Customs Union was first politically discussed. It met, not
unnaturally, with much opposition among the citizens, and
especially among the merchant class, of whom these citizens
are so largely composed. Not only did it wound the
Hamburgers' pride to see an old and honourable distinction
abolished, but they feared, and not without reason, that
their trade would be seriously affected by such a step. They
were afraid that their city would cease to be the great
international distributing centre which it had been so long.
Hot and animated were the discussions in the Senate, the
House of Burgesses, the press, on docks and quays, in public
and in private. But the pressure exercised from Berlin,
though in appearance gentle, was firm and decided. How could
a single city stand against a strong military empire? In
May, 1881, therefore, was drafted a proposal to the effect
that the whole of the city and port of Hamburg should be
included in the Zoll Verein. This was laid before the
Senate, who passed a resolution that the treaty should be
accepted, stating its conviction that the inclusion of the
free ports in the Zoll Verein would not only be beneficial
for the empire, most of whose foreign commerce passed
through them, but also would increase the prosperity of the
cities themselves. Whether the Senate really held this
belief, or whether they thought it wise to profess this
opinion, does not appear. The proposal was then sent down to
the House of Burgesses. Here it did not find such facile
acceptance as among the more aristocratic senators; here no
real or professed illusions reigned. For seven hours did the
fathers of the city discuss the resolution of the Senate in
a sitting that will ever be famous among the annals of the
town. The speech made by Dr. Petersen, the Commissioner for
the Senate, was most impressive, and it touched the hearts
of all his hearers.
He reminded the Assembly that their thousand years' history
testified to the fact that the Hamburgers were ever an
active, practical, patriotic people, who took life
earnestly, caring not only for business and family, but for
the common weal. Every good Hamburger has always been ready
to sacrifice his feelings and his personal interests for the
good of the Fatherland. Let all of them, he urged, even
those who could not do it heartily, vote for the measure, in
the sure and certain conviction that the "Father City" would
flourish and prosper, and increase through the skill, the
energy, and, above all, the public spirit of its citizens.
Hamburg would still remain the emporium, for the wide world,
of the German Fatherland, to which she would be more closely
united than ever.
This speech was followed by much and earnest discussion,
after which the proposal of the Senate was at last agreed
to as an inevitable measure, and Hamburg was included in
the Zoll Verein by one hundred and six votes against
forty-six.
The details for carrying into effect this conclusion have
occupied seven years, and the event was finally celebrated
with great pomp, the Emperor William II. coming in person
to enhance the solemnity of the sacrifice brought by the
burghers of the erst free city for the common weal of the
German Fatherland.
As we have said, the step was inevitable sooner or later,
and the Hamburgers knew it. The German Empire, so long a
fiction, had arisen stronger than ever. It was natural,
very necessary, that an anomaly should be abolished which
placed the great gateway of foreign commerce outside the
customs regulations of the rest of the empire. It was
natural for the imperial authorities to desire that their
two great commercial ports should be at one with the empire
in all respects; that as far as their trade is concerned
they should not be in the position of foreign countries,
jealously watched by imperial officers lest they might seek
to injure the financial interests of the country of which
they form a part.
It is too early to know what effect this step will have
upon the trade of the two cities, whether it will check or
increase their prosperity. The gain to Germany is certain.
The gain to the two cities, but in especial to Hamburg, is
something less than problematical. Meantime the last and
only privilege the three once powerful Hanseatic cities
retain is that of being entitled, like the greatest States
in the empire, to send their own representatives to the
Bundesrath and to the Reichstag.
EPILOGUE.
The once proud and mighty Hanseatic League is dead now, quite dead.
There remains of it only a noble memory, the record of a high and
fearless spirit which resisted tyrants petty and great, a spirit which
recognized the value of independence, and strove with all its strength
to attain and to maintain this boon. We have traced it from its earliest
dawn to its recent complete demise; there but remains for us to speak
its funeral oration. This is soon accomplished, since whether for men,
for nations or associations, if their deeds speak not for them more
eloquently than human words, the latter shall avail them little.
