state by some member of the local municipal council, and were offered
the wine of honour. The conferences began about seven or eight in the
morning, and lasted till one or two in the afternoon. One of the
burgomasters of Luebeck was usually made president. At the first meeting
he would thank the members present for having come, and these would
reply to him in courteous terms. Then when all their credentials had
been examined, and the excuses of the absent sifted, the diet would
proceed to the business in hand. This business was heavy and varied,
covering the external and internal policy of the League, the needful
moneys to be raised, the state of the various foreign factories. Even
private quarrels between merchants were heard here in appeal. The diet
decided on peace and war, sent despatches to foreign kings and princes;
threatened, warned, exhorted, those who had failed to fulfil treaty
obligations. Such was its power that it rarely failed to make its voice
heard, and a threat indited by the city of Luebeck was not put quietly
into the waste-paper basket by the northern courts. These missives were
sealed with the seal of the city in which the diet was sitting at the
time. Just as in their buildings, their guildhalls, and their towers,
our forefathers knew how to express a quaint conceit, so also in a
simple seal they understood how to express symbolically a summary of
their activity. Thus the pious and wise Luebeck bore on its city seal a
ship with high bulwarks, from whose single central mast waved a flag
bearing the cross. An ancient pilot steers the vessel through the waves
with his left hand while his right is raised in admonition. Opposite to
him sits a youth busy with the ropes, who, with his uplifted right hand,
seems to point to the help of heaven. This was to symbolize that
prudence, energy, and pious confidence accompanied Luebeck in all its
paths. The common Hanseatic seal was only used for foreign affairs. It
represented the imperial double eagle with the inscription "_Signum
civitatum maritimarum_."
[Illustration: SEAL OF LUEBECK]
The decisions arrived at by the diet were all recorded in careful
minutes, known as "recesses," of which an immense number have come down
to us, escaping fire and other vicissitudes. They all testify to the
thoroughly businesslike character that distinguished the League. Among
other matters we often come across applications from cities to be
admitted into the Hansa. Their candidature was generally addressed to
Luebeck, and their claims and resources carefully scrutinized by the
prudent League. As a rule the demand was conceded. The League was never
sorry to see its strength grow, and its expenses diminish by being
divided among a greater number of towns. Such admission, however, was
made upon unequal conditions, according to the importance, the
resources, and the situation of the city in question. This inequality
had struck deep roots also in the very heart of the cities. The
inhabitants were far removed from enjoying the same prerogatives, the
Hansa was by no means a democratic association. The most important posts
were reserved for a certain number of families know as patricians, who
had distinguished themselves by services for the common weal, or who
held power in the shape of wealth. An individual, however, could be
"unhansed" as well as a city, if he had failed to observe some law of
high commercial consequence, and it was even more difficult for an
individual to be readmitted than a town.
[Illustration: PETERSEN-HAUS, NUREMBURG.]
From the inequalities in the position of different members of the League
there arose conflicts of interest which were to prove "the little rift
within the lute," that by and by should "make the music mute." For
instance, the interest of the maritime towns was not always that of the
inland ones. Schisms and divisions were apt, above all, to take place
when there was a question of beginning a war, as this could never be
done without general approbation. Each town was inclined to throw the
burden on its associates. For as each was solely preoccupied with its
personal interests, and only entered into the League with a view to the
profits it could thus obtain, there was always in the minds of the
delegates a tacit reserve to make as few sacrifices as possible, and as
time went on they were even ready to abandon their allies, and let the
League perish if they did not find themselves directly benefited by any
sacrifice demanded by the common weal.
What held them together at all was, in a word, nothing more noble or
ideal than personal advantage, the fear through exclusion of losing by
exclusion, the great advantages that accrued from being a member of the
League. No wonder that with an ambition so little exalted the Hansa was
destined not to survive until our own day. For communities like
individuals must strive after some lofty ideal if their existence is to
be happy, and to have a sound enduring basis. The wonder is rather that
seeing what motives animated its members, the defective character of the
means at its disposal, such as the lack of a standing army, and the
constant mutations in its form of government, it should have attained to
such mighty results as we have roughly sketched in this, the second and
culminating period of its existence.
