The Church was but a society, fighting as an army for its
liberty. Each trade had its guild, and none might practise
his trade unless he was a member of the particular guild
controlling it. The handicrafts were in the same case; and
the real or operative freemasonry was instituted, about the
same time, for the erection of ecclesiastical and palatial
buildings.
Wealth, power, pomp, and pride began to wane in the cities
of the league early in the fifteenth century, and the
movement was accelerated by the change of ocean routes of
trade due to the discovery of America, and the Cape of Good
Hope way to India. The final extinction came as late as
October, 1888, when the free cities of Hamburg and Bremen,
whose right to remain free ports had been ratified in the
imperial constitution of 1871, renounced their ancient
privileges and became completely merged in the autocratic
Fatherland.
With good reason the world's commerce is to-day accepted as one of the
most imposing and unique phenomena of our time. It is but necessary to
consult a statistical handbook in order to obtain a conception of the
gigantic figures involved in the exports and imports of the
multifarious articles of commerce to and from all countries--figures
whose magnitude precludes the possibility of forming an adequate
conception of their true significance. No less astonishing are the
means employed by traffic to-day to develop our system of credit and
our complex and useful web of communication. One fact, however, should
be borne in mind: namely, that our commerce is of comparatively modern
growth. The two factors chiefly responsible for its development were:
(1) The great voyages of discovery which began at the close of the
fifteenth century and opened a theretofore unsuspected field of
production and consumption; and (2) the utilization of steam, that
great triumph of the nineteenth century. Perhaps a brief sketch of
that earlier commercial development which immediately preceded our
extensive modern commercial network may not be unwelcome to the reader
desirous of contrasting the narrower but nevertheless fascinating
mediæval conditions of the German Hansa with those prevailing in our
present mercantile world. Let us inquire how the confederation of the
Hansa arose, and, after briefly sketching its external history, review
in greater detail its commercial and industrial methods, its art work,
domestic life, and constitution.
The development of the German Hansa may be traced to two principal
sources: (1) The associations formed by German merchants abroad, and
(2) the union established by the Low-German cities at home.
In the days of Charlemagne, Germany's eastern boundary was extended to
the Elbe, and beyond it to Holstein, but it was not until four
centuries later, that is, in the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, that
the Baltic was reached, the southern borders of which sea, now
constituting Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and Prussia, having theretofore
been inhabited chiefly by Slavonic and Lithuanian peoples. The credit
for this increase of power is due primarily to the Saxon duke Henry
the Lion, who, while the Emperor was engaged in maturing and executing
mighty plans of world conquest, developed upon this virgin soil an
extraordinary colonial activity, transplanting hither German peasants,
burghers, and priests, and with them German customs and Christian
civilization. In this way there arose about the year A.D. 1200, upon
soil wrested from the Slavs, a number of promising towns, foremost
among which was Lubeck, a place endowed by Duke Henry with municipal
rights especially designed to promote commercial intercourse and
affording liberal and far-reaching privileges to the counsellors and
burghers. Soon thereafter the rapidly developing neighboring cities of
Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald, Anklam, and Stettin, usually
called "the Wendish cities," became participants in the constitution
thus granted. The territory now grew rapidly. In the course of the
thirteenth century, the then pagan country of Prussia and the present
Baltic provinces of Russia were conquered by the Teutonic knights and
kindred orders and were occupied and settled. The same historical
process which took place in Greece, and in more recent times in
America, also repeated itself here: the youthful colonial offshoots
overcame the narrowing and confining influence of the mother country,
yet reacted favorably upon it by virtue of that vivifying influence,
due to more rapid and exuberant growth.
In the mean time the other countries contiguous to the North and
Baltic seas, that is, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and England,
had become converted to Christianity. Some of them, indeed, had
embraced the Christian creed several centuries prior to this time. The
natural consequence was that a lively intercourse was cultivated upon
the two seas, especially after the crusades, which enterprises, by
opening new avenues of commerce and increasing the knowledge
concerning numerous articles of utility, had greatly augmented the
demands of the people of the Occident. The extraordinary development
of trade on the Baltic, indeed, vividly recalls the ancient commercial
activity on the Mediterranean; and the phrase, "a basin fruitful of
culture," often applied to the latter region, may with equal justice
be applied also to the former. In the beginning, Russians, Danes, and
Englishmen participated in the active trade conducted on the northern
littoral. Eventually, however, they were displaced by their German
rivals. As the northern nations upon their acceptance of Christianity
had once before formed their political and social institutions upon
German models, so they now, in such cities as Stockholm, Bergen,
Copenhagen, and others, became subject to the cultural and, above all,
the commercial influence of the German burgher.