The chief title of the Hanseatic League to remembrance is that it was
the means of spreading higher culture throughout wide tracts of the
European continent, many of them, in those early times, still sunk in
utter barbarism; that it introduced Western customs and civilization
into all domains of private and social life for millions upon millions
of people. This association is a bright spot that strikes the eye, as it
looks back across the long, dark abyss of ages past, and we welcome it
the more gladly because the bond that held this League together was
neither force nor fear, but free will and clear insight into the
advantages and necessity of mutual help. To quote the pertinent words of
Mrs. Sinnett: "These free cities of Germany rise like happy islands
amidst the wide-wasting ocean of violence and anarchy. Not by war and
spoil, but by industry, enterprise, and prudent economy, did they
accumulate the wealth that enabled them to heal so many of the wounds
inflicted on their country by the iron hands beneath whose grasp art,
science, even agriculture, by which they subsisted, was perishing. By
the unions which the cities formed amongst themselves they stemmed the
torrent of violence and anarchy that was threatening to turn their
country into a desert peopled by hordes of robbers and slaves; they lent
the most effectual aid to the Church in her efforts for the peace and
civilization of Europe; yet they held the balance most firmly against
the too great preponderance of her power, and rescued the human mind
from the injurious subjection which she sometimes claimed as the price
of her benefits when society had outgrown the leading strings that
guarded its infancy, and felt as a galling restraint what had once been
a needed protection. The cities built asylums for the widows and orphans
whom the nobles and warriors had made desolate; they stretched out often
a helping hand to the poor knight, who was regarding them with envy,
hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness, taking him into their pay
as a soldier, and enabling him to get a comparatively honest living,
instead of wringing 'from the hard hands of peasants their vile trash,'
or filling some menial office at the court of a prince, and picking up
the crumbs that fell from the great man's table. Behind their walls and
bastions the young tree of civil liberty, which was perishing in the
open country, took root and flourished; there, even whilst striving only
at first for riches and their peaceful enjoyment, did men learn to prize
the blessings of social order, justice, and peace. These cities were not
mere aggregations of men within a narrow space, such as may have existed
among the most barbarous nations; they were organic bodies animated by a
living spirit--a spirit of enlightened intelligence, courage, and
self-reliance, which best supplied what was defective in the religious
system of the time, and gave a more healthy and manly tone to the
character both of individuals and of society. The Church, it cannot be
denied, sometimes taught men, in the pursuit of an imagined perfection,
to trample on the impulses, and violate the duties of nature; in these
little republics, on the contrary, though originally they had only the
attainment of temporal good in view, they rose insensibly to higher
objects, and not only cultivated the social virtues more effectually,
but in their struggle to maintain their place in the world, fought in
many instances a more successful fight against the sins of the flesh,
through the discipline of the manifold cares of an active life, than the
recluse of the cloister, with all his fastings and flagellations. Among
the happy influences belonging to these miniature states was the ardent
attachment of the free citizens of the Middle Ages to the little spot
which they had hedged in from the wide wilderness of slavery around,
where the individual, if not of noble birth, was usually the mere
helpless victim of arbitrary power. Freedom and honour, the respect of
his fellows, the happiness of domestic life, the interest and excitement
of active business, the joviality of social intercourse, a thousand ties
entwined around him, connected him closely with the city, and even the
house of his birth; for in those days it was common for men to live and
die beneath the same roof under which they had been born. The merchant
regarded his native town with a pride fully equal to that of birth and
chivalry in the privileged classes, and little envied, we may suppose,
the life of the solitary feudal lord in his castle, or the anxious and
dependent position of the courtier. The citizen of a humbler class
showed, by parading on all occasions the tools and emblems of his trade
with the same complacency with which a soldier displays his sword, or
the noble his armorial bearings, that he knew his position and was
content with it, and felt none of that weak shrinking from his appointed
place in society or uneasy longing after another, which has since been
the epidemic malady of the middle classes."
For two centuries and more this guild of merchants made the German name
respected in European lands, the German flag respected in European
waters. When the empire had fallen to pieces and there was no union, no
cohesion left, the Hanseatics remained German and held together
staunchly and nobly. Though the time of their existence was brief, yet
it was all-important, not only for their own land, but for all Europe.
To appreciate to its full extent the influence exercised upon Europe in
general by the Hanseatic League, we must carry our minds back, and
compare Europe as it was when the League took its rise, with Europe as
it was when the League declined. The Hansa made its appearance in
history at a time when barbarism, violence, religious fanaticism,
political and civil slavery, and dire intellectual darkness overspread
the whole continent, when liberty and industry, as we understand them,
were unknown. The constant and active communication kept up by the
cities of the Hansa, not only among themselves and with all parts of
Germany, but with the most distant countries, awoke and kept alive the
intelligence of the people. To the Hanseatics, as to the Italians of the
same epoch, was reserved the honour of dispelling the obscurity that
reigned in the mental and material world. The Hansa's glory only pales
before that of the rival Italian mercantile associations from the fact
that its energies were somewhat too exclusively confined to
money-getting. Had these communities arisen in a period of literary
culture, or among the glorious relics of the art of a brighter age,
these cities would have presented several more salient points of
resemblance to the republics of Greece and Italy. It cannot, however, be
denied that in many of their institutions they improved on the model set
by the Italian cities, and this more especially in all matters relating
to morality and rectitude. But they were less grand and large in their
policy than their Trans-Alpine brethren, and unfortunately for
themselves, their commercial maxims were always narrow and selfish.
