes
of the third estate.
As the baronial strongholds were razed, the towns built up on their
sites strong citadels, walls, and moats, which they defended by a
burgher militia hardened to fatigue, brave, determined; who not only
dared to face the resentment of the barons, but often extorted from them
by force what they could not up to that date buy from them or obtain as
a meed of justice. It was no infrequent event in the thirteenth century
for a town to be besieged by its territorial lord; and these sieges,
like that of Troy, would last many years, for the art of reducing strong
places was but little developed, and wars, even if they lasted longer,
were less terribly destructive than in our day.
The cities, having the wealth, were most frequently the victors, and it
would even come about that as terms of peace their enemy would hire
himself out to his vassals as the legal and bound defender of his own
subjects, for a stated number of years. Further, the cities often bought
from these princelings the lands outside their walls; the forests,
mines, brine springs, even the highroads and streams, thus drawing into
their power anything that might assist in diminishing the danger from
all that could impede their commerce. They would also ask the cession of
villages, of tolls; next the right to coin money. In a word, they made
use of every means that came in their way, in accordance with local and
momentary circumstances, to extend and consolidate their power.
What wonder that the burghers feeling their strength and seeing the
weakness of the empire turned its dissensions and disorders to profit,
and began to make among themselves, quietly and unostentatiously,
alliances for maintaining peace in their immediate vicinities, for
keeping the roads cleared of robbers, for opposing the black mail levied
by their feudal lords, and anything else that offended against "the
common freedom of the merchant."
Curiously enough such alliances were in direct contravention of the
existing laws of the German Empire. At the Diet held in Worms, 1231, the
princes had expressed marked disapproval of such leagues, in which they
clearly recognized a dangerous rival power. But the cities seemed little
troubled by this interdict. They, on their part, recognized that the
time had come for a firm union, and adhesion of the weak against the
strong, and more and more, as they saw that the empire threatened from
within and from without was visibly falling asunder. For what respect
could be felt for a crown which was at last actually put up for sale to
the highest bidder, and acquired by the rich but otherwise impotent
brother of the English Henry III., Duke Richard of Cornwall?
[Illustration: ROBBER KNIGHTS. (_From Fritoch._)]
The towns of the Rhine were the first to form themselves into an
alliance, a fact that can scarcely surprise us when we remember how
thickly set is that lovely river with the now ruined strongholds of what
erst were robber lords. And the Baltic towns were not slow to follow in
their wake, forming a League "for the benefit of the common merchant."
These cities even settled the contingent which each town had to place at
their common disposal, a great stone of possible stumbling being
skilfully avoided by a phrase which occurs in a contract of 1296: "If
the fight goes against a prince who is lord of one of the cities, this
city shall not furnish men, but only give money." The Rhenish section
alone was able to put into the field some eleven hundred crossbowmen and
six hundred stout galleys; no mean army in those days.
In a word, the times were out of joint, and the people had to help
themselves, and did so. Sprung from modest sources, having its origin in
true neighbourly feeling, what was at first a mere association of
merchants had developed into an association of cities. The banner under
which they had grouped themselves bore the device "freedom for the
common merchant at home and abroad," and this device became the elastic
but durable bond, which, keeping them together, made them a mighty
power. Its very elasticity was the cause of its strength, giving it that
facility of expansion and freedom from rigidity which in more modern
times has made the glory and the might of England, whose constitution
is distinguished by a like principle of flexibility.
A naive North German chronicler of the thirteenth century telling of the
various alliances formed, writes: "But the matter did not please the
princes, knights, and robbers, especially not those who for ever put
forth their hands for booty; they said it was shameful that merchants
should rule over high-born and noble men." Undaunted, however, by such
objections, the cities continued to form alliances, to make contracts
among themselves until these contracts assumed the extent, dignity, and
importance of those made by the towns with their foreign settlements.
Thus, by slow degrees, cautiously, but very surely, the Hanseatic League
took its origin, and thus it grew until it became an independent popular
force, a state within a state. Like everything that the Christian Middle
Ages called into life, the _Vehmgericht_ (Vehmic Tribunal), Gothic
architecture, the knightly orders, it bore strongly the impress of
individuality.
The origin of the name of Hansa is wrapped in some mystery. The word is
found in Ulfila's Gothic translation of the Bible, as signifying a
society, a union of men, particularly in the sense of combatants. He
applies it to the band of men who came to capture Jesus in the Garden of
Gethsemane. Later on Hansa occurs as a tax on commercial transactions,
and also as the sum, a very low one, which the various cities paid as
their entrance fee into the association.
But our League did not yet officially bear that title; it acquired it
from the date of its first great war with Waldemar of Denmark and the
peace of Stralsund (1370). Then it won name and rank at the point of the
sword, and after this it came to be classed among the most redoubted
powers of the period, being thus by no means the first, and probably not
the last, example of the lift given to civilization by so barbarous a
thing as the powder cart.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] "Othello," act i. sc. 3.
IV.
THE HANSA FIGHTS.
Whoever looks on the old Schuetting at Luebeck, the building whence the
herring fishers were wont to start upon their voyages, and notes its
armorial bearings, three herrings upon a plain gold shield, should go
back mentally a few centuries and call to mind the fact that the badge
of this fish is the emblem of a might which many a time set forth from
this spot bent upon commerce or needful warfare, and which for
generations exercised great power over Northern Europe.
The district of Scania, which forms the southernmost portion of the
present land of Sweden, was until 1658 almost exclusively the property
of Denmark. The Danes, a turbulent and maritime people, had in the early
times of our era been converted to Christianity at the point of the
sword by the emperors of Germany, and during the 10th and 11th centuries
these emperors exercised a recognized suzerainty over the Danish kings.
Hence German traders easily obtained privileges among a people who were
by no means inclined to commerce themselves, but who welcomed none the
less eagerly the products that the strangers brought, above all, the
heady ale brewed by the Easterlings.
But as the might of the empire declined and the Danes had grown strong,
thanks to wise rulers, the people grew restive under the restrictions
imposed upon them, and tried to secure their independence. Under
Waldemar the Great (1157 to 1182), the country had acquired an important
position, which his successors strengthened. This increase of might
coincided with the German depression and with the change of course at
spawning time that the herring suddenly took in the twelfth century.
Strange that a little fish should have had such great power over
mankind; yet it is not going beyond the strict truth to state that the
mysterious wanderings of the herring determined throughout several
centuries the whole course of northern commerce. During the Middle Ages,
upon the appearance of the herring now on this coast and now on that,
the wealth and prosperity of the whole districts depended. Herring
fishing became a branch of industry that decided the fate of nations. To
it the Hansa owes a large portion of its riches and its power; in the
herring fisheries, when in the year 1425 the fish began to spawn in the
German Ocean, the Netherlands found the foundation stone of their wealth
and dignity. Indeed, it was said later, with scant exaggeration, that
Amsterdam was built upon herrings.
Now, as masters of the Belt and the Sound, the Danes were able, if they
chose, greatly to harass the Hanseatic traders and fishermen. For many
years they had not put forth their power, or rather the Hanseatic
towns, with the diplomatic astuteness that greatly distinguished them,
had averted the possibility of such danger by wise concessions of
tributes and privileges. Still disputes would arise, things did not
always go off peaceably, and in 1227 the Hansa towns won their first
military laurels, defeating the Danes in the battle of Bornhoved and
permanently weakening the power of their troublesome neighbours in
Northern Germany.
A few years later Luebeck, almost unassisted, threatened in its
independence by the Danish king, won a great naval victory over its
neighbours; and gained yet another in 1249, when Eric II. had ventured
to attack some of its ships upon the open seas. On this occasion the
merchant townsmen even seized and sacked Copenhagen and planted their
flag in Zealand.
It was no very easy position which the Baltic cities (for it was they
who were chiefly threatened) had to maintain against the Danish kings as
the power of the latter increased. For with their power, their rapacity
and cupidity increased also, and this made them look on the rich
commercial towns with a longing desire to absorb them into their own
possessions. These, though extensive, were poor, and their inhabitants
neither industrious nor prosperous. Further, the Danes, Norwegians, and
Swedes were in constant feud with one another, and each of these states
turned an eye of greed towards the flourishing Baltic cities, whose
possession they coveted. The two Scandinavian powers, in particular,
constantly harassed the German merchants by their scanty comprehension
of treaty rights, their breaches of faith, and it was not easy work for
the cities to steer clear between the three kingdoms, that were now at
deadly feud with one another, now convulsed by civil wars, now united in
a policy of rapine.
It would be tedious to enumerate the quarrels, jealousies, and feuds
that agitated these kingdoms during the early years of the fourteenth
century; to note in detail the trouble they caused to the Hanseatic
traders, and the need they awoke among them of holding together in as
close an alliance at home as they had hitherto done abroad. It was
necessary to be ever wakeful and mistrustful; and to watch jealously for
the faintest signs of an infringement of privileges.
In 1326 a lad of some twelve summers, whose memory was destined to be
handed down to posterity as that of a hero of romance, ascended the
throne of Denmark. In allusion to the famous fable about the election of
a king of the frogs, an old writer speaks of this event as a choice by
the frogs of the stork as ruler instead of the log. For Waldemar, as he
was called, proved indeed no log and no puppet in the hands of his
ambitious barons. As a mere youth he gave evidence of his strength and
determination, and under his aegis Denmark acquired great wealth and
consideration, and would have attained to yet more had not Waldemar,
with mistaken judgment, drawn the reins too tight, until from a wise
ruler he became a despot. It was his aim and policy to nationalize his
country, to drive away the foreigners who utilized it for their warlike
and commercial ends. He found it small and distracted with dissensions;
after twenty years' rule he could point to marked success and change,
for he had made Denmark respected and feared at home and abroad. History
knows him as Waldemar III.,[6] story and song as Waldemar Atterdag, a
nickname that well expresses the salient points of his character. For
the name of Atterdag, which means "there is yet another day," refers to
the king's constant habit of using this expression in the sense that if
to-day a goal is not reached, it is not therefore unattainable, that a
man must wait, never despair, and never lose sight of his aim.
And Waldemar for his part never did. He pursued his purposes with a
strenuousness and a patience, which contrasted favourably with the
vacillating attitude of his princely northern contemporaries, and which
was only matched and finally surpassed by the same strenuous and patient
policy on the part of the Baltic towns, and especially on the part of
Luebeck, their astute and diplomatic leader.
Nor was it only good aims that the king followed with such persistence.
He was an implacable, a relentless enemy, who never forgot an injury,
and who waited with cruel calmness the day of vengeance.
In Waldemar's state policy there often appeared mixed motives;
considerations of the most personal character were blended with care for
the welfare of his state, and when one should alone have been
considered, both frequently played a part. It was this that led to his
ultimate ruin; like too many clever people he overreached himself.
Therefore, while the early years of his reign were really a blessing to
distracted and impoverished Denmark, of the latter part a contemporary
chronicler complains that--
"In the times of Waldemar, every tradition of our ancestors, all
paternal laws, all the freedom of the Danish Church was abolished. The
rest of the soldier, the merchant, the peasant, was so curtailed, that
in the whole kingdom no time remained to eat, to repose, to sleep, no
time in which the people were not driven to work by the bailiffs and
servants of the king, at the risk of losing his royal favour, their
lives, and their goods." In a word, Waldemar worked his subjects hard,
and even the most patriotic singers cannot present him as a wholly
attractive figure. He is rather a character to be feared than loved.
The Hansa was not slow to recognize this. It saw that it was face to
face with a man whom no obstacles could deter, to whom even treaty
obligations were not sacred, and who was liable to be swayed by
incalculable caprice. That it was right in its estimate and its fears
Waldemar was not slow to make known, so soon as his power at home was
fully secured.
The first attack upon the Hansa towns was made by the Danish king in the
shape of interference with their fishing rights on Scania, breaking the
contracts which his predecessors, and even he himself, had made, and
demanding extortionate fees for the renewal of the time-honoured
privileges. Diplomatic negotiations were entered upon, but Waldemar
befooled the deputies from the cities, wasting their time with idle
discussion of irrelevant matters, and refusing to come to a real
agreement. After long and fruitless debate the ambassadors of the Hansa
towns departed home anxious and discouraged. Ten weeks after their
return the cities were startled by the terrible news that Waldemar, in a
time of perfect peace, without previous warning or declaration of war,
had suddenly invaded the island of Gothland, and seized, sacked, and
plundered the rich city of Wisby, the northern emporium of the Hansa's
wealth.
Such a blow was aimed not only at Wisby, but at all the Hanseatic towns;
from that moment diplomatic negotiations with Waldemar were no more to
be thought of. This act meant war; war at all costs and at all risks.
"In the year of Christ 1361 King Waldemar of Denmark collected a great
army, and said unto them that he would lead them whither there was gold
and silver enough, and where the pigs eat out of silver troughs. And he
led them to Gothland, and made many knights in that land, and struck
down many people, because the peasants were unarmed and unused to
warfare. He set his face at once towards Wisby. They came out of the
town towards him, and gave themselves up to the mercy of the king, since
they well saw that resistance was impossible. In this manner he obtained
the land, and took from the burghers of the town great treasures in gold
and silver, after which he went his ways."
Thus the contemporary chronicler of the Franciscans of St. Catherine at
Luebeck. By a skilful _coup de main_ Waldemar had indeed made himself
master of Gothland, then under Swedish suzerainty, and of the wealthy
city of Wisby. His aim had been booty, and he had it in rich measure in
the shape of gold, of fur, and silver vessels.