It is interesting to note the manner in which this extraordinary
influence was secured. In later mediæval times all classes of the
population were compelled to rely upon self-help. In other words, they
were compelled to replace the defective or insufficient protection
afforded by the State by corporate bodies. Thus the merchants of a
Low-German German town, when in search of a common centre of trade,
pledged themselves by a solemn oath to a defensive and offensive
alliance and mutual furtherance; and wider alliances between the
various towns themselves soon followed. Of all these private
commercial associations none attained to greater importance than did
the Gothland Company, a society of Low-German merchants who visited
Gothland, the centre of commercial activity in the Baltic, for trading
purposes. Here was the seat of the mighty city of Wisby, which
contained such wealth that a Danish king once declared that the swine
there ate from silver troughs. Even at the present day the massive
ruins of the old city wall and of the eighteen churches which once
existed there bear testimony to the former magnitude and grandeur of
the city. The Gothland Company flourished chiefly during the
thirteenth century and enjoyed all the privileges of a political
power; bearing its own seal, policing the seas, and insisting upon
strict compliance on the part of all navigators of the Baltic with the
marine laws which it had created.
Parallel with this development was the formation of unions between
inland towns, caused by the depredations of robber-knights; the
menacing increase of power among the nobility; and by commercial
motives of all kinds, as, for example, the necessity of preventing
banished criminals and debtors from seeking an asylum in neighboring
communities. Along the entire region from Esthland to Holland, both of
which at that time belonged to the German crown, the municipalities
united. In the far-western part of the German empire there was the
municipal group of the Netherlands, among which such cities as
Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Deventer belonged. Farther inland was the
Rhenish-Westphalian group, consisting of Cologne, Dortmund, Munster,
and others, which cities, though somewhat distant from the sea,
nevertheless occupy a place of honor as pioneers of German marine
commerce. Between these two western groups and those in the East there
was a wide gap extending as far as the mouths of the Elbe and the
Weser. At the entrance to these rivers, however, and along the borders
of the Baltic were the great maritime communities, the chief members
of the Hanseatic League, including the before-mentioned Wendish group
and the cities of Bremen and Hamburg. Yet not these alone, although
they were in some respects the most important. Inland, the municipal
groups extended so as to embrace Berlin, then very unimportant,
Perleberg, etc., in the Mark of Brandenburg, the Saxon cities of
Magdeburg, Hanover, Luneburg, Goslar, Hildesheim, Brunswick, and
others; in the far-eastern part of the empire the six rapidly growing
cities of the Teutonic order, Kulm, Thorn, Dantzic, Elbing,
Braunsberg, and Koenigsberg; and finally, in Livonia and Esthonia,
Riga, Dorpat, Reval, and Pernau. Noteworthy was the treaty concluded
in A.D. 1241, between Hamburg and Lubeck, whereby the former assumed
control of the interests in the North Sea and the Elbe, while the
latter safeguarded those of the Baltic. This treaty between Hamburg
and Lubeck is sometimes regarded as the beginning of the Hanseatic
League. It has here been sufficiently demonstrated, however, that the
association was the result of a slow and gradual process, enforced by
conditions, and that it did not originate in the mind of any
particular statesman as a definite plan.
The two groups, the maritime and the inland municipal, had developed
independently: it now remained to unite them; and from the union thus
effected sprang the great institution of the German Hansa. The private
associations, not excepting the Gothland Company, in view of the rapid
extension of commerce and the consequent jealousy of foreign
competitors, were no longer able to afford sufficient protection to
the foreign trade--a condition which did not escape the statesmen of
Lubeck, with their marked power of initiative and political sagacity.
Thus it came, during the last decades of the thirteenth century, that
the private societies became more and more dependent upon the
municipal unions, which, under the leadership of the free and
centrally located city of Lubeck, now assumed the energetic
guardianship of maritime commerce, by reason of which they were drawn
from their hitherto isolated position and gradually became fused into
an increasingly compact union.
Already at the close of the thirteenth century the young institution
of the Hansa received its initiation in warfare in a conflict with the
kingdom of Norway, which country was compelled to purchase peace at
the price of new and greater concessions to the league. Soon
thereafter, however, the steady progress of the Hansa met with a
rebuff. Denmark, at that time the foremost power of the North, had for
more than a century endeavored to obtain the supremacy of the Baltic,
at the entrance to which it was so advantageously situated. At one
time Lubeck was for an entire decade forced into a sort of vassalage
to the energetic king Eric Menved of Denmark, although the relations
to the sister-cities of the league, which had never been entirely
severed, were subsequently restored and confirmed by new treaties.
