lowest kind, that would not bear the light of day and of judicial
investigation. The inquiries, however, caused the archbishop and his
wire-pullers at Luebeck to think it well to remove Wullenweber from his
prison at Rothenburg to some other more distant place. In consequence,
he was passed on in the spring of 1536 to the custody of the
archbishop's brother, Duke Henry of Brunswick, a bigoted Catholic and
zealous persecutor of heretics. He confined Wullenweber in his castle of
Steinbrueck, a strong fortress situated between the towns of Brunswick
and Hildesheim. The dark dungeon with its walls ten feet in thickness,
with its small door but a foot and a half in breadth, are shown to this
day. Quite recently this inscription has been put up inside it--"Here
Juergen Wullenweber lay and suffered. 1536-1537."
Yes, suffered indeed. For a year and a half this unfortunate man
suffered mental and physical tortures in this hole. On one occasion he
was racked in the presence of Nicholas Broemse and other burghers from
Luebeck, and in order that he might recant nothing he had previously been
made to say, he was racked twice before this public torture came about,
and threatened with instant death did his answers vary. The duke was
present on all occasions, it being a special pleasure to him to witness
the sufferings of heretics. At the end, when the questions and replies
were read aloud in the presence of the Luebeckers and the lacerated man,
the duke turned on him harshly, asking, "Juergen what do you say to all
this?" "I have said, yes," replied the broken man, in low tones.
A letter written to his brother a few days after this event is
heart-rending in its accents of despair and sorrow that he had been made
to incriminate others by enforced false testimony. He begs his brother
to do his best to make this good; he says he knows that he himself will
lose his life, though he had two kings of England to friend, but he
wished to save those who had stood by him and aided him. Broemse and the
others who persecute him, know well that all the accusations are false,
but it suits their purpose to put them forward. "Vouchsafe me credit; if
I am a thief, may you yourself help me on to the gallows; if I am a
traitor, on to the wheel; if I am an Anabaptist, into the fire."
Thus Wullenweber's confinement dragged on, and public sympathy for his
fate increased. Seeing this, his persecutors thought it desirable to
make an end. They announced that "the honest country" should judge
Wullenweber. They carried out this proposal in the most despicable and
treacherous manner. On a Monday morning September 24, 1537, a large
gathering of peasants was assembled in an open space in the
neighbourhood of Wolfenbuettel. From their midst were chosen twelve
farmers who had not the smallest knowledge of State affairs, and barely
comprehended the question at stake against the accused. Then the charges
made against Wullenweber and to which he had acquiesced under torture
were read before them. Called upon to reply, Wullenweber boldly, in a
speech of great dignity, denied the charges, and declared himself
willing to die to prove his innocence. That he should die was
unanimously resolved; indeed, the verdict was a foregone conclusion. As
they were unable to resolve upon the method it was voted that the
hangman should decide on Wullenweber's punishment. Master Hans, called
on by the judge, said that he "deemed it right and fitting that
Wullenweber should be led forth and quartered and his body be torn on
four wheels, and that he should be judged thus between heaven and earth,
that he might act in this wise no more, and that others should remember
how he had been dealt by."
But even after this Wullenweber's enemies were not appeased. They read
out three more articles of accusation against him, articles which the
advocate said he could not hear because of the noise made by the crowd.
Juergen replied. It was true he had confessed this while in prison, but
under great pain, and in order to save his body and soul. But in order
that his soul might not lie before the stern judgment seat of God, he
herewith exculpated those whom he had inculpated while in prison, and
begged his gracious lord (Duke Henry was close by) not to stain his
hands with innocent blood and to bring therewith his (Wullenweber's)
soul to lasting damnation. He then requested, as a last favour, to be
permitted to speak a word or two with the emissaries from Luebeck. Most
unwillingly the two men came into the presence of their late chief.