Legend tells that the year previous to the attack Waldemar had visited
Gothland disguised as a merchant, securing the love of a goldsmith's
daughter, whose father held an influential position in Wisby, and who,
in her loving trustfulness revealed to him the strength and weakness of
the island and town, thus helping him to secure the spot that was
rightly regarded as the key to the three northern realms.
The inhabitants, unprepared, unarmed, had been unable to offer much
resistance. It was a terribly bloody fight this that raged outside the
walls of Wisby; the site of it is marked to this day by a cross erected
on the spot where 1,800 Gothlanders fell.
"Before the gates of Wisby the Goths fell under the hands of the
Danes,"[7] runs the inscription.
As was the custom among the conquerors of olden days, Waldemar, it is
related, entered the city, not by means of the gates that had been
forcibly surrendered to him, but by a breach he specially had made for
this purpose in the town walls. The gap too is shown to this hour.
When he had plundered to his heart's content, aided in his finding of
the treasure by his lady love, after he had added to his titles of King
of the Danes and Slavs, that of the King of Gothland, Waldemar
proceeded to return home in his richly laden ships. But it was decreed
that he should not bring his booty to port. A great storm arose in
mid-ocean. It was with difficulty that the king escaped with his life;
his ships were sunk, his coveted hoards buried in the waves.
There are still shown at Wisby the two fine twelve-sectioned rose
windows of St. Nicholas' Church, in which, according to tradition, there
once burned two mighty carbuncles that served as beacons to light the
seamen safely into harbour in the day of the town's prosperity. These
stones, it is said, were torn from their place and carried off by
Waldemar. The Gothland mariner still avers that on certain clear nights
he can see the great carbuncles of St. Nicholas' Church gleaming from
out the deep.
As for Waldemar's lady love, whom it is said he abandoned as soon as his
purpose was attained, she was seized on by the infuriated townspeople
and buried alive in one of the turrets of the city walls, known to this
day as the "Virgin Tower."
It is difficult to decide whether Waldemar foresaw the full danger and
bearing of his high-handed step; whether he knew what it meant to
plunder a city like Wisby, one of the strongest arms of the Hansa. He
had certainly thrown the gauntlet down to the towns; he was quickly to
learn that the power which some years ago had successfully beaten his
predecessors had but grown in strength since that date.
On the first news of Waldemar's treachery, the Baltic cities laid an
embargo on all Danish goods, and then called together a hasty council
in which it was decreed that until further notice all intercourse with
Denmark should be forbidden on pain of death and loss of property. Then
they put themselves into communication with Norway and Sweden in order
in the event of a war to secure the alliance of these countries, an
assistance that was the more readily promised because their sovereigns
were at feud with Waldemar. To defray the war costs it was determined to
levy a poundage tax on all Hanseatic exported goods.
A fleet was got ready with all possible speed, and when everything was
in order, the towns sent a herald to Waldemar with a formal declaration
of war.
In May, 1362, their ships appeared in the Sound, and brilliant success
at first attended their arms. Copenhagen was plundered, its church bells
carried to Luebeck as the victor's booty. At Scania the cities looked to
meet their northern allies, in order in conjunction with them to take
possession of the Danish strongholds on the mainland. Here, however,
disappointment awaited them. Whether lack of money or fear had deterred
the northern kings from keeping their word is unknown; at any rate, they
did not put in an appearance with their armies.
The Burgomaster of Luebeck, Johann Wittenborg, who commanded the
Hanseatic fleet, saw himself forced to use the men he had on board for
the land attack. He held himself the more justified in doing this since
he deemed he had so thoroughly routed the Danes, that from the side of
the sea there was nothing to be feared.
This decision was rash, and Wittenborg was to atone for it with his
life. Already it seemed as if the stronghold Helsingborgs was in his
hands--he had been besieging it sixteen days with great catapults--when
Waldemar suddenly appeared with his fleet upon the Scanian coast,
surprised the Hansa vessels that had been left with but a feeble crew,
and carried off twelve of the best ships, and most of their provisions
and weapons. The consequence was that Wittenborg saw himself obliged to
return with the remnant of his army to Luebeck.
He found the city embittered against him in the highest degree for his
defeat; though it saw that the main guilt of the disastrous end of the
war lay with the faithless northern kings. The stern free city deemed it
right, not only towards itself, but also to its sister towns, to punish
heavily the unsuccessful leader. Wittenborg had hardly landed ere he was
arrested, chained, and thrown into a dungeon. Here he dragged out a
weary year of imprisonment. In vain some of the cities pleaded his
cause, in vain his friends tried to obtain his deliverance. Luebeck was a
stern mistress, who knew no mercy, and could brook no ill success. In
her dictionary, as in that of youth, according to Richelieu in Bulwer's
play, there might be no such word as "fail." Wittenborg had, of course,
been at once deprived of his burgomagisterial honours; a year after his
defeat his head publicly fell under the executioner's axe in the
market-place of Luebeck. Burial in the councillors' church was denied
him. He was laid to rest in the cloisters of the Dominicans the spot
where all criminals were interred in Luebeck during the Middle Ages; the
spot where, down to our own era, all criminals passing that way to
execution received from the pious monks a soothing drink as last
farewell to life. Further, Wittenborg's name is absent from the record
of the burgomasters; an omission in this place, which doubtless has the
same meaning as the absence of Marino Falieri's portrait among the long
row of Doges in the Venetian Palace.
The election of a burgomaster as leader of the troops is quite in
character with the spirit of those times. Such trade warriors are not
uncommon in the history of the Hansa. Within the roomy stone hall that
served as entry and store-room to those ancient dwelling-houses, it was
usual to see helmet, armour, and sword hanging up above stores of
codfish, barrels of herrings, casks of beer, bales of cloth, or what not
besides.
To this day the stranger is shown in the marketplace at Luebeck the stone
on which Wittenborg sat before his execution, and in the collection of
antiquities is the chair of torture in which he was borne thither. So
sternly did the Hansa punish.
There exists an entirely unauthenticated fable that Wittenborg had
betrayed his trust in return for a dance with the Queen of Denmark,
promising her as a reward the island of Bornholm. That the fable had
some currency is proved by the fact that for a long while there survived
in Luebeck the expression, "He is dancing away Bornholm," when some one
light-heartedly did an unjustifiable deed. The story has given one of
the younger German poets, Geibel, the theme for a famous ballad.
Further, it was fabled that twice a year the Burgomaster and council of
Luebeck solemnly drank Hippokras out of silver cups made from
Wittenborg's confiscated property, repeating the while a Low German
distich that reminded them of their stern duty and their predecessor's
sad fate. Modern accurate research, pitiless in the destruction of
picturesque legends has discovered that these cups were not made till
the sixteenth century, and were paid for by a tax levied on Bornholm,
then in rebellion.
After the cruel defeat due to Wittenborg, the cities concluded an
armistice with Waldemar, an armistice that might easily have been
converted into a permanent peace, for the towns were not eager to fight.
It was too great an interruption to trade. Moreover, the war expenses
had exceeded their calculations, times were bad, harvests scant, food
scarce, and, to crown all, the Black Death had reappeared in Europe and
was devastating whole districts.
But Waldemar had resolved to break entirely the power of the Hansa. Once
more he befooled it in diplomatic negotiations, and in the midst of the
truce attacked its herring settlements at Scania, and captured some
merchant vessels that passed through the Belt.
The towns held council, Waldemar was offered terms. Yet again he
befooled them, and when he soon after married his only child Margaret,
celebrated in history as the Semiramis of the North, to Hakon, heir to
the thrones of Sweden and Norway, thus preparing the union of the three
northern kingdoms under one crown, the towns, alarmed at the mere
prospect, felt that now or never they must secure their independence.
In November, 1367, deputies from the Baltic and inland towns met in
conclave in the large council chamber of the Town Hall of Cologne, a
meeting that became the foundation act of the recognized and open
constitution of the Hanseatic League, and on which account the hall
still bears the name of Hansa Room. It seems certain that here for the
first time was drawn up an Act, modified, renewed, altered in course of
time, but yet always the fundamental basis of the League. There is no
older Hanseatic document than this of the congress known as the Cologne
Confederation, when the deputies of seventy-seven towns met to declare
most solemnly that "because of the wrongs and injuries done by the King
of Denmark to the common German merchant, the cities would be his
enemies and help one another faithfully." It was decided that such
cities as were too weak or too distant to help actively in the war,
should do so by the contribution of subsidies. It was further enacted
that such cities as would not join in the war should be held as outside
the League, with whom its burghers and merchants should have nothing
more in common, neither buying from, nor selling to, them, nor allowing
them to enter their ports, or unlade goods in their domains.
[Illustration: RATH-HAUS, COLOGNE.]
Waldemar was warned of what the cities had resolved against him. He
replied with an untranslatable pun, in which he likened the Hansa to a
flock of geese, who deafened him with their cackle. Warned once more,
Waldemar threatened the cities that he would complain of them to their
spiritual and temporal lords; among them the Pope and the emperor. The
cities had forestalled him. They had sent copies of a letter, stating
their grievances against a king whom they denounced as "a tyrant and a
pirate," to some thirty spiritual and temporal lords. In the letter to
the emperor, Luebeck, whence all the letters were dated, excused itself
in particular for not responding to Charles's recent invitation to join
his Roman expedition on the plea of its home difficulties, while humbly
giving thanks for the honour done it by the offer. It also justified
itself for not paying during the past year to Waldemar a tax decreed by
Charles, since this king, it wrote, "seeks to withdraw your town of
Luebeck from the emperor and the empire." It grieved to state that the
emperor lived too far off to shield by his arms his weak and neglected
flock in the northern region of the empire. Therefore the emperor's most
gracious majesty must not take it amiss if the cities, with God's help,
did something towards their own protection.
Worded with all the servile language of the period, Luebeck yet in this
letter made it pretty evident to its supreme ruler that it meant to
stand on its own feet, as it knew too well how unsteady were its
sovereign's.
Yet, again, Waldemar was warned of the growing strength, the earnest
purpose of the League, and this time he seems to have been alarmed, for
he tried to detach from it many of its members, and to win them over to
his own cause. He received from the towns with whom he opened
negotiations, the following reply, which proves how perfected and
tightly secured were already the reciprocal engagements of the League.
"The Hanseatic League," they said, "having resolved on war, they must
submit themselves to that general resolution which bound them all."
The cackling geese whom Waldemar had despised seemed to have grown into
formidable eagles overnight. Lordlings and princes too, many of whom had
private injuries to avenge, had joined the League or promised their
support. The Hansa had set up a rival and successful king in Sweden, and
it now proposed nothing less than to dismember Denmark, and to
distribute its provinces to its own friends and allies. It did not
desire to retain possession of it. It was ever its policy to restrict
actual possessions, but to seek that these should be as far as possible
in the hands of friends who would grant it the concessions and
privileges needful for commerce. Thus could be applied to it what a
Roman said of the peoples he subjugated, "I do not ask for gold; I only
desire to rule over those who have gold." With this difference, however,
that the Hansa, without wishing to conquer provinces, wished to draw to
itself whatever profits could be found therein.
It was on the Sunday of Quasimodo, April 16, 1368, that all the Hansa
ships were to meet in the Sound for a combined attack on Zealand. The
Easter days approached. All Northern Germany awaited anxiously the
moment for the decisive combat to commence; when suddenly the cities
learnt that on Maundy Thursday Waldemar had secretly fled from his
dominions, alarmed by the decision and strength shown by his enemies. In
a ship laden with much treasure he had landed on the Pomeranian coasts
to go further east and avoid the impending squall, leaving a viceroy in
his stead, whom he authorized to conclude peace or carry on war.
Waldemar's cowardly attitude could not of course alter that of the
cities. In that same month of April the war began and raged all the
summer, the Hansa meeting with but little resistance. With the winter
came a truce, after the fashion of those times, but in the summer war
was renewed and for two years the Hansa ships harassed the Danish coasts
and waters, sacked their cities and plundered their treasures. The
treacherous attack on Wisby was avenged with interest, and the war
proved so profitable to the League that it settled in congress that it
should continue until the Danes sued abjectly for peace. Its leader was
once more a Luebecker, Brun Warendorf, the son of the Burgomaster. He
died in battle, but the memory of his gallant deeds remains in the
stately monument the town erected to him in the choir of St. Mary's
Church. Thus Luebeck honoured those who contributed to her honour.
[Illustration: RATH-HAUS, TANGERMUNDE.]
By the close of 1369, Denmark was exhausted and the people weary of war.
They pleaded for peace. On this the seventy-seven cities, whom Waldemar
had derided as geese, dictated their terms. It was indeed a peace such
as few kings have signed in the deepest degradation of their empire. For
the term of fifteen years they claimed two-thirds of the revenues of
Scania, the possession of its strongholds, the free passage of the
Sound, and the right for the same fifteen years to veto the choice of a
Danish ruler, besides a number of other valuable concessions and
privileges; terms, in short, as humiliating for Denmark as they were
glorious for the League. The last paragraph of this remarkable Treaty of
Stralsund, which put the Hansa in the position of a first-class power,
ran thus:
"Our king, Waldemar, shall seal to the cities the above terms of peace
with his great seal, if he would remain with his kingdom and not give it
over to another ruler. If it should be that our lord and king; Waldemar,
desires to abdicate his land of Denmark during his lifetime, we will and
shall not suffer it, unless it be that the cities have given their
consent, and that he has sealed to them their privileges with his great
seal. Thus, too, it shall be if our lord and king, Waldemar, be carried
off by death, which God forfend. Then, too, we will accept no ruler but
in council with the cities."
It is evident from this paragraph that the Hansa still mistrusted
Waldemar, and feared he would by some subterfuge evade the treaty
obligations made in his name by his appointed viceroy.