When finally, in A.D. 1361, the Danish king Waldemar Atterdag,
inspired by rapacity and revenge, went so far as to fall upon the
metropolis of the Baltic, the Swedish city of Wisby, in the midst of
peace, and to annex it, thereby inflicting serious losses upon the
resident Low-German merchants, Lubeck once more placed herself at the
head of the Wendish cities and at the diet of Greifswald decreed war
against the ruthless invader. But the expedition proved disastrous,
owing chiefly to the tardiness of the kings of Sweden and Norway, who
had been drawn into the alliance. Nevertheless, the unfortunate
admiral of the Lubeck fleet, Johann Wittenborg, who also enjoyed the
rank of burgomaster of the Hanseatic city, was put to the axe in the
public market-place of Lubeck in expiation of his failure.
A doubtful peace was now concluded with the Danes, but was soon broken
by their renewed plunderings of Hanseatic vessels and the obstacles
placed by them upon traffic. Another passage at arms was required. The
ensuing conflict was the greatest and most glorious ever fought, not
only by the Hansa, but by Germany, upon the sea. In 1367 deputies from
the Prussian, Wendish, and Netherlandish cities assembled in the city
hall of Cologne and there prepared those memorable articles of
confederation which decreed another war with King Waldemar of Denmark;
stipulated the levying of a definite contingent of troops on the part
of the contracting cities; provided for a duty on exports to defray
the expenses of the campaign; and draughted letters of protest to the
Pope, to Emperor Charles IV, and to many of the German princes. That
auspicious day marks a turning-point in the history of the Hanseatic
League, and was fraught with high importance to the whole German
empire. The preliminary history of the Hansa here ends and its
brilliant epoch begins. The warships of the cities and their army so
thoroughly vanquished Denmark that, after two years of warfare, the
Danish royal council and the representatives respectively of the
municipalities, the nobility, and the clergy despatched a commission
of thirty-two to Stralsund to sign a treaty, ostensibly in the name of
their fugitive ruler--a treaty which may justly be said to mark the
climax in the development of the power of the burghers of Germany.
The treaty not only provided for considerable concessions in matters
of navigation and intercourse, but also conceded to the members of the
Cologne confederation, comprising about sixty Hansa cities, the right
to occupy and to fortify for a period of fifteen years the four chief
castles on Skane--Helsingborg, Malmo, Scanov, and
Falsterbo--commanding the sound, the most important maritime highway
traversed by the Hanseatic vessels.
But the most extraordinary privilege granted by this treaty was that
making the subsequent election of a king for Denmark subject to the
approval of the confederation--thus assigning to the burghers a right
such as no king or emperor of that time exercised over a foreign
state. The confederates, however, wisely declined to avail themselves
of this dangerous prerogative, not only for political reasons, but
also because of the clever negotiations of the youthful queen
Margaret, the daughter and heir of Waldemar, who, by the union of
Kalmar in 1397, became invested with the triple crown of Denmark,
Norway, and Sweden. The fact remains, however, that the Hansa for the
ensuing century and a half maintained its title as the foremost of
maritime and as one of the principal political powers--and that
entirely unaided and without the sanction of kaiser or empire.
Let us take a very general survey of this glorious period, concerning
which many interesting disclosures have recently been made, and
endeavor to obtain, if possible, a glimpse of the activity of these
busy cities and of the confederation which they formed.
As to commerce, the first task which the confederation set itself to
fulfil was the abolition of that early mediæval condition which
inclined to regard the stranger in foreign parts as devoid of rights.
The efforts of the confederation in this particular resulted in the
acquisition of hundreds of privileges, secured either singly or
conjointly by the cities. The contents of the treaties are usually the
same: (1) Protection of person and goods; (2) abolition of the law
which declared forfeit to the feudal lord such goods as, for instance,
might happen to fall from a wagon and thereby touch the ground; (3)
the abolition of the strand right, which had secured to the owner of
the shore land the jetsam and flotsam of wrecked or stranded vessels;
(4) the concession of legal procedure to the debtor; (5) liberation
from the duel and other forms of the "divine judgment" in legal
procedure; (6) the reduction of duties; (7) permission to sell at
retail, as for example, cloth and linen by the ell--a privilege
previously accorded only to natives. These are but a few of the
privileges secured, the most important of which, however, remains to
be mentioned. This was the establishment of branches and bureaus in
the most frequented commercial centres abroad. On the other hand, the
confederation never had the remotest intention of granting similar
privileges to the nations from which these concessions had been
secured, such as the English, Flemish, Norwegians, Danes, and
Russians. On the contrary. In Cologne, for example, foreign merchants
were permitted only three times a year and then for a period of three
weeks only. Never, perhaps, in history has a monopoly been so rigidly
and relentlessly enforced--a monopoly which not only rested upon the
nation at home, but which made bold incursions into the sovereignty of
foreign states in order to smother their independent trade, or, as in
Norway, utterly to stamp it out.