Monopoly was their watchword, their grand aim. And it was largely in
consequence of this narrow policy that their ruin overtook them. They
perished of that disease whereof corporations are apt to perish, namely,
egotism, the centrifugal force which is perpetually tending to rend
asunder all human society, and must inevitably do so, when not
restrained by some powerful antagonistic action.
It is strange that, while so rich commercially, the Hanseatic League
lacked political ambition. Had they possessed it, there is little doubt
they might have made themselves independent masters of all Northern
Germany. But they seem never to have forgotten that they were merchants.
They were held down by petty motives, smallness of views. Here, again,
they were unlike the Italians, among whom the trader could develop into
the aristocrat, as is abundantly proved by the history of the Medici and
other famous great houses. The reason must be sought, no doubt, in the
different native temperament of the two nations--the one innately
refined, the other rougher and more boorish. Though the civic pride of
the Hanseatics was highly flattered when the kings of the North and the
princes of Germany trembled before them, they confined their ambitions
entirely to gaining commercial advantages.
Certain it is that the two powers--the Hanseatic and the Italian
Republics--each in their respective sphere of action, helped on the
progress that has changed the entire face of this hemisphere, and that
they did this by no other means than that of their commercial activity.
For this is the great power of commerce, if practised in its best and
highest spirit, that it is able to work veritable miracles, bringing
into contact the extremes of civilization, enlarging and disseminating
ideas, and helping forward towards that universal brotherhood of man,
that universal peace and goodwill, which is, and must be, the highest
ideal of humanity. Not till war is really rooted out from among us, not
till what is for the benefit of one is held for the benefit of all, not
until a generous altruism reigns supreme, can mankind be said to be
thoroughly civilized. Trade and commerce, though apparently egotistic
factors, work strongly towards this end, even though their action
proceed merely from motives of self-seeking. War is so serious an
interruption to trade that men will seek to avert it, even out of a
simple regard for their own pockets. By fair smiling peace, not only
traders, but all the world is benefited and made happier. Once let
nations fully understand and recognize its incalculable benefits, and
even the lowest and most squalid souls will struggle to uproot this
remnant of a barbaric spirit which can never evince itself as aught but
an evil.
The Hansa uprose in a rough age, and hence had to work with the
rough-made methods of its time; but in its time and in its way it did a
good work, and posterity cannot withhold from it either gratitude or
admiration. Its policy, its laws, its constitution, its commerce, its
immense credit, the sway which it once exercised, the able magistrates,
merchants, and mariners whom it produced--all these have vanished,
unable to resist the torrent of time that engulfs good and bad alike.
But its influence and example have remained, while much of its spirit,
like many of its ideas and rules, have become incorporated into the
general stock of the ideas of humanity.
Of the League itself, it is true there remains only an illustrious name.
For Germany, which gave it birth, there remain memories both of pride
and regret--memories that should serve as a spur to noble and useful
emulation.
"The History of Commerce," says Montesquieu, "is the history of the
intercommunication of peoples." The story of the Hanseatic League is an
eloquent testimony to the truth of these words.
INDEX.