PERIOD III.
_THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE HANSA._
INTRODUCTION.
From the law of change to which all human affairs are subject the mighty
Hanseatic League was not exempt. Great though its power seemed to all
outward appearance, and rich as were its members, still, for some time
past, signs of decay and decline had made themselves manifest, here and
there ominous rents and fissures, that threatened, if not an entire, yet
a partial fall of the building.
The latter years of the fifteenth and the early years of the sixteenth
centuries were a time of the greatest moment in the history of modern
Europe. They mark the transition from the mediaeval to the modern spirit,
embracing two such potent factors in human development as the
Reformation and the discovery of America. It is almost sad to think that
the decrepitude of a powerful institution should have coincided with the
transformation and rejuvenescence of Europe. Yet so it was. So it will
ever be; we must march onward with our time, or be trodden down.
Many of the ideas of the Hansa had grown effete or were becoming
gradually obsolete. Individuality in men, independence in nations were
factors beginning to manifest themselves and to rebel against those
notions of blind obedience and of selfish monopoly inculcated by the
Hansa. The time was nearing when the old system of staple, of factories
was to give place to the busy varied life of the Exchange.
The discovery that the earth was round, not flat, that Ulysses had no
idle dream when he dreamed that there was another continent beyond the
pillars of Hercules, was a matter of unspeakable moment to trade. When
we recollect that almost to the same date belong the discovery of a
maritime route to the East Indies, and the invention of printing, we
cannot but recognize that a power, not willing to move with the times,
but painfully, obstinately clinging to its own ideas and images, had to
be left behind. The very causes for which the Hansa had been founded,
insecurity of roads, want of international justice, and other barbarous
and intolerant conditions, no longer existed. The League itself had
developed from a liberator into an oppressor. It no longer fitted with
the changing conditions; it too must change or perish. In vain did it
point to ancient charters, evoke "inviolable treaties" acquired at the
point of the sword or by might of wealth. It had to learn that of these
treaties, as indeed of treaties in general, must be said that which is
sadly, but too truly said of human promises, that they are "like
pie-crust, made to be broken."
The spirit of revolution, or rather of change, was abroad. It made
itself felt in manners, in institutions, in governments. The capture of
Constantinople by the Turks contributed to the new development. By
warning Europe of a new and menacing danger, it drew yet more closely
together the different states which the Crusades had already put into
relations with one another, and for which the feudal system formed a
sort of common link. This same event turned the stream of sciences,
letters, and arts towards Italy. On the other hand, the princes were
finding out the means of diminishing the power of the feudal lords and
nobles. The subjugation of the power of these vassals undermined little
by little the feudal system, and allowed this worn-out institution to be
replaced by institutions more in conformity with the needs of modern
society.
Various states, that had been unable to develope their forces, owing to
the abuse of the feudal system, moved swiftly forward, now that they
were free from restraint, and, having succeeded in centralizing their
power desired to give it a firm and equal step in the march onwards.
Meanwhile the forces that existed in the hands of the rulers were active
enough to assure the tranquillity of the people, but it was always
possible to turn them from their destination; war might arise any moment
out of the very institutions that ought to secure the maintenance of
peace. The people, recognizing this and fearing lest ambitious rulers
should form projects of aggrandizement and conquest, had recourse to
that policy which the Italian republics had already initiated and in
which Florence took the lead.
The democracy understood full well that it was for their good, and even
essential to their very existence as a power in the state, that they
should act upon the forces that determined the government, just as
these re-acted upon them: that, in a word, they should mutually hold
each other within the limits of the law and that general security could
only arise from the equilibrium of the means of attack and defence. This
new policy which demanded frequent communications between the parties
interested, gave rise to the system of embassies, itself quite a new
feature in international and political life, though it was really an
extension of ideas and systems long ago pursued by the Hansa. In a word,
the whole method of the world was changing, and it remained to be seen
whether the Hansa could still keep ahead as it had hitherto done.