"Juergen, what do you want?" said one of them, in harsh tones that roused
all the pent-up ire of Wullenweber's soul. In presence of the miserable
instruments of his oppressors he broke, for the first time, his silence
of two years' standing.
"This," he said in loud, clear tones: "this is what you have striven
after so long, even four years ago when you wanted to surprise and carry
me off by night in my house, which God Almighty did not permit. Now
after all you have succeeded, that I admit before God. But I also tell
you before the whole world, that the last articles are false, and that
what I said in prison, I said under torture and to save my life."
He wanted to add yet more, but the Luebeckers were afraid lest a tumult
in his favour should arise among the people. One of them urged Master
Hans, the hangman, to hurry on the execution. But the hangman had a soul
of mercy. He listened to Wullenweber's prayer, "I have but a short while
left. Let me say two or three words more, then I will gladly die." And
yet again he repeated, taking Almighty God to witness, that he had in no
respect failed in his duty or his obligations to the town of Luebeck;
that he was no thief, no traitor! Then as though he had done with his
conscience, with the world, he sank upon his knee, and bent his head to
receive his death-blow. Master Hans severed the noble head from its
trunk with one sharp blow. The body was then quartered and torn to
little pieces on the wheel.
So perished the last great Hanseatic hero and with him the Hansa's
power. At that time, so great was the fear of his foes, so blindly
prejudiced the masses, that no one ventured to speak a good word for the
dead man. But that all did not think that he had suffered justly is made
manifest by a few little trifles. Thus, for example, a worthy Hamburg
burgher of the period notes in his private diary the fate that had
befallen this great man. In the margin he painted a red flaming sword
and underneath he wrote the words, "This he did not deserve." The same
man writing a few days later and speaking of his execution and
quartering, notes again in the margin, "Duke Henry merited this." Even
the chancellor of Zelle, one day in his cups, ventured the utterance
that "Wullenweber had died as a martyr to the gospel."
Yes, he had died as a martyr; a martyr to his town and to his faith, and
the Hanseatic League was not to see the like of him again. He was no
perfect hero of romance. Indeed his impetuosity and his excitable
temperament, which caused him to be carried away by his enthusiasms,
hindered him from developing one of those firm characters that excite
eternal admiration and respect; he was lacking in moderation, and in
foresight; but combined with his faults there were grand and noble
elements, and take him "all in all," he was a man to honour and admire,
a true patriot, a true friend to the people and their cause.
In the archives of Weimar are deposited and can be seen to this day, the
acts of interrogation and indictment planned against Wullenweber by his
enemies; curious documents, well worth the study of a student of
humanity, as proving how even truth can be distorted to bad ends. In one
of them Wullenweber's signature is scarcely decipherable; no wonder when
we learn that he had just before been hung up for four hours by his
thumbs!
[Illustration: THE RACK.]
Juergen's friend and ally Max Meyer had not survived him. He too fell a
victim to treachery and cruelty. Vardberg's walls were subjected to hot
bombardment, from which sacks stuffed full of wool taken in booty could
not preserve them. Then too the hired soldiery had grown restive, their
wages being in arrear, owing to the delay with which supplies arrived
from England. In the month of May, 1536, the castle was forced to
surrender and open its gates to the enemy. Max Meyer was promised a safe
pass, a promise that in accordance with the usages of the time was
broken. The whilom blacksmith was delivered over into the hands of King
Christian III., who caused him to be put in irons. He was then accused
of all manner of offences, many of them, as in the case of Wullenweber,
purely imaginary; was tortured, and made to confess to fictitious crime;
and finally, given over to the keeping of the Danish governor from whose
guardianship he had months before escaped by his happy ruse. On June 17,
1536, Max Meyer was beheaded at Helsingoer, and his body quartered and
torn upon the wheel. So ended this handsome adventurer, and with his
death, and that of his friend Juergen Wullenweber, ended also an
important and picturesque episode in Hanseatic history.
IV.
THE HANSA LOSES ITS COLONIES.