And they had probably not gauged him falsely.
It was further settled that Waldemar must sign this document within
sixteen months: if he did not do so within this period, the Danish
council and kingdom would nevertheless be bound to keep its terms "even
if the king did not seal."
But abject though these stipulations were, complete as was the
submission of Denmark to the League which they implied, Waldemar signed
them within the appointed time. He saw that he was defeated, friendless,
and alone. In vain had he scoured the mainland, and recounted his woes
to all who would listen, in vain had he begged or bribed for help
against his enemies. He had made himself too much hated, and even those
who promised aid failed at the last to keep their word.
With the signature of peace Waldemar also signed away his position, nay,
perhaps his life. Broken in hope and spirits, his health gave way. Four
years later (1375) he died, after he had just appealed in vain to the
towns to restore to him his castles in Scania.
With the peace of Stralsund the German merchants had established the
supremacy of the Hansa over Scandinavia, and laid the foundation for
that power over the northern kingdom, which, in the words of King
Gustavus Vasa, places "the three good crowns at the mercy of the Hansa."
Thus ended the Hansa's great war against the King of Denmark--a war that
marks an important era in its history and development.
The League henceforth took a changed position, not only in its own
fatherland, but in the face of all Europe, for nothing succeeds like
success. Flanders, France, and England, had all to recognize that a new
power had arisen in the north of Germany. For the war had proved, not
only how valiantly the League could fight if need arose, but also how
well organized it was; how it held together for the common weal; how it
would be not only unwise, but dangerous to resist its demands for trade
privileges and concessions.
A curious juxtaposition of events was afforded by this chapter of
history; a German emperor was busy in the interests of Rome, striving to
bring back the Pope from his long exile at Avignon, and obtaining
dubious victories over the great Italian family of the Visconti; while
meantime a league of cities in his own empire was carrying on a
successful war against the kings of the north, dethroning and defeating
them. And so far from raising a hand to aid them, the emperor, on paper,
at least, and by word and protestation, was taking part with Waldemar
against his own subjects. A curious, a unique condition of things truly.
And herewith we have brought the history of our League to the close of
what is known as its first period, dating from its origin to the peace
concluded with Denmark.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] Some writers reckon Waldemar as the fourth of his name, counting as
the third Waldemar the impostor, who for some years ruled over the land
under that name. I have preferred to follow the more generally adopted
reckoning.--H. Z.
[7] "Ante portas Wisby in manibus Danorum ceciderunt Gutenses."
PERIOD II.
_THE HISTORY OF THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE, FROM 1370 TO THE PUBLIC PEACE OF
1495, DECREED IN GERMANY BY MAXIMILIAN I._
I.
LUEBECK RECEIVES AN IMPERIAL VISITOR.
The great war ended, the Hansa, in true merchant spirit, instantly
busied itself making up its accounts. The poundage toll, instituted to
cover martial expenses, was at once abolished; credit and debit
carefully balanced. Examination of its books showed that,
notwithstanding the long duration of the war, the Hansa had been as
little a pecuniary, as it had been a military, loser, in its struggle
against Waldemar's assumptions.
While thus engaged, Luebeck was startled by the intelligence that the
Emperor, Charles IV., intended to honour "his beloved free Imperial City
of Luebeck" by a personal visit. Since Frederick Barbarossa no emperor
had ever passed the city gates, and the town councillors were probably
not far wrong when they perceived in this proposal a tacit imperial
acknowledgment of the Hansa's great military victories, victories in
which Luebeck had played the part of leader. For twenty-eight years
Charles had worn the imperial crown, and all that time his chief efforts
had been directed towards extending the power of his family, and the
home influence of the emperors. He was a shrewd and wily old man, who
saw the dangers Italy presented to the empire, and wished to avoid them.
At first, however, he had no proper comprehension of the great power
that had sprung up within his own domains in the shape of the Hanseatic
League, nay, indeed, he had sided against his subjects and with
Waldemar. But now the scales fell from his eyes, and he appreciated, as
all Europe did, the greatness and the strength of the Hansa.
Of course he did not admit this in words, yet there is little doubt that
he wished to gain the goodwill of this League, and hoped thus to get
from it both pecuniary and military support for his dynastic plans.
It was, however, "diamond cut diamond;" the worthy councillors of Luebeck
were no less shrewd and wily than their imperial master. Needless to say
that, in accordance with the usage of the age, they indulged in the most
servile and hyperbolical expressions of their joy and unworthiness to be
so honoured, but like true merchants they had a good memory, and knew
that Charles had not so long ago pawned his coronation cloak and some of
his tolls to one of their federation, and they suspected in their heart
of hearts that ulterior motives were probably not absent to account for
this unwonted event. Still, with the wisdom of the serpent, they let
nothing of this appear, either in their replies to Charles, or in their
treatment of him. Like their Lombard predecessors, even when in open
warfare against the emperor's authority, they ever protested in words
their submission and fidelity to the imperial crown.
It was in the autumn of 1375 that Charles the Fourth entered the gates
of Luebeck as the city's guest. It is a curious fact that his visit
coincided with the death of Waldemar on the island of Zealand; but in
those days of slow communication the news did not reach the emperor till
after the festivities were over.
On October 22nd, the Emperor, accompanied by the Empress, the Archbishop
of Cologne, prince-bishops, dukes, earls, and suzerains many and mighty,
halted before the closed gates of Luebeck. His suite, his armed
retainers, and those of his party, made such a numerous host that Luebeck
hesitated awhile ere opening its gates to so great a multitude, not
feeling wholly sure whether their mission were indeed one of peace, or
whether an affectation of peace was meant to cover a deceitful attack.
For such things were not uncommon in those days.
After some preliminaries it was however decided to let them all in. A
halt had been made outside the walls. Here was situated the Chapel of
St. Gertrude, patron saint of strangers. The chapel was the property of
the municipal council, and to obtain relics for it the town had spent
many sums of money. Among other matters, they boasted of possessing some
bones of Thomas a Becket, and it is curious to note that they sent over
to England to buy these at the very time Chaucer was superintendent of
tolls in the harbour of London, and was writing his immortal "Canterbury
Tales," in which he derides the frauds constantly practised upon the
purchasers of such wares; as in his "Pardonere's Tale." Now Charles
IV. had a great fancy for objects of this nature; he was in the habit of
making tours in his kingdom in order to collect them, begging them from
churches or monasteries, and giving in return privileges and sanctions.
It is possible he also had an eye to St. Thomas's bones, but among the
rich booty he took with him from Luebeck, we find no mention of such
relics.
[Illustration: SHIPPING HOUSE, LUEBECK.]
It was before St. Gertrude's Chapel, then, that Charles and his great
suite halted, and here he and his empress put on their imperial robes
previous to entering the city. This done, they were greeted by a
procession that came forth from the gates to welcome them. It consisted
of the temporal and spiritual lords of the town, the leading men, and
the most lovely and notable of its women. They carried before them a
crucifix and a casket containing relics. Both the emperor and his
consort kissed these with great fervour. Then two stately horses, richly
caparisoned, were brought before them, upon which they mounted. That of
the emperor was led by two burgomasters, that of the empress by two town
councillors. Eight young patricians carried a baldachino of rich stuffs
over the heads of the imperial pair. In front of the emperor rode a
councillor, bearing aloft on a pole the keys of the city; while he was
flanked by two imperial dukes, carrying respectively the sword and the
sceptre of the empire. In front of the empress rode the archbishop,
bearing the imperial globe. Behind followed all the nobles, the suite,
the men-at-arms.
Such was the procession that moved from St. Gertrude's Chapel on the
morning of October 22nd. In the space between the outer and inner walls
of the city the women of Luebeck awaited them ready to greet the guests
with cheers and song and waving kerchiefs. It was through the stately
Burg Thor that the great train passed and entered the streets of the
city, gaily decked out with arras and banners and verdure to bid them
welcome. They rode the whole length of the town, through the Breite
Strasse, to the sound of fife and drum, and then made for the cathedral.
Here they halted, dismounted, and entered. A solemn thanksgiving service
was held, and the choir sang the Introitus for the feast of the
Epiphany: "Ecce advenit Dominator Dominus" ("Behold the Lord, the Ruler
is come"), and then the second verse of the Seventy-second Psalm, "Give
the king Thy judgments, O God." After this the party once more
re-formed, and rode along the Koenigstrasse, till they came to the house
that was to harbour the imperial guests.
Contemporary chroniclers tell us that all along the route of the
procession and both by night and day the sounds of military and sacred
music never ceased. Night was as light as day, thanks to the general
illumination prescribed by the council; a prescription that, in a city
thus overcrowded by a martial train and by curious spectators from far
and near, was as much a matter of safety as of compliment to its guests.
In those times street-lighting was an unknown luxury, and nocturnal
brawls of constant occurrence.
The house where Charles halted exists to this day, as also that where
the empress lodged. They are both corner-houses and boast gables, which
according to contemporary writers was an indication of an aristocratic
building. The lodging of the empress was opposite to that of the
emperor, and a covered way was built across the street to connect them.
Such road-bridges, springing from the projecting gable windows, were not
unusual things in the harrow streets of those times. The condition of
the unpaved roads made them requisite, as these could not be crossed on
foot with safety or cleanliness.
For the space of eleven days Charles and his train halted at Luebeck, and
the town spared neither cost nor trouble to entertain him right royally,
and to impress him with its wealth and importance. Feasts, tournaments,
rejoicings, followed upon one another; time was not allowed to hang
heavy upon the emperor's hands. But neither was he allowed to carry out
his ulterior objects. With great politeness and fulsome flattery Charles
was made to understand that the Hansa was sure of its own strength, and
since he had not helped it in the hour of need, it did not propose to
make great sacrifices to assist him in his troubles. All however was
done with perfect courtesy, Charles even being permitted on one occasion
to be present at a meeting of the municipal council when both sides
exchanged pretty compliments. He even went so far as to address them as
"Lords." With great modesty they disclaimed this appellation. But the
emperor insisted on it: "You are lords," he said; "the oldest imperial
registers know that Luebeck is one of the five towns that have had
accorded to them in the imperial council the ducal rank, that they may
take part in the emperor's council and be present where is the emperor."
These five cities were Rome, Venice, Pisa, Florence, and Luebeck.
When Charles left Luebeck he was delighted with the hospitality he had
there received, but disappointed in his political aims. It is certain,
however, that he rode out richer than he rode in; to this the account
books of the city bear testimony, of this the taxpayers told a tale for
many a long day. Indeed the expenses incurred through this imperial
visitor were to lead later on to some serious riots of the guilds
against the municipality.
It was through the _Muehlen Thor_ that Charles departed with his train
and by order of the town council this gate was walled up for ever behind
him. It was meant as a piece of subtle flattery to the emperor, a
suggestion that no mortal was worthy to step where he had stepped,[8]
but it is not out of keeping with the astute sense of humour that
distinguished these commercial princes, that the act also covered a
secret satisfaction in having outwitted their imperial guest and in
being once more the victors in an encounter with royalty. Certain it is
that Charles' visit proves that the Hanseatic League had reached the
apex of power, and that the city of Luebeck was regarded in Europe as
the head of this organization. Charles' visit was one of the proudest
moments in her story, and the memory survives in local chronicles.
It also survives in an old picture preserved until quite recently in the
house where he lodged, and now removed to the rooms of the Municipal
Antiquarian Society. In this canvas we see the Emperor Charles IV.,
seated on a large throne-like chair. On either side of him is a leaded
window. A carpet lies before his feet bordered with black, red, and gold
cords. The emperor is clothed partly in imperial, partly in episcopal
robes: a not uncommon mode of representation in those days. He wears his
hair long, has a long moustache, and his full beard is parted in the
middle, showing the costly clasp that closes his mantle. His head is
surrounded by a golden jewelled crown, in his right hand he holds a long
sword, in his left the imperial globe. The subscription runs: "Anno Dni.
1376 ipse Sevori Dn. Carolus quartus imperator invictissimus decem
diebus hac in domo hospitatus est."
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Modern, disintegrating criticism, casts doubts on this story, and
tries to prove that this gate was walled up before Charles' visit, and
that he did not depart by it. This objection, however, is not fully
proved, and the contrary tradition so powerfully rooted, and so entirely
in keeping with the spirit of the age, that I have preferred to
reproduce it as characteristic, even if untrue.--H. Z.
II.
THE TOWNS IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
Our League had attained its maturity. As we have seen from its origin
and as we shall see until its decadence, security and extension of
commerce was its one aim and solicitude. The Hanseatics were at all
times desirous to extend their markets abroad, to obtain, if possible,
the monopoly of trade, and it must be admitted that they succeeded
admirably in achieving the end they had in view. When we look back and
consider the disorganized state of the empire and the slight support
they received from their nominal liege lord, it seems strange that they
did not take this occasion to constitute themselves also into a
political union, forming independent states after the pattern of the
Italian commercial republics. In general, the towns in pursuing their
policy took as little real notice of the authority of the emperor, as
the emperor of the interests and doings of the towns.
Even our shrewd Hansa merchants, it would seem, were afraid outwardly to
present a bold front to their rulers, though secretly they defied them
and circumvented their laws. The very existence of the federation was
illegal, and in direct contravention to one of the chief clauses of the
Golden Bull, which forbade all associations and unions within the
empire. It is no doubt on this account that the Hansa, like the Venetian
Republic, kept its organization so secret. Even in its own day people
were but vaguely informed as to the working of its government, and as to
the number and extent of its dominions.