While other nations were looking about them all round the globe, the
Hansa was, as ever, occupied in securing to itself the monopoly of the
Baltic basin, in order that no other peoples should deprive them of the
wealth of Scandinavia. And yet this "monopoly of the herring and the
cod-fish," as it has been named, was steadily becoming less and less
valuable. More than half of Europe was Protestant and no longer fasted;
wax was no more required in quantities for Church ceremonials and the
evidences of personal piety; the imitation of Italian and Spanish
fashions in dress caused less demand for the furs of the North. The
English were among the chief commercial rivals of the Hansa at this
date, and after them the Dutch, those very Dutch whose cities had at one
time formed part of the League, but who had seceded after the wars with
Waldemar, finding it more profitable to keep friends with the Danes.
It is strange that this combination of merchants, generally so astute,
should not have recognized whither the stream of things was tending.
Nor in its perplexities could it find any help from the emperor. The
German Empire was suffering from the same ills as the League, and with
equal steps was advancing towards its dissolution. Until now the Hansa
had gone on its triumphal way in spite of all inner and outer political
complications, indeed had rather profited than lost by these. This was
now altered. It was now no longer a body animated by one will, one
spirit. The disintegrating element of religious discord had entered
among its members, they were mixed up with the bloody doctrinal wars,
that followed the Reformation and ravaged Germany, and they were divided
among themselves on this very point. At last, after the treaty of
Augsburg (1555), which restored to Germany a more or less agitated peace
of some fifty years, there followed the terrible, devastating Thirty
Years' War, which gave the death blow to the League.
The Thirty Years' War left behind it only a heap of ruins. It had
consequences so disastrous that from some of them Germany has not
recovered even to this day. It caused her to lag in the onward march of
progress, and for all her military strength at this present moment, she
has not yet overtaken her neighbours and contemporaries in many
important points of civilization, that are more unfailing sources of a
nation's power than mere brute strength in arms or tactical skill in
battle.
One of the first serious causes of decline in the Hanseatic power was
due to the fact that as time went on and conditions of trade altered,
the interests of the maritime and continental cities were no longer
identical. The sea-board towns used to furnish to the inland the means
of selling the produce of industries with profit in the countries east,
north, and west of the Baltic. The Hanseatic ships and factories
facilitated this distribution of goods. But when other nations, and,
above all, the merchants of the Netherlands, and after them the English,
Danes, and Swedes carried on a part of this commerce with their own
ships, the inland cities no longer had the same interest in remaining
united with the maritime. They even thought that their union with the
League was more onerous than useful, and began to grow restive and would
no longer pay their dues to the general fund, which consequently became
much weakened and impoverished. Thus there were not only enemies from
without, but enemies from within to contend against. "A house divided
against itself cannot stand" is a saying of which our Hansa was very
soon to learn the full truth.
But before the final collapse came the League was to know one more
moment of proud prosperity, a moment which, had it been wisely and
unselfishly used would have secured to the Hansa a prolonged
dictatorship in Northern Europe.
After this rapid survey we will consider these events in detail and
order.
I.
STORM CLOUDS.
The centre of the Hansa's power had ever been the Baltic Ocean. On its
shores the idea of the League had first taken shape: here it had grown
and flourished, and here also it was to receive its death blow. As we
have said, in the course of the fifteenth century the Dutch gradually
came forward as serious competitors of the League. Their geographical
position made them freer than the Hanseatics; enclosed in a sort of
inland basin to which at any moment they might lose the key, their
astuteness was not less keen than that of their rivals, and like their
rivals they wisely made use of any quarrels or dissensions that might be
abroad. They were not slow, therefore, to discern that the Scandinavian
people and also the Scandinavian kings groaned under the heavy despotism
exercised by these German merchants. They proposed themselves as
substitutes for the Hansa, offering money and support to the kings and
easier and better conditions of trade to the natives. These proposals
were unofficially accepted. Neither rulers nor ruled as yet dared oppose
themselves openly to the League, but they were not sorry to see its
power reduced.
[Illustration: CHARLES V.]
For awhile the Hansa were able to keep their rivals in check, worrying
them by piracy on the one hand, and insisting on their ancient claims
and trade rights on the other.