A
Albert Duerer, 226
Alva, Duke of, 299
Amsterdam, 308, 310
Antwerp, 308, 310
Armada, 317, 349
Arnold of Brescia, 38
Art, 109
B
Baltic, 21, 45, 89, 217, 260, 286, 296, 309
Barbarossa, 4, 35
Bergen, 20, 127, 137, 284
Bismarck, 375
Blackmail, 12, 43
Boris, Gudenow, 161, 302
Bornholm, 59, 98, 237, 300
Bremen, 83, 322, 365, 375
Broemse, Nicholas, 266, 270
Bruges, 95, 100, 163, 307
Brunswick, 85
Burleigh, Lord, 336
C
Charles IV., 63, 73
Charles V., 219
Charles VI., 369
Christian II., 219
Christopher of Oldenburg, 251
Civilizing influence of traders, 24
Cologne, 34, 61, 95, 168, 179, 264, 309, 319, 321, 348
Commerce with Denmark, Sweden, and Russia, 148
Commerce with the Netherlands and Southern Europe, 163
Copenhagen, 50, 57
Court of St. Peter, 30, 153
Cromwell's Navigation Act, 256
D
Dalecarlia, 227
Dangers of navigation, 17, 18
Danzig, 87, 98, 185, 300, 315
Decline and fall, 209
Denmark, 48, 51, 57, 148, 219, 250, 259, 260, 284, 300, 357
Diet of Worms, 43
Ducal cities, 80
Duke of Northumberland, 332
Duerer, Albert, 226
Dutch, 95, 137, 169, 217, 306
E
Elizabeth, Queen, 336
Embden, 342
End of Hansa dominion in England, 324
England, 15, 16, 98, 138, 179, 286
England, end of dominion in, 324
English towns, 195
Epilogue, 379
Ethelred the Unready, 15
F
Federation, 21
Feodorowitch Gudenow, 161, 302
Fights of the Hansa, 48
Foreign protection, 15
Foreign trade, 30
France, 171
Frederick Barbarossa, 4, 35
Frederick (of Holstein), 225, 231, 236, 244
Freiburg, 38
G
Godeke Michelson, 129, 134
Gothland, island of, 24, 54, 55, 127
Gresham, 328, 337
Gudenow, Feodorowitch, 161, 302
Gustavus Adolphus, 355
Gustavus Vasa, 222, 226, 232, 236, 260, 285
H
Hamburg, 300, 342, 365, 375
Hansa fights, 48
Hansa, name of, 46
Hansa, towns in fourteenth century, 82
Henry VIII., 248, 271, 326
Herring, 48
Holbein, 246
Holy Roman Empire, 4, 6, 31, 231, 358
I
Italian merchants, 37, 40, 307
Italy, 175
J
Julin, 23
L
Liberty, personal in twelfth century, 35
Life in fourteenth century, 112
Lisbon, 175
Livonia, 157, 288, 291
Lombards, 6, 37, 40, 159
London, 15, 16, 20, 179
Loss of colonies, 283
Luebeck, 48, 50, 57, 63, 73, 85, 89, 149, 202, 223, 232, 237,
242, 246, 283, 300, 319, 333, 345, 357, 365, 375
M
Mary, Queen, 332
Max Meyer, 245
Merchant Adventurers, 325, 328, 337, 342
Meyer, 245
Michelson, 129, 134
Municipal privileges, 40
N
Napoleon, 371
Netherlands, 217, 250, 306
Nicholas Broemse, 266, 270
Northumberland, Duke of, 332
Norway, 137, 219, 284
Novgorod, 20, 152
O
Oldenburg, Christopher of, 251
Organization of the League, 202
P
Payments, 103
Peace of Westphalia, 364, 365
Personal liberty in twelfth century, 35
Peter's Court, St., 30, 153
Petersen, 377
Portugal, 175
Protection, foreign, 15
R
Reformation, the, 241
Religion, 106, 241
Rhine towns, 45
Rudolph II., 350, 354
Russia, 23, 96, 152, 185, 286, 301
S
St. Nicholas Church, 56, 133
St. Peter's Court, 30, 153
Scania, 26, 48, 53, 57, 60, 149
Simon of Utrecht, 131, 134, 136
Sir Thomas Gresham, 328, 337
Smolensk, 20, 96
Spain, 174, 311, 349, 357
Steelyard, 30, 179, 328
Stock-fish, 26, 195, 214
Storm clouds, 217
Stortebeker, 129
Stralsund, 47, 67, 357, 362
Sudermann, 314, 332, 347
Survivors, 365
Sweden, 98, 149, 152, 222, 259, 285, 296, 355
T
Teutonic knights, 159, 292
Thirty Years' War, 215, 354
Tilly, 361
Trade guild, 11
Treaty of Stralsund, 67
Treaty of Utrecht, 185, 339, 343
U
Unhansing, 29
Utrecht, Simon of, 131, 134, 136
Utrecht, Treaty of, 185, 339, 343
V
Vasa, 222, 226, 232, 236, 260, 285
Venice, 20, 175
Victual Brothers, 126
W
Waldemar, 47, 49, 51, 75
Wallenstein, 357, 361
Westphalia, peace of, 364, 365
Winetha, 23
Wisby, 25, 54, 55, 87, 127
Wittenborg, 57
Wrecking, 12
Wullenweber, 237, 240
Y
York, 20
Z
Zealand, 64, 319
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Page 312: "formerly" possibly should be "formally."
Page 160: "Ivan II." possibly should be "Ivan IV."