The prominence which we have had to accord to the history of Luebeck in
the preceding chapters would almost make it appear as though we were
dealing with the adverse fortunes of only one town, of a town moreover
that was fighting mainly for its private and special interests and that
succumbed in the combat. But this conception would be wholly erroneous.
In those days the German Empire had no maritime commerce save that
carried on by the Hansa; this commerce had no protection save that
afforded to it by the League. The League was only powerful so long as
Luebeck with a firm hand and high spirit held together its various
members and led and encouraged their more feeble and often vacillating
steps. For there were few among the cities that heartily supported the
Queen of the Hansa in these latter days. At the cost of great and real
sacrifices she insisted that the prerogatives of the League should be
maintained, and if in return she also asked for some privileges for
herself, this can scarcely excite wonder. It is therefore obvious that
the declining power of Luebeck necessarily brought with it an
enfeeblement of the whole federation.
After the failure of Wullenweber's bold schemes and his ignominious
death, after the enmity against Luebeck, and consequently against the
League, that had been fanned to yet greater fury by late events, it is
easy to understand that the relations of the Hansa to the Scandinavian
kingdoms suffered an entire change. Denmark was the first to avail
itself of the liberty it had regained. The country forthwith began to
draw profit from its "gold mine" the Sound. Then Norway followed suit.
The town of Bergen, above all, so long oppressed by the League, now took
its revenge. Gradually as the inhabitants beheld the enfeeblement at
home and abroad of their rivals they withdrew from them privilege after
privilege until the time came that the natives of Bergen recovered both
their commercial activity and their fortune.
The justice of history is less pressed for time than the justice of man,
but it is yet surer and more inexorable.
This inevitable justice, which punishes the children for the sins of
their fathers, fell upon the Hanseatics in full measure at Bergen. The
time actually came when it fell to the people of Bergen to advance funds
to impoverished or ruined Hanseatics, and, on the principle of returning
a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, insult for insult, they advanced
these moneys under the same hard conditions that had been employed
towards themselves. The dispossession of the Hanseatics was naturally a
work of time, but in course of years it became complete. The last
occasion when the four chief "games" were performed, which according to
a reporter at the Hanseatic Diet were designed "to keep off rich folks'
children from Bergen and secure the profits of the trade to poor young
fellows," seems to have been about 1590.
It is true that up to the eighteenth century German merchants retained
certain prerogatives in Norway, but they were no longer the Hanseatics
of the League, they were merely the members of an association reduced to
slender proportions, an association as impotent to sustain its dignity
as to restore the rights of its predecessors.
Sweden was no less happy in its efforts after emancipation from
Hanseatic tutelage. Gustavus Vasa laid the foundations for this
exemption from tolls, monopolies, and harassing restrictions. He taught
his subjects the great lesson how to trade to their own profit. After
his position as ruler was once well assured he did not hesitate to speak
in open court of the German merchants as "butchers," comparing his
predecessors to "good milch kine," and adding that he should never
forgive himself, but should be ashamed before God and man, did he
sacrifice the well-being of his kingdom to the rapacity and selfishness
of the Luebeckers. And he kept his word. So long as he lived he
checkmated the League with all the resources at his command, and he left
his desire to raise the commercial prosperity of his kingdom as a legacy
to his son.
Nor was it enough that men had come to hate the Hansa with that fierce
hatred which is felt towards those who, holding power in their hands
disgust and oppress their inferiors by overbearing conduct. Even nature
seemed to turn against them in that dark moment of their national life.
In the years following the burgomaster's war, as Wullenweber's war grew
to be called, the herrings which had already failed once or twice during
the course of the fifteenth century, either entirely abandoned the
Scanian coasts, or came in such small quantities as not to repay the
cost of maintenance of the "Witten." There was yet worse in store. Not
only did the herrings abandon the Hansa, but they favoured their rivals
the Netherlanders, coming in great masses into their waters, and thus
enriching them at the expense of their enemies; a circumstance that
furnished the pious preacher Bonnus with the theme for a sermon, in
which he pointed out, to his own satisfaction, how this was the direct
punishment inflicted by Almighty God, for the war so wantonly entered
upon by the Hansa.