But Charles V. had ascended the throne; the greatest emperor that had
ever governed in Germany since his namesake Charles the Great. He was
ruler not only of Germany, but of Spain and the Netherlands, and to the
latter people he was especially well disposed. He looked with no
friendly eye upon the League, which made itself a power within his
territory, and he was not sorry to see it weakened by competition. When
the Sound, their Danish Hellespont, the gold mine of the League,
continued to be jealously guarded by them, and its navigation denied to
other nations, Charles V. declared quite openly that "he would rather
miss three royal crowns, than that his Burgunders should be excluded
from the Sound." This was a sort of challenge to the Hansa. Let us hear
how other circumstances came about to enforce it from other quarters.
It may be remembered that since the days of Waldemar Atterdag, the
League had always had a voice in the election of a ruler to one of the
three northern kingdoms, and that it regarded with no friendly eye the
attempts made at a union of those kingdoms under one common head.
In 1513 Christian II. had ascended the Danish throne. He was an
unscrupulous and cruel ruler, known to posterity as the Nero of the
North. Before ascending the throne of Denmark he had been governor of
Norway, and in that capacity had conceived a bitter hatred against the
overbearing foreigners, "those German cobblers," as he called them, who
once even ventured to close against him the gates of his own town of
Bergen. He had already favoured by all ways in his power the trade of
non-Hanseatics, and tried to obtain some gentler treatment for the
oppressed burghers of Bergen. Still so great was yet the fear of the
Hansa, that when in 1513 Christian was crowned King of Denmark, he made
no difficulties about renewing all Hanseatic treaties and privileges,
and only stipulated that the harbours of Norway should also be
accessible to the Netherlanders. In return he desired their assistance
against Sweden, with which country he was at war.
For a time the League, and above all Luebeck, were rejoiced at this new
king and his attitude towards them, but not many years had passed before
they found out that they had to do with a more logical and altogether
sterner man than any of his predecessors had been. Christian hated the
Hansa, and rebelled against the subjection of the Sound, a Danish sea,
to foreign control, and the absolute sway of the Hansa in his markets.
Among many unwise words and deeds that live bound up with his memory, it
was not the most unwise which he repeated after Sigbrit Willem, the
mother of his beloved and lovely friend, Digveke (Little Dove), "that
good friendship must be maintained with the Netherlands, and that
Copenhagen must be made the staple place of the North."
[Illustration: CHRISTIAN II. OF DENMARK.]
Unfortunately for Christian, though he could repeat Sigbrit's sayings,
and perhaps also in a measure recognize their wisdom, he had not the
natural capacity to carry them into execution. This clever woman
recognized that the aim of the king should be to reinstate the
Scandinavian Union, to break the power of the aristocracy and the
clergy, and to free his impoverished people from the fetters in which
the Hansa had bound them for nine centuries. This was all right and
well, but it needed to be carried into effect with tact and moderation.
Christian did not possess these gifts; he made himself personally
detested by his cruelty and his overbearing manner, he knew not that
generosity which so gracefully becomes a victor. After conquering
Sweden, he soiled his victory by causing the most illustrious personages
of the kingdom to be executed, and still worse he stained his personal
honour by violating the conditions of an armistice in causing Gustavus
Ericson, of the house of Vasa, to be carried off captive to Denmark. It
did not improve matters when Christian explained that he required him as
a hostage. He caused Gustavus to be shut up in the strong fortress of
Kalo in Jutland. Here the captive was put on his parole, and it is said
suffered none of the rigours of custody. But the food put before him,
salt junk, sour ale, black bread, and rancid herrings, cannot have
comforted his enforced captivity in the material sense, while he
confessed to having been maddened by the talk of the soldiers who
guarded him, and who boasted that they would soon hold all Sweden, and
jestingly parcelled out among themselves the wealth and beauty of the
nation.
This young man so unjustly imprisoned was destined to become the avenger
of his fatherland, and those of his fellow-countrymen who had perished
upon the scaffold. He resolved to escape, hoping to reach Sweden in time
to defend his country, or to take advantage of any favourable juncture
that might arise.
