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.