The very natural question arises now that our League is mature, How many
cities did it count in its federation? but it cannot be answered with
precision. Nay, this question can receive no final reply in any period
of the Hansa's history. The towns that joined did not always do so
permanently, or were not able to maintain their place, and to fulfil
their duties. Often, too, they proved restive and were "unhansed," and
it was no easy or inexpensive matter to be readmitted. The ban of the
Hansa was more potent than that of pope or emperor. A town that fell
under it lost its commerce at one blow. Thus, for example, Bremen,
headstrong and stiff-necked, anxious to play an undue part in the Hansa
League, saw itself shut out in 1356, because one of its burghers had
traded with Flanders at a time when such trading was forbidden. The
municipality, called upon to punish him, took his part, with the result
that for thirty years the town was "unhansed," thirty miserable years,
during which "the city was impoverished, grass grew in its streets, and
hunger and desolation took up their abode in its midst," so writes a
contemporary eyewitness. Reinstated at last, Bremen had to take up heavy
responsibilities in atonement for its misdeeds.
[Illustration: GROCERS' HALL, BREMEN.]
On another occasion Brunswick fell into the hands of discontented
artizans, who headed a revolt of several towns against the League. A
fulminating decree was issued by the Hansa with the same results as in
the case of Bremen. Misery and hunger in this case also proved
persuasive, and at last, after six years, this proscribed town was
readmitted. It had to send deputies to Luebeck, who craved pardon in the
most abject terms, and who had to accept the most humiliating
conditions. Besides questions of internal management, the Brunswickers
undertook to build a votive chapel in the town in memory of their bad
behaviour, and to send pilgrims to Rome who should crave the Papal
pardon for the murders of councillors committed by the rioters. Two
burgomasters of Brunswick, and eight of the chief citizens walked humbly
in procession, bare-headed, bare-footed, carrying candles in their hands
from the church of our Lady at Luebeck, to the town hall, where in the
great council chamber of the League, before an enormous crowd, they had
publicly upon their knees to confess their repentance for what unruly
passion had caused them to do, and to implore their confederates to
pardon them for the love of God, and the honour of the Virgin Mary.
[Illustration: RATH-HAUS, BRUNSWICK.]
More and more did Luebeck come to take the leading place among the
cities. Her laws ruled at the Hansa diets. They were reckoned the wisest
ever framed by an autonomous community, and are still quoted with
respect. The right to use Luebeck law was as eagerly craved by distant
cities as the Greek colonies craved the holy fire from native altars.
No wonder Luebeck's merchants loved to quote the proud couplet:
"Was willst begehren mehr,
Als die alte Luebsche Ehr?"
("What more will you desire than the old Luebeck honour?")
Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius II., when travelling
through Europe as Chancellor of the Emperor Frederick III., visited
Luebeck, and writes of it as the town which surpasses all others in the
wealth and magnificence of its buildings and churches. The same praise
is echoed a little later by a rare guest, the Metropolitan of Moscow,
who passed through Luebeck on his way to Florence, to be present at the
great church council held there by Eugene IV. Aeneas also visited Danzig,
and says it was so well equipped for land and sea warfare, that it could
call under arms at least 50,000 men.
The prominence of the cities varied greatly. Circumstances which at one
time might be to their advantage, might at another time prove adverse.
Thus Wisby, after its sacking by Waldemar, was the victim of an
accidental fire, which destroyed all that the Dane had spared. In
consequence it fell at once from its position of importance, and its
very site, once the source of its strength, became the cause of its
downfall, for it proved a most convenient station to pirates. Where the
merchant had safely halted, he was now in peril of life and goods.
[Illustration: MUEHLENTHOR, STARGARD.]
To the question put at various times to the Hansa's ambassadors "which
are the Hansa's cities?" evasive replies were given, either "those towns
that fought the Hansa's battles;" or a few were enumerated, and the
list closed with a colossal etcetera, etcetera. For they were not easily
caught napping, these worthy burghers, and had ever in view "the
interests of the common German merchants," which they feared might be
endangered by too much publicity. Still, they had become a power that
could not be hid, and seeing how well they realized this in most
respects, it is the more curious that they did not avail themselves of
their chance of attaining political autonomy. The more curious too,
because, as a rule, the Hanseatics, like the modern Italians, knew so
well how to draw profit out of all the dissensions and disorders that
agitated Europe.
It was indeed a vast dominion that stood under the sway of the Hansa. In
the course of less than a hundred years there had arisen on the Baltic
coast, within the area of two hundred and fifty miles, no fewer than
fourteen cities of first-class importance, not to name those that
already existed there. Thus the merchants held in their possession the
mouths of all the great Baltic rivers, on all of which they founded
harbours and depots. Germany in that epoch evinced a power of
colonization which in its successes recalls the most brilliant moments
of the extension of Greek life in the Mediterranean. In more modern
times only the North American soil has exercised an attraction similar
to that of the Baltic coasts, and has shown an equal power of upraising
cities within a brief space of time. Many of the towns boasted a far
larger population than they have at this day. Thus Luebeck in the
fourteenth century counted eighty thousand inhabitants, as against
forty-eight thousand in 1870.
An interesting contemporary opinion on our merchants is extant from the
pen of a learned and travelled Italian, Marino Sanudo, a pious Venetian,
who set forth early in the fourteenth century with a mission to stir up
the Christian world, and organize a new Crusade, for Askelon, the last
stronghold of the Romish Church, had fallen into the hands of the
unbelievers. His first purpose was to gauge the fighting power of the
various European maritime states, for it was a fleet rather than an army
that was required. In his journeyings he ventured as far north as the
Baltic, and thus reports in his letter to Pope John XXII.:
"In Alemannia live many peoples that could prove most useful to us.... I
have seen with my own eyes that these coasts of Alemannia are quite
similar to the Venetian. The inhabitants, strong of limb and practised
in arms, are mostly warriors; others well skilled in dyke-making;
besides, they are rich, and what is yet more commendable, they show a
warm zeal for the affairs of the Holy Land."
After enumerating other advantages to be gained from these allies, he is
however obliged to draw his Holiness' attention to a serious drawback on
their part, namely, "that the Germans are enormous eaters, which arouses
anxiety in respect to supplies when the fleet shall find itself in the
hot regions."
A love for feasting meets us repeatedly in the old chronicle reports on
the German merchants, and shows that in those days there also held good
what Hawthorne has more recently expressed, that the Germans need to
refresh exhausted nature twice as often as any other peoples. Then, as
now, they were an upright, thorough, massive race, not made of too fine
a clay and wanting rather on the aesthetic side; a want sure to strike
the more finely strung senses of an Italian.
[Illustration: BURGHERS AT TABLE.]
It is certain that the fourteenth century was in many respects the epoch
when the Hansa cities flourished most actively. Neither before nor after
did they have so many sided an importance for the whole life of the
German nation. It was a stirring period in the history of the European
continent; when the Minnesingers gave place to the Mastersingers; when
learning, hitherto stored up jealously in the monasteries and the
libraries of the princes, had found its way out among burghers and
laymen; when protectors of art and science were more often simple
merchant princes than noble-born beggars. In a word, it was an epoch
when the middle class sprang into full being, and took its due and
proper place as a link between the nobility and the common people.
Towards bringing about this state of things the Hansa had greatly
contributed. If it failed to emancipate itself entirely from the empire,
it was yet ever keenly desirous of emancipating itself from its petty
suzerains. Thus the burghers of Luebeck, Cologne, Goslar, and other
cities were early forbidden to hold posts under the lord of the domain,
no matter how lucrative such posts might be. Wismar, engaged on one
occasion in a dispute with the Dominican monks concerning the repair of
the town walls, and obliged to cede to these ecclesiastics because the
lord of the land was favourable to the Church, carefully recorded the
occasion in its "town book," "in order," as it wrote, "that it might
remember the circumstance on some future and more favourable occasion."
"To pay them out" is implied though not expressed in the phrase.
With the same insistence and energy the towns made good their claims
when it was requisite to protect the burgher in his commerce, this
source of life to all the cities. Formerly, it is true, the German
merchants had appeared in the foreign markets as "the men of the
emperor," but now the emperors had no longer might wherewith to back
their right, and more efficient protection was called for. This each
found in his own city. Hundreds and thousands of treaties and letters of
freedom attest to the fact that the towns recognized their duties
towards their citizens and practised them most strenuously. Sometimes
these were written out in the name of a princeling, whose signature it
was always possible to buy for hard cash; but as time went on the towns
gradually took an entirely independent stand, so that from France to the
Russian districts of Smolensk the whole continent was overspread with a
network of diplomatic and commercial contracts eagerly supported and
extended by the towns.
The first thing sought for from the territorial lords, was protection
for person and property from the gang of banditti who dwelt in every
castle under the leadership of some titled robber; then protection
against the cruel rights of wreckage and salvage, which declared all
such goods the property of the territorial lord; further, release from
imprisonment for debts and other misdemeanours incurred within the
jurisdiction of the city and to be dealt with by itself alone;
assistance in obtaining payment of foreign debts; freedom from the
so-called "judgments of God" in the form of torture, walking on red-hot
irons, &c.; regulation and diminution of local taxes and tolls on the
lading or unlading of vessels, the weighing of merchandise; permission
to fell wood to repair ships; in a word, one and all of the necessary
permits to render more easy and profitable the intercourse between towns
and nations.
[Illustration: GERMAN TRADE LIFE.]
In each foreign country the Hanseatics had always their permanent
settlement, known as the _Kontor_, and for these they had early obtained
a species of autonomy that permitted them to exercise jurisdiction
according to their native laws over their own country people. Defaulters
were judged by Hanseatic rules, and the "common merchant" found a help
and support against the foreigners among whom he for the moment resided
and with whom he traded.
The shrewd towns knew well how to estimate the value of such foreign
settlements, and it is noteworthy that they never accorded reciprocal
rights. In vain foreigners pleaded permission to found similar
settlements in the Hansa's dominions; the towns always skilfully
declined such requests. Thus in Cologne foreign merchants were not
allowed to reside longer than six weeks at a stretch, and this only
three times in the year; therefore only eighteen weeks in all. Similar
and even more restrictive regulations prevailed in the other cities.
It is curious to note that, until the end of the thirteenth century, it
was chiefly the inland towns who were the great traders, but when they
needed for their trade the highway of the ocean, gradually the maritime
ports had taken the place of importance. One of the chief lines of sea
traffic was that between Bruges in Flanders and Northern Russia. On this
route hundreds of ships sailed annually, all owned by the "Easterlings,"
as the Baltic merchants were called to distinguish them from the inland
traders. It was not until the fifteenth century that we find Dutchmen,
Zealanders, and Frisians striving to come into serious competition with
the Hansa.
A decree that no German merchant might go into partnership with a
Russian, Fleming, or Englishman, no doubt aided greatly this exclusive
possession of the Baltic Sea. In Russia waterways led them as far as
Smolensk; and, later on, they penetrated even further inland, by
utilizing the roads that had been made by the German knights whose seat
of might was Pomerania and Livonia. The Marienburg, the chief house of
the Order, proved a welcome halting station for the merchant travellers,
where they found safety and shelter. Furs were largely obtained from the
inner districts of Russia. "They are plentiful as dung there," writes
the pious chronicler, Adam of Bremen; adding, "for our damnation, as I
believe, for _per fas et nefas_ we strive as hard to come into the
possession of a marten skin as if it were everlasting salvation."
According to him, it was from this cause and from Russia "that the
deadly sin of luxurious pride" had overspread the West.
[Illustration: RENSLAU GATE.]
Wax, that played so large a part in mediaeval religious rites, and was
required in great abundance, was furnished by the "honey-trees" of the
virgin Russian forests. Leather, skins, tallow, and all species of fat,
were also among the chief products of Russia and the exports of the
Hansa. In return, they imported into that empire the produce of the
looms of Germany, England, and Flanders, the fine Flemish cloths, the
coarser English and German. Silk, too, and linen were valued goods.
Important also were all manner of worked metal objects, and such wares
as town industries manufacture. Beer, too, was a valued and most
profitable article of commerce. This drink was brewed in superior
excellence in Northern Germany, the hops being grown on the spot.
Contemporary writers tell how outside all the northern cities hop
gardens flourished. This beer was never wanting at any carouse in the
whole stretch of land from Flanders to Finland; a heavy, heady beverage,
which would now be deemed unpalatable and indigestible. Some specimens
are preserved to this day in the Danzig _Topenbier_ and the Brunswick
_Mumme_. To this thirst for ale Hamburg largely owes its prosperity. For
many long years it was the greatest beer-making town of the North,
boasting in the fourteenth century no less than five hundred breweries.
From Sweden the Hanseatics fetched copper and iron; in many cases they
had acquired the sole possession of the mines. Scandinavia also
furnished skins, as well as the various forest products of wood, potash,
pitch, and tar. From Blekingen, as at this day, the merchants brought
granite, and from Gothland and Bornholm limestone, both stones being
required for those building purposes for which the native material of
brick did not suffice. Already the Baltic supplied the Netherlands with
grain.
The Hansa carried in return to Sweden, Finland, and Russia the
requirements of daily life, since these countries possessed neither
manufactures nor skilled labour. Down to the altar shrines and the
psalters of the Church the merchants brought the evidences of civilized
workmanship to these lands. The very furs they had taken thence were
returned to their northern homes; of course manipulated and worked up.
Even the English, more advanced in handicraft, submitted to the same
_regime_. It used to be said on the European continent in those days:
"We buy the fox skins from the English for a groat, and re-sell them the
foxes tails for a guilder." With England indeed the Hansa's intercourse
was most active, as we shall show more in detail later on.