Of the two great avenues of trade, that indicated by the termini
Bruges and Novgorod is first deserving of mention. For centuries it
was practically used exclusively by merchants of the Hansa, who,
moreover, were forbidden to form copartnerships with foreigners, such
as Russians and Englishmen. Novgorod, well guarded against pirates and
situated in the navigable Volkhov, was at that time in a sense the
capital of the much-divided Russian empire. This city, since the day
of its founder, Rurik, had been the centre of Russian trade and
enjoyed an almost republican independence. From this point diverged
the most frequented highways of trade to the Dnieper and the Volga.
From Russia the German merchant exported chiefly fine furs, such as
beaver, ermine, and sable, and enormous quantities of wax, which
to-day, as formerly, is still obtained in the central wooded parts of
the country where apiculture is extensively prosecuted. His imports,
on the other hand, consisted of fine products of the loom, articles of
wool, linen, and silk; of boots and shoes, usually manufactured at
home of Russian leather; and finally, of beer, metal goods, and
general merchandise. It is evident, therefore, that the German
merchant provided Russia--which country was at that time industrially
in a very primitive condition--with all the necessaries required.
Bruges, in Flanders, the western terminus of the before-mentioned
highway of commerce, was during the last centuries of the Middle Ages
approximately what London is to the world of to-day. It was, beside
Venice, the actual world-mart of the Continent, a centre where
Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Frenchmen, and High- and
Low-Germans--a motley throng--congregated to exchange their goods.
Thither the Hanseatic merchant transported wood and other forest
products; building stones and iron, the latter being still forged in
primitive forest smithies; and copper from the rich mines of Falun,
the ore from which was usually sold or mortgaged to the Lubeck
merchants. From the Baltic countries he imported grain, and from
Scandinavia herring and cod--all natural products, in exchange for
which he sent to the respective countries his own manufactured goods.
In Bruges he represented the entire northern region, both in the
giving and the receiving of merchandise, for only through his
instrumentality could the gifts of the East, such as oil, wine,
spices, silk, and other articles of luxury, which were usually
transported through the Alpine passes and thence down the Rhine to
Bruges, be distributed among the northern nations. This applies also
to the highly prized textiles of Flanders, which in those days were
sometimes sold at fabulous prices.
The other stream of Hanseatic trade terminated at London. The German
merchant sent thither chiefly French wines and Venetian silks. It was
he who attended to this traffic--not the consumer or the producer. In
exchange for these commodities he took English wool--the output being
already at that time very extensive--transporting it to the mills of
Flanders. Such was at that time the commercial relation of Germany to
England. If the latter country to-day, by virtue of its incomparably
favorable geographical position, has become the first naval and
commercial power, it was in an economic sense at that time absolutely
dependent upon Germany, which country, after the loss of its political
supremacy, outstripped all other nations in the contest for economic
supremacy--excepting perhaps the Arabians and the republics of
Northern Italy, who controlled the trade in the Orient and the
Mediterranean. Naturally the English merchants were jealous and
frequently brought complaints before their kings and parliaments; but
the latter, despite occasional contentions, ever and again upheld the
foreign invader. The reason is not far to seek: like the kings of the
north, they could not dispense with the silver chests of the Hanseatic
towns and merchants, who on more than one occasion secured their loans
by appropriating the products of the tin mines or the duties on wool,
or by taking in pawn crown and jewels.
It is evident, therefore, that the greatest source of wealth to the
Hansa was this intermediary traffic. Several other important
commercial connections will be touched upon later. Casual mention
should here be made, however, to the trade with Scotland, Ireland,
Brabant, and France, whose annual markets were regularly attended by
the Hansa merchants. While the trade of the cities of the league found
such wide extension abroad, however, the traffic with their nearest
neighbors, the High-Germans, was very weak. Their domestic trade,
indeed, was confined chiefly to the plains of Northern Germany,
extending southward to Thuringia and eastward to the Oder and the
Vistula, where Cracow constituted the last outpost. The great
High-German communities along the Main and the Danube pursued
different political and economic interests. Being chiefly
manufacturing cities, they formed only temporary unions. Dependent
rather upon the south of Europe, they were also differentiated from
their northern brethren by their coinage, inasmuch as they accepted
gold as their standard, whereas the Low-Germans preferred silver
money, especially that of Lubeck. Of course each Hanse town formed the
nucleus of the local intercourse; and thither came noblemen and
peasant to barter the produce of the fields for the merchandise of the
city, and to invest, or probably more frequently to borrow, money.
Lubeck and Bruges were in those days the money centres of Northern
Europe, and their councillors and commercial magnates were the bankers
of kings and princes.