It was in September, 1519, that, early one raw autumn morning, Gustavus
managed to escape from the Castle of Kalo, disguised as a drover of
oxen. He made his way to the city of Luebeck, and threw himself upon the
protection of the burgomaster and council. Needless to say the town gave
a generous welcome to the man who was foe of their foe--the King of
Denmark. But it was not long ere his whereabouts became known, and
Christian sent messengers to Luebeck, demanding in high-handed language
that Gustavus should be handed over to him. He complained that Vasa had
effected his escape contrary to his pledged word as a knight. Gustavus
spoke in his own defence.
"I was captured," he said, "contrary to all justice and all plighted
faith. It is notorious that I went to the king's fleet as a hostage. Let
any one who can, point out the place where I was made prisoner in
battle, or declare the crime for which I deserved chains. Call me not
then a prisoner, but a man seized upon unjustly, over-reached, betrayed.
I am now in a free city, and before a government renowned for justice
and for defending the persecuted. Shall I then be altogether deceived in
the confidence I have placed in them? or can breach of faith be
reasonably objected to me by one who never himself kept faith or
promise? or can it be wondered at that I should free myself from prison
which I deserved by no fault, except that of trusting to the assurances
of a king."
The shrewd burgesses who listened to Gustavus's defence were not misled
by his rhetoric, but motives of policy told in his favour. They knew
that if Christian were once undisturbed king of the three northern
kingdoms, he would possess a power which, as he had already shown, he
would not use to the advantage of the League. Here was a young nobleman
of fearless character and high talent, a man who hated the king with
hereditary hatred and personal animosity. Might he not become a thorn in
his side and a clog upon his movements?
This was the view of the matter taken by the burgomaster of Luebeck and
put forcibly before his colleagues. It was therefore agreed emphatically
to refuse the king's demands, and, instead of giving up Gustavus, to
furnish him rather with the means to return to his own country. "For who
knows," said the worthy council, "what he may do when he gets there."
To this refusal to deliver up the hostage the King of Denmark replied,
through his ambassadors, that he should make a house-to-house search for
his prisoner. That was truly more than the proud city could stomach.
They answered in the most haughty terms that they should never permit
such an interference with their home rights and privileges, and in the
presence of the Danish ambassadors reassured the fugitive of their
protection and friendship.
When the news of this reply reached Christian, he regarded it as an act
of great audacity. From this moment he became a yet more embittered
enemy of the Hansa, whose chief city and spokesman he very properly
recognized was Luebeck. He harassed them continually in fresh ways; he
carried on a yet more envenomed war against the Swedes, of whom he knew
the League to be the secret ally and the chief support.
At first success favoured his arms; he broke faith in all
directions--plundered, ravaged, sacked. But at last he made the cup of
wrath against him overflow by his cruel execution of ninety noble
Swedes, in the autumn of 1520; vaunting the deed in insolent heartless
words. He had shown them, he said, "how he roasted his Michaelmas
goose." Further, in his wanton presumption he did not hesitate to give
active expression to his hatred against Luebeck. When congratulated by
his councillors that he could now rejoice in the possession of the three
northern crowns, he replied: "So long as Luebeck is not in my power, I
cannot be happy in my kingdoms."
Shortly after this, Christian set out for the Netherlands to visit his
imperial brother-in-law at Ghent. The objects of his journey were
various. He wanted to obtain the payment of his consort's marriage
portion; to solicit the emperor's aid against his uncle, Frederick of
Schleswig Holstein; and yet more to obtain his tacit, if not active
assistance, against the Hansa towns on the Baltic, and especially
against Luebeck.
It was on the occasion of this visit that Charles V., accompanied by
Christian and Margaret of Austria, laid the foundation-stone of Antwerp
Cathedral. After this ceremony they returned to Brussels, where
Christian entertained his friends at a banquet. Among the guests was the
great German painter, Albert Duerer, then visiting the Low Countries. He
was then and there commissioned to paint the Danish king's portrait--a
portrait that all contemporaries greatly admired as a faithful
reproduction of Christian's manly beauty. The artist received thirty
florins--a sum that seemed to him munificent, and called forth
expressions of real gratitude.