[Illustration: CROSSBOW.]
Danzig owes almost all its splendour to the English trade. This city
dealt largely in Austrian and Hungarian products, which were distributed
from out its harbour. English crossbowmen received all the wood for
their bows from Austria by way of Danzig. They were made from the yew
tree, which was considered especially adapted to this end.
What the German merchant obtained as produce from Russia, Scandinavia,
and other parts of Europe, not to mention the special productions of his
own towns, he distributed either at home or in the world-famed markets
of Bruges and London, for the Hansa was then the only intermediary
between East and West. For more than three hundred years Bruges
maintained its place as the central market for the whole of Europe this
side the Alps. Here could be met traders from all parts; the Lombard
bankers and money-changers, the Florentine, Spanish, Portuguese, French,
Basque, English, Scotch, North and South Germans. It was from Bruges
that the Baltic merchant supplied his home and Northern Germany with the
products of the East, which the South German had brought from Venice and
over the Alpine passes along the Rhine. In Bruges he could buy the
fruits of the Mediterranean, the silks of Florence, the oils of
Provence, the wines of Spain and Italy. These meetings of merchants were
wont to take place at stated times, intercourse being thus made surer
and easier. This custom laid the foundation for those annual fairs for
the exchange of wares, of which one yet survives in Germany in little
diminished importance, namely, the great fair of Leipzig, where all the
German publishers meet to exchange the intellectual productions of the
year.
Another source of wealth to the cities arose from the circumstance that
they not only supplied the requirements of the mass, but were also the
purveyors to the princes and the aristocracy. We find in their books
that these frequently owed them heavy sums for furs, Flanders cloth, and
choice wines. They were also most often their bankers, for the towns
and, above all, Luebeck, the centre of cash transactions, were held
desirable places for money investments. Even in the distant districts of
Sweden people knew no better mode of investing capital than to confide
it to Luebeck merchants.
Of course the conditions of trade were vastly different from those of
to-day. Above all, the merchant had to act more in person. Posts did not
exist, orders and contracts, therefore, could rarely be made by letter,
for it mostly required a special messenger to carry these. It was hence
almost the rule that the merchant accompanied his wares "over sea and
sand," as the phrase went. For the sake of greater security, and in
order also to diminish expenses, many would club together to charter a
ship. It was usual to interest the captains in the sales of the wares,
it being held advisable that every one on board should have an advantage
in bringing the goods safe to land and in their profitable disposal.
This custom arose from the dangers that lurked from robbers, while
insurance of goods in transit was yet unknown. By interesting captain
and crew pecuniarily they were less likely to throw the goods overboard
in a storm, or to allow pirates quietly to board and rob the vessels;
both matters of common occurrence.
If it was dangerous to travel by water, it was yet far worse to travel
by land. Not to mention that there were few roads, that the mud often
lay piled wheel high, so that the strongest horses could not pull the
carts; the presence of robbers was a constant cause of fear on the road.
Many of these were, as we know, the lordlings of the land in disguise,
and hence they naturally turned a deaf ear to the repeated petitions of
the merchants to keep the highways in better order. Added to this, each
lord had the right to demand toll for the passing of his dominions and
the toll stations were often very close together. Thus, for example,
within a space of fifteen miles from Hamburg the merchant encountered no
less than nine. Fortunately the tables of tolls in those days were not
too complicated. They were generally paid by waggon, or ship load,
regardless of contents.
The Middle Ages were ignorant of protective taxes. These impediments to
the useful exchange of international produce were reserved for the
invention and practice of our more enlightened centuries. It is
characteristic that the oath which played so great a part in all
mediaeval transactions, social and political, was also employed to settle
the toll dues of the traveller. A crucifix was held before him; on this
he swore that he was not defrauding, that the weight of his wares, as
stated by him, was accurate, and herewith the transaction was completed.
It was, however, necessary to be most careful not to diverge from the
toll roads. If a merchant was found on a bye-road his goods were
confiscated and he himself imprisoned. On this account, too,
companionship was sought after, the leadership of some one familiar
with the ground, and hence merchants and merchandize generally moved in
caravans.
It is worthy of note that all the trade of that time was strictly
legitimate, and what is known as real merchant's business. Speculation
hardly existed. Commission and agency dues were not wholly unknown, but
happily there was not existent that pernicious scourge of modern trade,
the time bargains, which permit merchandize to be sold a dozen times
over before it actually exists. It was honest, true trade, which only
sold what it could show. Therefore, it could uphold and practise the
axiom, "ware for ware, or for cash." In certain districts, for example
Russia, barter was more common than money payments. Credit was
absolutely forbidden in certain towns and in certain branches of trade.
If credit was allowed the borrower had to find a surety, and to go
surety was a grave matter, of which the consequences might easily prove
disastrous, entailing loss of property and often of personal freedom.
Payments were usually made in coined money, but bar silver was also
employed, especially in Russia, and bills of exchange were not quite
unknown. The bills were payable as a rule either at Luebeck or Bruges.
Silver was the chief currency, but in the fourteenth century Luebeck was
permitted to coin gold. It made guilders after the pattern of the
Florentine ducats. The gold to coin them with was bought at Bruges. We
must remember that money had a far higher value in those days than in
ours, and that if we want to arrive at a just comparison with our own
times, we must multiply the sums by seventy or seventy-five. The most
common form of reckoning was the Flemish, _i.e._, one pound, equal to
twenty shillings at twelve groats each; in a word, exactly the reckoning
that has survived in England to this day. The pound of money was
originally a weight. The best money was that of Luebeck, and, above all,
the English contracted to be paid in pounds of the "Easterlings," their
generic name for the Baltic merchant. As a survival and abbreviation of
this phrase we in England say pound sterling to this day. A bad light
upon the morality and conditions of the period is thrown by the fact
that the petty kings, seeing that their coins were often refused and
mistrusted, did not hesitate to coin and give currency to false money
bearing the imprint of the League. We come across frequent bitter and
often useless complaints on this subject.
Putting out capital at interest was not wholly unknown in those days,
notwithstanding the prohibitions of the Church which, founded on the
text in St. Luke vi. 54, and the Fourteenth Psalm ("qui pecuniam non
debet ad usuram"), forbade all usury business. The Jews early held this
branch of trade in their hands. Rates of interest varied from 6 to 10
per cent. Loans, too, were made to princes, foreign and native, and to
cities, upon industrial enterprises. Wholly erroneous is the notion that
capital was inactive, kept in a strong box or an old stocking. That
great riches were accumulated is proved by some of the old wills and
account books. Fortunes of a quarter of a million were not unknown. A
single merchant would often own not only many farms in different and
distant parts of the country, but whole villages and townships. As for
the men themselves, we encounter them in every part of the continent,
the artisan as well as the merchant. Thus, for example, Germans seem the
favourite shoemakers; we hear of them in this capacity as far off as
Lisbon. Then, as now, they were renowned as bakers, and no one knew
better how to salt and preserve herrings and cod-fish.
In Livonia, Esthonia, Gothland, rich merchants died whose nearest heirs
had to be sought in far off Westphalia. For instance: A worthy shoemaker
became burgher of Luebeck; then visited Rome and San Jago di Compostella
as a pilgrim, and afterwards being named shoemaker to the German
knights, had as his chief debtor for goods supplied a cavalier who
fought in Sweden. Thus diverse, many-coloured, and full of adventure
were lives in those times, which we are too often tempted to think
sleepy and stay-at-home.
It is difficult to gain an idea of the full extent and nature of
mediaeval trade, but this too was far more rich and varied than we
suppose. Though there was no activity outside Europe, still it can well
stand beside our modern commerce, and as regards honesty, thoroughness
of produce and workmanship, it unhappily far eclipses it. Certainly the
list of articles imported and exported in their variety of needful and
needless objects, their luxury and magnificence, goes far to disprove
our notions of the greater simplicity of life in the Middle Ages. For
supply means demand, and meant this yet more emphatically with our
practical forefathers.
Apart from the evidences of figures and statistics, the evidences of
wealth and luxury can also be found in the yet extant monuments of the
time, and, above all, in the churches. In the Middle Ages the one
converging point of ideal life was the Church. Everything that went
beyond the immediate practical needs of daily existence, every form of
charity, every endeavour after culture, every striving of artistic and
scientific activity had in those days a religious foundation.
Imagination, too, came to the aid of this tendency in the shape of the
possible and probable dangers encountered by "sea and sand," by the town
traders. Thus in 1401 we find merchants and shippers at Luebeck founding
"an eternal brotherhood and guild to the honour of God, of Mary His
beloved mother, and all the saints; above all, the holy true helper in
need, St. Nicholas, that they may aid and comfort the living and the
dead, and all those who seek their rightful livelihood on the water,
many of whom, alas! perish in water troubles, are thrown overboard or
expire in other ways, dying unconfessed and without repentance; for on
account of their agonies they could feel neither remorse nor penitence
for their sins, and who have none who pray for them except the general
prayers."
Such guilds were by no means rare. Legacies, too, were left for similar
ends, by which thousands of our money were willed away: churches,
monasteries, and holy foundations of all kinds raised or aided to pray
for the benefit of the souls of the dead.
Nor were distant pilgrimages unknown. The merchant would go in person,
combining business and religion on the road, or he would send a
substitute, who for a certain sum would visit Rome, the Holy Land, San
Jago in Spain, or Rocamadour in Guyenne. Such pilgrims by profession
were frequent. St. Peter, St. James, after them St. John, then St.
Nicholas and St. Clement as patron saints of merchants, shippers and
fishermen, and among the women saints St. Catherine, were the chosen
objects of North German piety. In no town was lacking a leper house, a
refuge for those troubled with that plague of the Middle Ages, happily
now almost unknown in Europe. These were dedicated to the Holy Ghost and
to St. George, the slayer of dragons.
Above all, worship was paid to the Virgin Mary. All the municipal
churches were dedicated to her. There is not a town that has not its
church of "Our Lady." The municipal council were put under her especial
protection. To this day the so-called Beautiful Door of the Mary Church
at Danzig bears the inscription in golden letters: "Queen of Heaven,
pray for us!"
[Illustration: HOHE-THOR, DANZIG.]
These churches and religious buildings of all kinds, many of which
survive to this day amid surroundings to which they have grown strange,
speak more eloquently of the Hansa's might than piles of old parchment
records. All Scandinavia can show nothing to compare with these
architectural monuments, and we can well comprehend that the Northman
entering the Elbe, the Trave, or other Baltic rivers, and seeing the
lighthouses, churches, and mighty buildings of the towns, were awed by
the Germans' wealth and power and strength, much as we are impressed
now-a-days when we first set eyes upon Eternal Rome. These buildings
resembled each other in externals; in each we find the same tall
graceful steeples rising into the heavens, the same proud, defiant
battlements and turrets, the same high-gabled many storeyed,
small-windowed houses, the same tendency to employ bricks as building
materials, and to use coloured varieties as ornamentation. Of this
method of building and decoration the Holstenthor of Luebeck is a
well-preserved example, as indeed these double gates to the towns were
also a characteristic feature. One, a round tower, resembling greatly
the Castel St. Angelo of Rome, situated on the south side of Rostock,
was so strongly built that even the mechanical contrivances of our days
found it hard work to demolish it when modern progress required its
removal.
Art was then almost exclusively the handmaiden of religion, and hence it
is also in the churches we have to seek evidences of what the Hansa
could produce in this respect. Metal gravestones, rich bindings, cunning
iron work, attest its taste. Evidence of a love of painting is found in
many works now preserved in museums of the pre-Holbein day. And,
incredible though it may seem, they were so famous for glass painting
that early in the fifteenth century men came from Italy to Luebeck to
learn perfection in the craft.
[Illustration: HOLSTENTHOR, LUEBECK.]
Of their domestic architecture little, unhappily, remains to us, the
practice of building with wood having wrecked most of the cities. Such
houses as survive, however, testify to the national love of cunning
carvings and inscriptions of didactic purpose. For it is the keynote of
that time to express in artistic form its ardent faith and activity,
and its somewhat rough-and-ready philosophy. Theorizings and
abstractions were little understood. Thus in old legal codes we see the
punishments to be inflicted pictorially portrayed. Contempt and mocking
also took tangible form, and the clergy were by no means exempted from
such satire. Notwithstanding all the piety of the age, the people were
ever on their guard against the encroachments of the wily priests. The
deeds of Reynard the Fox--that favourite national comic epic, so wholly
in keeping with the Hansa spirit of practical good sense and business
cunning--was a favourite theme for weaving into arras and carpet; and it
was common to give a distinct hit at the clergy in the person of the sly
beast.
It was the custom to depict the Last Judgment in the court of justice of
each guildhall. That painted in 1341 for Hamburg led to a long lawsuit
before the Papal Court at Avignon, because the local dean and chapter
saw in it personal allusions. Thus devoutness did not impede the
townspeople from rigidly retaining their mental independence of view and
action.
Science and literature--such as those ages could boast--were, like art,
more or less pressed into the service of the Church. The only exception
is to be found in the few popular folk-tales, all comic, like the deeds
of Eulenspiegel, and in the town chroniclers who were in the pay of the
municipal council; but activity was not great in this latter domain. In
most cities, schools were attached to all the parishes, in which the
children of the wealthy classes learned reading, writing, some
arithmetic, singing, and a little Latin. These institutions were
founded in defiance of the priests, who loved to keep the people in the
darkness and enslavement of ignorance.
Nearly all the merchants and many artizans could read and write, even if
they did not practise these arts with great facility. Business letters
were indited either in Latin or German, for the latter tongue was more
widely diffused for commercial purposes than in our day.