A fresh blow of great force came to the League in the year 1553. The
English, so long forcibly kept outside the navigation of the Baltic, had
suddenly opened out for themselves a road to the mouth of the Northern
Dwina by means of the Arctic Ocean, thus discovering the White Sea, and
offering a new route to merchants trading with Russia.
The discoverer of this new ocean route was Sir Richard Chancellor, who,
together with Sir Hugh Willoughby, had been commissioned by an
association of London merchants, to undertake the search of a road to
China by way of the icy sea. They set forth in three stately vessels,
the _Bona Esperanza_, the _Bona Confidentia_, and the _Edward
Bonaventura_. For four months the ships kept close together, but in the
region of the North Cape the _Edward Bonaventura_, which Chancellor
commanded, was separated, owing to ice and storms, from its
comrades--never more to rejoin them.
Sir Hugh penetrated with his ships as far as the harbour of Artschina in
Northern Lapland, whence he could not continue his journey, owing to the
intense cold and the lack of means of sustenance. In this desolate spot,
he and his whole crew perished. Long after, fishermen found their
bodies. Beside Willoughby's corpse lay his journal, which closed with
the desponding words: "Then sent we three men south-east three days'
journey, who returned without finding of people or any similitude of
habitation." The diary, which has been lately printed, is a touching
record of patient endurance and heroic enterprise.
Meantime the more fortunate Sir Richard had penetrated to the spot where
Archangel is now situated, and where then stood a monastery dedicated to
St. Nicholas. After resting here, he made his way to Moscow, where Czar
Ivan held his Court. Here he was received in the most friendly manner,
remained some months, and was finally dismissed with a royal letter to
the young King Edward VI., in which Ivan expressed his great wish that
their two countries should henceforth approach each other in more
intimate relationship. Nor were these desires of the Czar's fruitless.
After Sir Richard Chancellor's return, and on hearing his report
concerning the terms under which the Czar would allow the English to
trade in and with his country, a number of London merchants formed
themselves into a commercial corporation under the title of "The London
and Muscovite Company." This company once more despatched Chancellor to
treat with the Czar, and the result was that by the year 1555, mutual
trading relations between Russia and England were established.
Now if an earthquake had shaken the whole of Northern Europe, it could
not have produced a greater commotion in the entire Baltic North than
did this Russo-Anglican alliance, "The London and Muscovite Company."
The good understanding between England and Russia was at once recognized
as a danger of first-class importance to all the merchants along the
Sound and the Baltic. They saw their entire commerce in imminent danger.
What did it now avail them that the Sound had been closed for centuries
against the English ships, if the London merchants could carry their
goods to Russia by another route? Above all, the Hanseatic League
recognized the danger that menaced both them and their colony of
Livonia, the colony of which the city of Bremen was wont to boast that
it had been the godmother. What would happen, they asked themselves,
with good reason, if Czar Ivan, already their enemy at Novgorod, should
also take unto himself Livonia, if he should open its harbours to his
new friends, and thus obtain for himself the mastery of the Baltic?
In order to fully appreciate these fears, we must remember that the
province anciently called Livonia embraced all the departments now known
as Esthonia, Courland, and Livonia; in a word, the whole Baltic coast
of the Russian continent. This district was entirely governed by the
Germans. Three hundred years back a priest named Meinhard had founded
the first Christian Church at the mouth of the Dwina, and from that time
forward Germany had not ceased to send the flower of its aristocracy,
the _elite_ of its burghers, its monks and its priests, its merchants
and citizens, its _landsknechte_ and mercenaries to these northern
coasts to spread the Christian faith, and to found a German colony.
Colonists of all kinds rapidly established themselves in Livonia, and
while the industry of the merchants raised prosperous cities and safe
harbours along the river and the seaboard, the nobles dotted the land
with their castles and strongholds, and the clergy with their churches
and convents. It was a special characteristic of this greater Germany
that it faithfully retained and reproduced the outward features of the
mother-land. With German speech, German law and German customs had
become naturalized.
On the gates of the citadels the knights beheld the same coats of arms
that greeted their eyes at home. In the towns were seen the same
architectural features, the same tightly-packed gabled houses, with
their quaint projecting storeys, and their yawning cellars, for the
storage of goods; the cocklofts, with their heavy, pendant cranes, that
distinguished the northern cities and made them all resemble, more or
less, those toy towns of our childhood that come from Nuernberg, and are
so deftly packed into their box that, once removed, no unskilled fingers
can replace them.
The monks and the priests, on their part, formed in Livonia their
accustomed cells, their silent cloisters, the glory and weird wonder of
the Gothic cathedral, with its tall, pointed spires and steeples, its
coloured glass windows, through which the northern sunlight broke in
soft rays, staining the floors of God's house with glory.
In a word, everything here reproduced mediaeval Germany. Of the natives
of the land there was little trace, though some of these still lingered
in the country and ventured secretly to pay worship to their old deposed
gods in sacred thickets and on lonely heaths. To this day Livonia
retains its German character; the German language still reigns supreme
there, German customs prevail, German names survive. In the times we
speak of it was entirely under Teutonic sway.
Was this rich, important colony to be lost to the mother-land and to the
Hansa that had created it? No wonder the League was alarmed.
Nor was it alone in its fears. Sweden and all the West took fright. In
imagination, they already beheld the East--in the shape of Russia and
its barbarous dependencies--descending upon them with the weapons
furnished to them by England. At the instigation of the King of Sweden
and of the Livonians, who, in 1556, expressed their fears on this
subject before the Hanseatic Diet, the League, desirous to dispel this
European peril, warned the Emperor of Germany, the Kings of Denmark,
England, and Poland, and the Duke of Prussia, not to facilitate Russia's
projects of invasion by putting at her disposal either the munitions of
war or the means that would help to civilize her, and thus render her
yet more redoubtable.
To these requests England turned a deaf ear, for her commercial policy
then, as now, was a trifle selfish and insular. Judging that the
distance which separated her from Russia gave her entire security, she
did not dream of disturbing a traffic which she found lucrative. Queen
Mary, admonished by the King of Sweden to interdict to her subjects the
new navigation to Archangel, contented herself by forbidding the
shippers who traded with the White Sea the exportation of arms.
It was not long before the alarms expressed proved themselves to be
anything but chimerical. Danger first showed itself in the shape of
dissension. Livonia, seeing itself suddenly grown of enhanced importance
to the League, took up certain pretentious airs towards its
foster-mother. It broke through ancient contracts and statutes, among
which was a stern interdict against trading on its own account with
Russia. The next step was to put the Hanseatic League commercially upon
the same footing as a stranger; and the Livonians were, consequently,
able to turn against them some of their own laws--for example, that
which declared that guest should not trade with guest.
Meanwhile Russia, which had now completely thrown off the Tartar yoke
and was beginning to feel its strength, cast more and more greedy eyes
towards Livonia, with its rich cities and wide seaboard.
Under pretext of bringing about a fusion of the Greek and Latin branches
of the Catholic Church, the Czar Ivan had sent successive embassies to
Germany, who there recruited for him workmen, artists, learned men, and
officers, all of whom were to aid in putting the newly-welded Russian
Empire upon a civilized basis. While there, these men had learnt the
fact that Livonia, which stood under the government of the Teutonic
knights, had been divided by internal dissensions since the death of the
Grand Master, Walter von Plattenberg, who, early in the sixteenth
century, had saved the province from falling a prey to the Russian
desire for conquest.