But if the wealth of the towns led them to encourage the gentler aspects
of life, it also enabled them to give expression to less refined tastes,
and refinement of taste was never a speciality of these rather
coarse-grained and boorish Teutons. The Middle Ages were essentially a
time of animal enjoyment and license; the people loved life and all life
could offer on the material side. We come across constant records of
carouses and feasts, at which the manners and customs were--to our
ideas, at least--most gross. No occasion for merry-making, which meant
largely eating and drinking, was allowed to slip by unheeded. Nor were
these occasions few, for the Catholic Church, with its endless list of
saints, furnishes easy and constant excuses for holiday-making, as we
see to this day in Catholic countries.
When guilds, corporations, or associations met for convivial
intercourse, this was pursued according to established rules, some of
which survive in the student _corps_ of German universities. Breaches of
regulation were punished by extra rations of beer that were paid for by
the delinquent. Entrance fees were defrayed by giving a feast to all
members. In short, they ate hard and drank yet harder, with the result
that nightly drunken brawls were frequent, the quieter folk often
lodging complaints concerning disturbed sleep or rioting beneath their
windows between the younger burghers and the watchman. Occasionally a
man is banished for molesting the town guard, while intoxicated and
disorderly, for undue license was not winked at by the town council.
This was also the epoch when flourished those civic games which
furthered the sentiment of brotherhood, and served, besides, to improve
the youth of the city in the use and practice of arms. Among these, the
May games, May processions, May empires, took a foremost place. They had
their origin in the pagan conception of spring as a fair youth, who, in
victorious duel, overcame the treacherous winter.
The May emperor was usually elected from among the town council. The one
who had obtained the wreath during the previous year delivered it up at
the beginning of May or at Whitsuntide. He would ride out into a
neighbouring wood "upon his good horse," accompanied by all the
councillors clad in armour, to the sound of martial music and with the
town's flag flying. This was called "going to fetch the May." A
beautiful boy generally headed the procession. What ceremonies went on
in the wood is not known, but when the procession returned, leading in
the new May emperor, the boy would bear a flowery wreath upon his long
pole as token of victory; while all the councillors and the huge crowd
that followed in their train were decked with green branches and boughs.
The newly-elected emperor was expected to treat the crowd. After a
while this grew a heavy and serious expense, and we find it recorded
that a certain burgher of Stralsund, who knew he would be elected to
this honour, fled the city. He was, however, followed and brought back,
made to accept the post and its expenses, and heavily fined into the
bargain.
As in modern Switzerland, so in mediaeval Germany, crossbow shooting for
prizes gave another occasion for public holiday, the different guilds
turning out, with banner and music, to do honour to their various patron
saints. In such wise all adult men were trained to warfare, though the
armies of the Hansa usually consisted in great part of hired
mercenaries, easily obtained for ready cash in those days, when fighting
was held a pleasure far beyond legitimate work. Many records survive to
attest that these Hansa merchants were skilled in the use of dagger and
axe. One, for example, a peaceful citizen and trader, with his own hand
killed a noted pirate who had long rendered the Baltic unsafe. The
merchant went his road, as the saying was, trusting to God and his own
right arm. "Whosoever would be a good burgher at Danzig must be
industrious both in commerce and arms," runs an inscription on the house
of the crossbow shooters of that city.
[Illustration: CHILDREN'S SPORTS.]
Later on, as the towns grew more aristocratic in character, the gilded
youth of the day had games of their own, from participation in which the
artizan was excluded. These, in many cases, led to such riots and
uprisings of the populace against the municipality as occasioned the
"unhansing" of Brunswick and other cities. Foremost among them were
the so-called "Popinjay Associations," who met to shoot down from a pole
these bright-coloured birds with which travellers had become acquainted
in the market of Bruges. It was usual for the winner to treat his
comrades to a barrel of beer and cakes.
Indeed, without touching upon the innumerable institutions common to
guilds, trades, patricians, and plebeians, a picture of those times
would be imperfect. Some of these were instituted for purely hilarious
purposes, others combined charity and mutual support with carouse and
license. Thus in Cologne there was a society which met to drink wine,
and presented to every honoured guest a medal having the inscription,
"Bibite cum hilaritate." This society imposed on itself certain laws
regarding the avoidance of bad language, of lawless living, of coarse
speech and action.
In the North beer was the chief beverage, many companies were dedicated
to Gambrinus, the "arch-king and inventor of brewing." Here, too, quaint
rules attest the rudeness of contemporary manners. It was customary to
exact a monetary fine from those who spilt more beer than they could
cover with their hand. It seems that even women were not excluded wholly
from these revels. At least a princely guest, harboured by Luebeck,
expressed his disapprobation at the presence in the cellar of the town
hall of patrician ladies, who under cover of their veils, which formed
for them an incognito, drank hard and enjoyed themselves grossly.
Endless are the rules and regulations of the various calends, ghostly
brotherhoods, companies, and other names by which they styled
themselves. Thus, for example, they were forbidden to take the food off
each other's plates, to call each other certain most injurious names, to
throw knives and plates at each other, to appear at solemn drinking
bouts bare-footed, to roll in the mud, to retain arms, hat, and cloak
when in company, to tap a fresh barrel without the presence of an elder,
and so forth. Their duties to each other combined social and religious
obligations. Thus they were often bound to pray for those who, absent on
travels, could not attend at mass. They gave decent burial to their
poorer comrades, nursed them when sick, helped them when distressed. A
pound of wax, half a hundredweight of tallow, a barrel of beer, were not
uncommon fines for dereliction of duty. Games of chance were universally
forbidden. Dancing and song were common forms of diversion. The
shoemakers and tailors of Luebeck were noted for their skill in the
sword-dance, a dance probably not unlike the Highland reel executed to
this day by Scotchmen.
[Illustration: DOMESTIC MUSIC.]
Wit, grace, imagination, were elements mostly absent from the lives of
these rough Germans. This is nowhere more evident than in their
amusements. The carnival practices furnished a notable example,
practices so graceful, so pretty in the South, so rough and rude in the
North. Two instances will suffice. At Stralsund it was customary to nail
up a poor cat with which a man fought until he hit it to death, when he
was mock-knighted by the burgomaster. In Cologne poor blind people were
let loose in an enclosed space to hit a pig, which should be the prize
of the successful candidate. The joy of the spectators reached its
height when the poor blind men struck each other in place of their
victim. The practices at weddings were too rude for description.
Luxury in dress was most pronounced, and sumptuary laws were repeatedly
enacted. It seems strange that it was the men even more than the women
who offended in these respects. Simple, nay, rude as the lives of these
burghers were in their homes, out of doors they loved to make display,
especially in the matter of costly weapons and brave horses. Young men
returning from the wars or the great markets of London or Bruges,
introduced new fashions and fantasies which changed far more frequently
than we are apt to suppose. The most conservative dress was the headgear
of the patricians, the councillors and members of the municipality. This
consisted for many ages in a long cap of cloth, trimmed with fine fur.
Before hats or caps came into fashion as coverings, the sight of these
men in their long fur cloaks, with their heads enclosed in these curious
hoods, must have had a stately, grave effect. So proud were the
patricians of this dress that the councillors of Bremen actually forged
a document early in the thirteenth century, according to which Godfrey
of Bouillon, accorded to them, during the first Crusade, the permission
to wear fur and gold chains. The dress, clogging the free action of the
legs, necessitated a stately slow walk, and its length would seem often
to have inconvenienced them in those times of unpaved streets and
mud-coated roads. A certain Evart von Huddessen, the representative of
Stralsund at the Court of King Erik of Sweden, gained the special favour
of the monarch on an occasion, when, invited by the king to visit with
him his pleasure gardens outside the town, he quietly walked through the
puddles after Erik's horse, instead of waiting like the other
representatives for their servants to carry for them their trains, which
they feared to spoil in the mud. "Eh! what are we waiting for here?" he
cried to his colleagues, "shall his royal highness ride alone? I reckon
my masters of Stralsund are rich enough that they can make good to me my
new coat."
Nor were they invariably simple in their homes, though usually so. A
favourite German folk tale tells how Melchior, of Bremen, had his
dining-room paved with silver dollars, and even if history or chronicle
does not confirm this legend, it is thoroughly in keeping with Hanseatic
modes of displaying wealth. There did exist, for instance, a certain
Wulf Wulflam, of Stralsund, who sat upon a silver seat, and had his
rooms hung with costly arras. When he married he, like a royal
personage, caused the road from his house to the church to be overspread
with a Flanders carpet, while musicians played day and night before his
door. No doubt at his wedding appeared also the eighty dishes which at
weddings was the highest limit allowed to burgher luxury by the
Hanseatic by-laws.
It would seem, too, that the Hansa representatives when sent to "Hansa
days" (the meetings of the various cities in common council) after a
while indulged in great display to impress beholders with the power and
wealth of their respective cities. This, after a time, assumed such
proportions that poorer or wiser communities refrained, whenever
possible, from sending members to the "Hansa days."
Such were the habits and customs of these old burghers. As we see, it
was a time when men were occupied with the material rather than the
ideal side of life. A curious medley it presents of egotism and
altruism, piety and license, love of individuality and strict
regulation, roughness of living and unbridled luxury, boorishness and
civilization.
A word must be said of that important institution, the town council, to
complete this sketch of the German towns during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. Its constitution varied somewhat of course,
according to the size and wealth of the cities, but there were certain
main resemblances. The number of aldermen varied from twelve to
twenty-four. At their head were two or four burgomasters, who enjoyed no
special privileges, except that in council they held the office of
president. The appointment was for life, but they took it in turns to be
on active duty. Certain limitations of choice as to aldermen existed.
Thus for long in Luebeck no one could hold that office who earned his
bread by handicraft. This regulation however did not last. Still
merchants throughout filled the chief places; as, being travelled men,
and knowing the requirements of their fellows, they were considered the
most fit. Next to these, brewers and tailors took a leading part. The
general constitution of the council may be regarded as in a fashion
aristocratic, but it was checked in deliberations and decisions by a
sort of second chamber, the common council. Under their rule the cities
certainly flourished; the one chamber counselled, the other acted, and
to be alderman was indeed no sinecure, but rather a post that imposed
heavy labour. Honour it brought, but scanty remuneration.
[Illustration: MIDDLE-CLASS OCCUPATIONS IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.]
_Noblesse oblige_ was the proud motto these men acted on. The church
bells called them to their meetings, which at first were held in the
municipal church, later in the guildhalls. At Luebeck they always
assembled first in their own chapel of Our Lady's Church, then went in
procession to the town-hall. This was the centre of all national life.
The market-place was built before it, around it were the chief shops. In
the market-place justice was administered, either in the open air or
under the open porticos of the guildhall. Civic feasts were held here,
foreign guests received at this spot. No wonder, then, that the burghers
spent great sums upon the building and decoration of their town-halls
and surroundings. They were to them the palladium of civic independence,
whence law and order, merriment and feasting took their origin. To this
day the cellars of the town-halls in Germany boast the best wines and
choicest foods, and though now let out as restaurants they still, many
of them, show in fresco and carving the remains of ancient splendour. In
the town-halls were preserved the treasure, the civic documents, and the
great town books, called into requisition in all disputes. "No witness
goes beyond the Book" was the axiom of the day.
The market-place was always the largest open place in a city. The
streets were narrow and tortuous. This was necessitated by the
circumstance that all towns at that date were walled, and hence their
extension circumscribed. Each class of workmen lived together;
shoemakers in one street, coopers in another, and so forth. Their houses
being small, it was usual for them on fine days to do their work out of
doors, which gave an animated appearance to the place. At night these
streets were closed by iron chains drawn across them.
The town life was, in short, but the family life on an extended scale,
and the municipality watched over the welfare of the inhabitants as a
father over that of his household. To facilitate commerce and industry,
and to look after roads and buildings, were among its chief cares. It is
noteworthy that in some towns regulations existed compelling every one
who had means to leave in his will a certain sum for repairing the
highways and keeping the ports in good condition. Many fulfilled this
provision, even without this order.
Another occupation of the aldermen was to superintend trade, and see it
carried out on honest principles. Thus, at Novgorod, a bale of linen is
discovered to be bad, so that "no honourable and good man could be paid
in such ware." It is sent back to Riga, thence to Wisby, thence to
Luebeck, where the aldermen had to find out who delivered these goods.
Punishment for such fraud followed inevitably, and was so heavy that, on
the whole, few attempted to play these base tricks. We also come across
complaints that barrels of herrings had been packed fraudulently, good
and large fish being on the top; small and inferior and even stale ones
filling the rest of the barrel. As such perishable goods could not be
returned, the aldermen instituted official herring packers, who were
responsible for honest action.
In all difficult matters, the advice of the municipality was asked and
given. It was held "that they knew what others did not know." Thus
burgher and burgher ruler worked hand in hand, and each man felt himself
a link of the whole chain. This feeling gave rise to an active
patriotism, a warm love for their own town, of which instances abound in
the mediaeval chronicles. Many tales are preserved of brawls arising in
the towns through the vauntings of rival citizens. Thus a certain
Luebecker meeting a Bremener in a Hamburg inn, boasted so greatly of his
native town's advantages and made such fun of his companion's aldermen
that they all but came to serious blows. "You had better mind your words
and drink your beer in peace," was the friendly advice of a bystander.
Such were these burghs which had grown free and strong through burgher
industry, and were kept powerful by burgher unity and honesty.
III.
THE VICTUAL BROTHERS.
A serious interruption to the Baltic trade after the glorious peace with
Waldemar arose from the notorious gang of pirates known to history as
the Victual Brothers. Upon the principle that all is fair in love and
war the Hansa, during its campaign against the Danish king, had openly
countenanced and even abetted piracy, so long as the attacks of the
robbers were directed against their enemies. The chance of plundering
under protection was too tempting not to attract a large number of
adventurers, who for some years carried on their black trade under the
designation of "Victual Brothers," a name chosen because their
ostensible aim was to supply with provisions that part of the Swedish
coast which belonged to the Hansa.
It seems strange to us of to-day to find as the leading spirits among
these Brothers the names of Moltke and Manteuffel, doubtless forbears of
the famous modern German generals. These pirates founded masses and
charitable institutions on the one hand, and robbed and sacked
remorselessly on the other. Peace being concluded, the Hansa naturally
had to clear the seas of these pests, but it had been easier to call
them into activity than to suppress them. A large body of men had found
profitable employment coupled with stirring adventure; this latter being
a powerful incentive in those days, and were loth to quit their free
wild life.
They continued their association, nay, even enlarged it, forming
themselves into a corporation, after the pattern of the Knights
Templars, and divided all booty equally among their body. In a brief
space they became the scourge of all the commercial cities. "God's
friend and all the world's enemy" was their audacious motto. Masters of
both seas, the Baltic and the German Ocean, on one occasion they even
seized, plundered, and burnt down Bergen (1392) and took prisoner the
bishop. Gothland became their stronghold, and Wisby, once the Hansa's
glory, was turned into a pirate's nest near which the merchant sailed
with fear and trembling.
It seems strange, to our modern ideas, even to think that piracy was
once a reputable calling. It was held as such, for example, in ancient
Greece, as we may read in Thucydides, book i. chap. 5. No offence was in
those days either intended or taken if one Greek asked another if he
were a pirate. In the Baltic, like duelling in more polished climes,
this practice long survived the positive laws framed against it. Pirates
would even give back empty ships to merchants, wishing them a happy
return with fresh and fuller cargoes.
In vain did Margaret of Sweden protest against the audacities of the
Victual Brothers. She was helpless against them. The measure of her
impotence can be gauged by the fact that she begged from Richard II.,
king of England, permission to hire three ships at Lynn for the
protection of her kingdom. In vain, too, on the days when the Hansa met
in council, was this theme discussed. For three whole years all fishing
on Scania had to be abandoned. The result was severely felt throughout
the length and breadth of Christian Europe, for herrings and other
Lenten food became rare and costly.
[Illustration: SHIP-BUILDING IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.]
Stronger and stronger grew these pirates, so that at last it was decided
to send out an army against them. Once more recourse was had to a
poundage tax to raise supplies and thirty-five large vessels with three
thousand men were sent to sea in 1394. After long and arduous struggles
they at last broke the power of the association, but for long afterwards
separate bands of pirates, once members of the mighty gang, rendered the
navigation of these seas a peril.
Legend took possession of these robbers from an early date, and we come
across them in song and fable. Taking a foremost place were Godeke
Michelson and Stortebeker, whose special mission it was to harry the
traders with England. Stortebeker, it is said, was a nobleman, indeed
noblemen were frequently found in the association. As a youth he had
been wild and lived so riotous a life that all his property was gambled
and drunk away. When finally the town of Hamburg, the scene of his
carouses, in order to pay his debts, deprived him of his knightly armour
and forbade him the city precincts, he joined the Victual Brothers.
At this time their leader was Godeke Michelson, who hailed the new
confederate with joy, after testing his strength, which was so great
that with his hands he broke iron chains like string. And because his
new ally was also great at drinking--he could pour down huge bumpers at
one gulp--he bade him lay aside his noble name and renamed him instead
Stortebeker ("Pour down bumpers"). Once when the pair had plundered the
North Sea clean they made a descent upon Spain. As was their wont, they
divided their spoils with their comrades, only on this occasion they
kept for themselves the holy bones of St. Vincent, stolen from a church,
bearing them under their coats upon their naked breasts. Hence, says
legend, they grew invulnerable, so that neither crossbow nor axe, sword
nor dagger, could harm or wound them.
When the Victual Brothers were conquered by the Hansa and banished from
the Baltic, these two chieftains with their followers found good friends
in Frisia, where to this day memories of Stortebeker survive, and the
chieftain Keno then Broke became his father-in-law, for his lovely
daughter lost her heart to the doughty pirate, and followed him on to
his ships and his floating kingdom. For Stortebeker was a king in his
way. When he made captives who promised him a ransom he let them live.
But if they were poor and old and weak, he threw them overboard
relentlessly. If they were poor but strong, and so likely to be of use,
he tested their strength in this manner. He caused his own enormous
goblet to be filled with wine. If they could empty it at one gulp they
were his peers, and he accepted them as comrades. Those who could not
pass this ordeal were dismissed.
It is said that Stortebeker and Godeke Michelson sometimes had moments
of penitence concerning the lives they led. In such a moment of remorse
they each presented the cathedral of Verdun with seven glass windows, on
which were painted cunningly the seven deadly sins. Stortebeker's
"mark," two reversed goblets, is depicted in one of them, probably the
one that treats of gluttony. They also founded a charity for
distributing bread to the poor.
In 1400, the Hansa sent out a fleet to Frisia to combat these
chieftains. It was in this war that the Hamburgers attained the honour
of conquering the Victual Brothers, dispersing their crew and releasing
their captives. Keno then Broke was carried off into confinement, for he
had, against his oath and faith, contrived to aid the pirates. With Keno
the town of Hamburg made a new treaty. It is said that just as it was
signed and the councillors had left the council chamber, Stortebeker
managed to slip out of a hiding-place, where he had heard all that
passed, and joked with his father-in-law at the expense of the Hamburg
aldermen who had once more put faith in him. Whilst so engaged a certain
Councillor Naune, who had forgotten his gloves, returned to the hall and
overheard them. Hence the war broke out afresh. Once more many Victual
Brothers were captured and beheaded in Hamburg. Their heads were stuck
upon poles for the warning of all beholders, while the account books
prove that the executioner received eight pennies per trunk decapitated
and his servant twenty pennies per body buried. Yet again a fleet had to
set forth; for as long as Stortebeker and Godeke Michelson were living
there was no peace possible. Under a Hamburg alderman, Simon of Utrecht,
who commanded the fleet on board a mighty ship known as the _Coloured
Cow_, they again set out. The name of this vessel is remarkable, and is
the first instance we come across in Hanseatic history of a profane
denomination for a ship. All the others are named after some saint or
angel, under whose special protection it was supposed to sail. "The
_Coloured Cow_, from Flanders, that tore through the ocean with its
great horns," sings the folk-song, the "Stortebeker Lied," which a
hundred and fifty years ago was still sung by the people. The Victual
Brothers lay off Heligoland. Towards dark one evening in the year 1402,
the Hamburg fleet approached them, and a daring fisherman came so near
that he was able to pour molten lead upon some of their rudders,
loosening them, and rendering the vessels unseaworthy. Next day the
battle began. It raged three days and three nights, and only after a
desperate resistance was Stortebeker conquered.
[Illustration: HELIGOLAND.]
Some of the pirates fled, many were killed or thrown into the sea; their
ships, richly laden with booty in the shape of linen, wax, cloth, &c.,
were seized, and Stortebeker with seventy comrades carried in triumph to
Hamburg. The cell in which Stortebeker was confined was known as
Stortebeker's hole as long as it existed. It was destroyed like so many
of the antiquities of Hamburg in the great fire of 1842. Short work was
of course made of his trial, and with his companions Stortebeker was
condemned to death. When he heard his sentence it afflicted him much,
and he offered the municipality in return for his life and freedom a
chain of gold to be made from his hidden treasures, so long that they
could span with it the whole cathedral and also all the town. This offer
was, of course, indignantly rejected, and next day he was publicly
executed, together with seventy comrades. In compliance with their dying
petition they went to death dressed in their best, marching in stately
procession, and preceded by fifes and drums.
After Stortebeker's death the Hamburgers searched his ships for the
hidden treasures. Except a few goblets they could find nothing at first,
until a carpenter broke the main-mast, which was discovered to be hollow
and full of molten gold. With this fortune the merchants who had
suffered at Stortebeker's hands were indemnified, the costs of the war
paid, and out of the remainder a golden crown was made and placed on the
spire of St. Nicholas Church.
Stortebeker was thus out of the way; but there still remained Godeke
Michelson. So the Hamburgers with Simon of Utrecht and his _Coloured
Cow_, once more set forth and once more returned victorious, bearing in
their train Godeke Michelson, eighty robbers, and the under-chieftain
Wigbold, of whom it is said that he had been a professor of philosophy
at Rostock, and had exchanged his chair for the forecastle of a ship.
These men also were all decapitated in the presence of the burghers and
municipal council.
It was a heavy day's work for the executioner, and it is related that he
waded up to his ankles in blood. After it was all ended an alderman
asked him kindly if he were not much wearied. "Oh no," said the
headsman, laughing grimly, "I never felt better in my life, and I have
strength enough left to behead the whole lot of you councillors." For
this treasonable speech he was at once dismissed from his post.
Various relics exist to this day to keep Stortebeker's memory fresh in
Hamburg. Among them were a small whistle with which he gave the signal
to his ships during a storm, an iron cannon nineteen feet long, his
armour, and the executioner's sword.
But chief of all Hamburg preserved the so-called Stortebeker goblet, a
silver bumper, from which tradition says he drank. "Whosoever comes to
Hamburg and does not go to the Ship's Company, that he may drink from
the goblet of Stortebeker and Godeke Michelson, and write his name in
the book that lies beside it, has not been in Hamburg," says an old
writer. This goblet is about a yard and a half high, and holds four
bottles. A sea-fight is engraved on it, together with other incidents
out of Stortebeker's life, and some rough rhymes. Once more modern
criticism, destructive and intolerant of all picturesque legend,
declares that the cup is of later date than Stortebeker's time, and can
never have been his.
[Illustration: TOMB OF SIMON OF UTRECHT, HAMBURG.]
Soon after the death of the pirate chiefs, Hamburg sent an envoy as
pilgrim to the shrine of San Jago of Compostella. Whether he was
employed to bear thither the thanks of the city to the saint for their
victory, or to return to Spain the relics of St. Vincent, history saith
not. A medal was struck to commemorate the event. It bears Stortebeker's
portrait and an appropriate inscription. Simon of Utrecht, the
victorious captain of the fleet, who later won other battles for the
Hansa, received high honours from Hamburg. When he died he was accorded
honourable burial, and a gravestone to his memory was put outside St.
Nicholas Church. Happily it survived the great fire. It shows the crest
of Simon, a large three-masted vessel, with the figure of a beast at the
helm; doubtless, the famous "coloured cow;" a swan draws this ship
through the waves. Below is an inscription in Latin verse, recording the
hero's feats against the pirates, and enjoining posterity to imitate the
great deeds of their forbears, that the fame of the city may not be
diminished.
IV.
THE FACTORY OF BERGEN.
We have seen how great was the Hansa's power in peace and in war; let us
now cast a glance at the basis upon which the whole proud fabric rested.
This is to be sought, beyond doubt, in its foreign commerce. How
enormous the interest they had, especially in the Baltic trade, how
great, indeed almost exclusive, was their empire in that sea, it is
difficult to realize. And to retain this empire, to be masters of the
mercantile relations between the eastern and western extremities of
Europe, they considered no sacrifice too great. This was the keynote of
their policy. Their purpose, simple enough in conception, was carried
out with a disregard of other claims than their own, and often a
violence which made them encounter resistance, and which in the end was
largely the cause of their fall.
The political agitations and confusions which disturbed the Scandinavian
kingdoms early in the fifteenth century were astutely utilized by the
Hanseatics, who, having their settlements at Bergen and Scania, were
able to keep out the Dutch and English, then just beginning to attempt a
rivalry with them in the northern trade. The Dutch were easily
disheartened. Not so the English; and we read of instances in which the
Hanseatics and English acted towards one another with a savagery which
proves that commercial rivalry can excite hearts as bitterly and
furiously as political or religious fanaticism.
No matter at what cost, monopoly the Germans were resolved to have, and
they succeeded in forcing the kings of Denmark to place an interdict
upon English trading. This prohibition corresponded to another that they
had extorted, according to which all merchandize coming from the extreme
end of the Norwegian kingdom was obliged to pass through and halt at
their station of Bergen. The purpose of the latter regulation was to
concentrate all the productions of the country at a single point; thus
offering to the Hanseatics the first refusal of goods, and a power of
dominating the market.
Indeed nowhere did their imperious and self-seeking policy show itself
in a less amiable light than in the dealings of the Hansa with the poor
inhabitants of Norway's sterile coasts. The history of their factory at
Bergen is from its earliest foundation the history of a relentless
despotism, disfigured by violence and breach of faith in treaties. King
Haguin had, in 1376, accorded to the German merchants the right to trade
freely in all the burghs, villages, and harbours of his kingdom, but it
seemed that they themselves preferred to restrict their business to the
town of Bergen, which, it is true, combined uncommon advantages. It
possessed an excellent harbour, the city was shielded by an amphitheatre
of lofty mountains, and though, as regards climate, it could boast no
advantages, more rainy days occurring there than at other points of the
Norwegian coast, yet it had early been the staple of all Norwegian and
Arctic products. Its geographical situation rendered it equally
accessible for travellers from the north and south, while its harbour
was so deep that even ships of considerable draught could anchor almost
in front of the town's houses.
From the earliest times the inhabitants of Bergen had been traders. In
1393 they were grievously pillaged by the Victual Brothers; and ere they
could recover from this misfortune, another pirate, Bartholauer Voet
(1428), attacked them, just when the English were helping them to
recover their commerce. It is pretty evident that his attack was
countenanced, if not commanded, by the Hansa. At sight of his ships the
inhabitants fled. The crew were thus enabled to land unhindered; they
plundered everything, down to the bishop's palace and his library; and
they despoiled the Norman vessels which had come there for the summer
fishing. They then took their stolen goods to market, returning the
following Easter for a second visit. This time the inhabitants were more
on their guard, and made a gallant but vain defence. Once more the city
was sacked, and the royal and episcopal palace and many private houses
were burnt to ashes.
Shorn of its wealth, Bergen was now so weak that the conquerors were
able to dictate their own terms. The city, which for five hundred years
had been in exclusive possession of the Greenland passage had to
renounce all maritime traffic. Further, the citizens saw themselves
forced to pawn their land to the Hanseatics, in return for the mere
necessaries of life, and as they could rarely redeem these pledges the
whole city of Bergen gradually fell into the hands of these opulent
traders.
Expelled from their old dwellings in ancient Bergen, which formed the
part of the city known as the Bridge, the inhabitants planned to
establish themselves on the harbour board that skirted the opposite side
of the crescent. But the insatiable greed of the Hanseatics would not
suffer them to stay there. The conquerors obtained this also for
themselves, so that in the end the entire port was in their power.
Thus, and by means of an ever-increasing population of merchants,
clerks, apprentices, sailors, workmen, they exercised a practical
suzerainty over the town. Whenever cited to submit themselves to the
local authorities they claimed the privilege of foreigners; they refused
to pay city taxes, though they held the rights of citizens, while they
paid custom duties at a reduction. They openly protected the enemies of
the king, felled the forests, introduced themselves arbitrarily into the
houses of strangers; in short, committed every offence with impunity. As
in London and Novgorod, so in Bergen, the Hanseatic factory formed a
state within the state.
The Hanseatics, in their arbitrary actions, repeatedly ran counter to
the Hansa's command and how to keep order at Bergen became one of the
most difficult problems at "Hansa days." It would seem as if the rude
climate had exercised a deleterious influence over these naturally
coarse-grained Germans.
As we have said, the whole harbour board was in their hands. The two
sides were connected by the so-called Shoemaker's Alley, long the abode
of strangers at Bergen, a quarter that became after a time the residence
of all boors and doubtful characters, who shrank from no acts of
violence, and defended the German monopoly after their own fashion,
_i.e._, by means of fisticuffs and knives. Thus, as an example: the
all-important fish market was so situated that the inhabitants of Bergen
could reach it only by means of this street. Until the Germans had had
the first pick of newly-arrived goods, the inmates of Shoemaker's Alley
suffered no one to pass, and woe to those who ventured to disregard this
prohibition. So completely broken was the might of these northern
people--the descendants of the Normans, that most warlike race, the
scourge of ancient Europe.
[Illustration: JUSTICE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.]
The side of the harbour known as the Bridge--the Bridge of the lice the
natives called it in derision--was the actual factory of the Hansa. It
consisted of so-called gardens, of which nine belonged to the community
of St. Martin and thirteen to that of St. Mary. Each garden was
isolated, and formed a separate factory, bearing its own crest and name,
such as "The Cloak," the "Court of Bremen," &c. The common crest of the
Bridge was odd enough, presenting half of the German imperial eagle,
against a crowned cod-fish. Each garden was connected with the sea by a
drawbridge, so that vessels could anchor in front. The ground-floor
consisted of workshops and warehouses: in the first were the bedrooms of
the resident merchants, above were the kitchens. Behind the house were
mighty cellars, and above these again the "Schutting," a large
windowless space used as a council chamber. Opening thence was the
kitchen garden.
Every "garden" was inhabited by at least ten "families," each of whom
had a husband as chief superintendent and magistrate, to keep order
among the younger members and apprentices. As a rule the "family" came
from the same Hansa town. The faults of the very young were punished by
flogging, those of the apprentices by fines or imprisonment. In the
summer the heterogeneous "families" dined alone, in the sad winter time
they all met in the "Schutting," but ate at separate tables. At a fixed
hour every one had to rise and go to bed.
Superintending the entire factory was a grand council, composed of two
aldermen, eighteen members, and a secretary, who had to be a doctor of
laws. When conflicts arose between the different members of a family, or
between residents and travellers, the matter was referred to the
aldermen for decision. Grave cases were sent up to the Hanseatic diet.
The aldermen had further to watch over trade, taxes, and all that
regarded the business transactions of the colony.
In its time of greatest prosperity the factory at Bergen counted about
three thousand souls, all vowed to celibacy, which was imposed on them
under most severe penalties. The fear was that union with the native
women might lead to the divulging of Hanseatic secrets, or induce the
men to settle permanently in this spot, and so become denaturalized.
Members of the Hansa were strictly forbidden to spend a night outside
the factory. Armed watchmen and savage dogs exercised a rigid guard.
These residents were usually agents for merchants in the Baltic cities.
After ten years' sojourn, they were obliged to return to their native
town to give place to new arrivals, who then had to go through the
various gradations of rank, beginning as office boy, and ending, if luck
favoured, as alderman. It was a sort of hierarchic organization, of
which the rules were most rigidly enforced. Entrance dues for vessels,
fines, and money penances defrayed the general expenses of the factory;
each town paid for the board, wages, and arming of its representatives.
Not all members of the Hansa, however, were permitted to trade with
Bergen, the conditions being purposely made onerous and expensive.
In the same restrictive spirit, and to hinder a great influx of men to
the factory, a series of probationary ordeals was planned, through which
every new-comer had to pass. By rendering these tests difficult and
repulsive they hoped to deter from Bergen the sons of opulent families,
for whom the advantages to be gained there would be counterbalanced by
the perils of initiation. These "games," as with grim humour they were
termed, were entirely in keeping with the grotesque spirit of the age,
and analogies are to be found, though less gross, in the religious
orders and the institutions of chivalry. The mildest of them resembled
in some respects the practices common to British sailors in crossing
the line. It is scarcely strange, that in the frigid, rigid north, among
a population naturally rough, far from home, friends, and the more
refining influences of life, a prey to deadly _ennui_, imagination
should have taken a fierce and coarse turn.
[Illustration: SHIP AT THE END OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.]
We cannot sully our pages by detailing the thirteen different "games" or
modes of martyrdom that were in use at Bergen. Our more civilized age
could not tolerate the recital. In those days they attracted a crowd of
eager spectators, who applauded the more vociferously the more cruel and
barbarous the tortures. The most popular were those practices known as
the smoke, water, and flogging games; mad, cruel pranks, calculated to
cause a freshman to lose health and reason. Truly Dantesque hell
tortures were these initiations into Hansa mysteries. Merely to indicate
their nature we will mention that for the smoke game the victim was
pulled up the big chimney of the Schutting while there burnt beneath him
the most filthy materials, sending up a nauseous stench and choking
wreaths of smoke. While in this position he was asked a number of
questions, to which he was forced, under yet more terrible penalties, to
reply. If he survived this torture he was taken out into the yard and
plied under the pump with six tons of water.
The "water" game that took place at Whitsuntide consisted in first
treating the probationer to food, and then taking him out to sea in a
boat. Here he was stripped, thrown into the ocean, ducked three times,
made to swallow much sea-water, and thereafter mercilessly flogged by
all the inmates of the boats. The third chief game was no less
dangerous to life and limb. It took place a few days after, and was a
rude perversion of the May games. The victims had first to go out into
the woods to gather the branches with which later they were to be
birched. Returned to the factory, rough horse-play pranks were practised
upon them. Then followed an ample dinner, which was succeeded by mock
combats, and ended in the victims being led into the so-called Paradise,
where twenty-four disguised men whipped them till they drew blood, while
outside this black hole another party made hellish music with pipes,
drums, and triangles to deafen the screams of the tortured. The "game"
was considered ended when the shrieks of the victims were sufficiently
loud to overtone the pandemonic music.
When all the ordeals were ended a herald, who also occupied the _role_
of fool, announced in a loud voice that the games were over, adding the
fervent wish that the noble practice of ordeals might never be
abandoned, and that for the honour and prosperity of the Hansa commerce
and the Hanseatic factory they might ever be held in veneration.
Only those who survived and sustained these rites were admitted into the
corporation at Bergen and could rise to the highest grades, with the
prospect of assisting as spectators at the games in which before they
had themselves played a part. Not till 1671 were these barbarous
practices, which every year increased in ferocity, suppressed by order
of Christian V. of Denmark, and only, of course, after the Hansa had
sunk from its pristine power.
V.
THE HANSEATIC COMMERCE WITH DENMARK, SWEDEN, AND RUSSIA.
Though the Government of Denmark was more enlightened than that of
Norway, and though the Danes were jealously desirous of keeping their
trade in their own hands, they, too, could not free themselves from the
all-absorbing power of the Hanseatic League. In vain did they endeavour
to raise up rivals to these traders; in vain did they even encourage
pirates to attack them; in vain did they institute custom dues and
taxes; each and all of these measures proved insufficient. The credit of
the towns was unassailable. The Hanseatics knew how to vanquish all
obstacles, and finally they found themselves in full possession of all
their ancient privileges, as well as those which they had extorted in
concluding peace with Waldemar.
The dissensions of the three northern kingdoms, which lasted for nearly
fifty years, and which the Hanseatic League were by no means anxious to
see settled (for, above all else, they feared the union of the three
northern kingdoms under one head) were admirably utilized. The League
played off one set of enemies against another, now aided this faction,
now sided with that, never too openly expressed either sympathy or
hostility, and yet always contrived so that any advantages accruing were
theirs.
It was in those troubled times that Luebeck bought from the Danish king
the town of Kiel and adjoining lands, while the queen pawned her jewels
to the city in order to raise money for war purposes.
Denmark was of immense importance to the Hanseatic League, not only for
the grain and cattle it produced, but because it was the key to the
passages of the Belt and the Sound, the only maritime routes for passing
from the Baltic to the North Sea. And, above all, the Sound was of
first-class importance as dominating the coveted province of Scania,
that mediaeval Peru. This tongue of land, which juts out into the sea in
form of a hook on the extreme south-west of Sweden, and shows to-day two
miserable towns, Skanoe and Falsterbo, almost buried in driving sand,
presented in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, from St. Jacob's to
St. Michael's Day (July 25th to September 29th), a most animated
spectacle. Nothing more strange is to be found in either hemisphere than
was the tumultuous life of this arid province. Here each foot of ground
was jealously disputed by fishermen and merchants.
Englishmen, Flemings, Danes, and peoples of tongues and customs the most
diverse were found side by side. But the Hanseatics preponderated. They
established themselves in a species of rude wooden barrack called by
them Witten, where they at once instituted their peculiar rules and
privileges, which gave them that united power which in the end enabled
them to crush out all competition. For the device of the Hanseatics,
though unexpressed, was "Monopoly," and during these centuries they
carried it rigidly into effect. The word Witten still survives in the
name of various fishing stations on the Baltic; for example, one not far
remote from the old pagan city of Arkona, once the site of a temple,
where the Christian Saxons bought the right to fish by paying tribute to
the local god.
The main object of the trade in Scandinavia was herrings, but this
brought many other industries in its train. Itinerant merchants offered
cloth, linen, hardware, wine, beer, and many other articles to the
natives, whose country boasted no handicrafts, as well as to the
temporary residents. In short, the place became a market for the
exchange of Western and Eastern products, natural and manufactured. Here
could be seen the Luebeck cooks busy in extemporized kitchens that formed
a sort of rude restaurant; here rough taverns in which German drinks
were obtainable at easy prices; here German shoemakers plied their
skill; above all, the coopers drove a lively trade, making and mending
the barrels needed for the precious fish. The import of salt, too, was
obviously of first-class importance, and this was entirely in the hands
of the Germans. We might expect that during the busy period when
thousands of men were hard at work fishing, salting, packing the
herring, beer should have been drunk in large quantities, but the amount
consumed almost passes belief. This also was entirely supplied by the
Hanseatic cities. It was they, too, who shipped the indispensable fish
and sent it to England, France, the Netherlands, the Baltic, nay, far
into the centre of Germany, and even to Poland and Russia.
They had not in Scania, as at Bergen, a regularly organized factory, but
the Witten stood under superintendence, while at adjacent Malmo they
founded a permanent colony, under the jurisdiction of an alderman, who
administered Luebeck law and watched over the Witten trade with jealous
care. Here each town had its guild representative, often its house, and
here annually a dignitary from Luebeck would pay a passing visit in order
to adjust quarrels and investigate the state of trade.
The "Scandinavian travellers," as they were named, instituted a number
of companies with rules of a religious, commercial, and worldly-sensuous
character. Thus the "Pious Brotherhood of Malmo" buried every poor
stranger with the same church pomp, costly palls, candles and masses, as
they would one of their own members. No one was admitted into the
brotherhood who was at feud with one of its associates. No one might
enter the common room bearing arms. A member who introduced a guest was
responsible for his good behaviour. In a word, the regulations were of a
certain humane character, far different from those which obtained at
Bergen. They were evidently copied from those of the guilds in the
Hanseatic and other towns of the Middle Ages.
Until early in the sixteenth century the League retained in undiminished
vigour its advantages in Scandinavia. To break their power it was
necessary for the Dutch to discover a better mode of salting the fish.
Then the fish itself came in smaller shoals to these coasts, and
appeared instead near Scotland and Ireland, and, worst of all, modern
Europe became Protestant, and fasting was hence no longer an
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