The Hansa Towns

Whether it be that our forefathers were not so prompt to put pen to paper as we are, or that they purposely avoided written words and inclined to silence from motives of that combined prudence and love of mystery-making that distinguished the Middle Ages, the fact remains that of the real origin and founding of that great federation of industry and intelligence known to after-years as the Hanseatic League, we have no accurate knowledge.

We see the tree in full growth, with its widespreading boughs and branches; of the modest seedling whence it sprung we are in ignorance. We only know most surely that some such seed there must have been, and in this case may with certainty infer that the main causes of this unique combination were the alliance of the North German cities among themselves, and the protective and social alliances formed by German merchants who met in foreign parts.

It is obvious that there must have been much commerce, and that it must have played an important part before either of these circumstances could have arisen. Therefore in order fully to understand the importance and bearing of the League we must begin our story earlier than its history proper would seem to warrant; only thus can we thoroughly comprehend why the Hanseatic alliance in fostering its own interests, in aggrandizing and enriching itself, was working also for all humanity, since it created and enlarged the idea of public right, and thus sowed the seeds of principles then novel, but on which our modern civilization is largely founded and with which we are now so familiar that it is difficult to realize how matters could ever have been otherwise. Can we grasp, for example, a state of things when wrecking was considered a legitimate occupation; when the merchandise thus thrown on land became the possession of the strand dwellers and the ship's crew their legitimate slaves; when barons who deemed themselves noblemen lay in wait within their strong castles to pounce on luckless traders, and either deprived them wholly of their wares or levied black mail under the name of toll; in short, when humanity towards the weak and unfortunate was a word of empty sound? Yet so strongly is the love of enterprise implanted in the Northman's breast that even these obstacles did not deter him from the desire to enlarge his experience and to widen the field of his energies. He was the kinsman of those adventurous Angles and Saxons who had not feared to cross the boisterous German Ocean and to subjugate Great Britain to themselves; in his veins ran the blood of those Normans, the scourge and terror of European coasts, against whom the peoples knew no better protection than the prayer addressed to Heaven in their despair-"A furore Normanrorum libera nos Domine," a clause that survived in their litanies some time after the cause was no longer to be feared.

PIRATES.

Indeed it is not easy to distinguish the earliest traders from corsairs. It would seem that as occasion served they employed their long narrow rowing ships to scour the ocean or to carry the produce of the north, above all the much prized amber. It is thought that they bore it down even to the Bay of Biscay, nay, perhaps yet further within the Roman Empire.

Under the intelligent rule of Charles the Great the activity of the Northman assumed a more pacific character, and we meet with the idea of merchant and trade guilds, though the latter were not much encouraged by the emperor, who feared lest they should contain in themselves elements of corporate union and political revolt. But he fostered the growth of cities; and in those days trade and commerce filled up even more than at the present day the daily life of a citizen. In the Middle Ages the expression "merchant" (mercator, negotiator) was on the Continent actually held as identical with townsman.

It is curious that the early Teuton regarded manual labour as unworthy a free man, but did not extend this feeling to commerce, and trading became more and more the occupation of the third estate. We find them on horseback or in ships traversing many regions to bring their wares to market and to enlarge their sphere of action, and gradually as their numbers increased they would meet each other at the various foreign ports, exchange news, perhaps even wares, and hold together in that brotherly spirit that men of one nation and one tongue are wont to feel towards each other on foreign soil. Disputes and difficulties with the natives must also have been of frequent occurrence, for though the merchant, as bringer of news and novelties, was usually a welcome visitor at a time when intercourse between nations can hardly be said to have existed, yet, on the other hand, he had to reckon with the prejudice that regards what is strange as equivalent to what is hostile. Hence the merchants very naturally combined among themselves at the different ports to protect their common interests, and endeavoured by all means in their power to enlist in their favour their own sovereigns and those of the lands they visited.

Thus in the lawbook of London, under the reign of Ethelred II. the Unready (978), we come across the phrase, "the people of the Emperor have been judged worthy of the good laws, like to ourselves." This phrase meant that, in cases of wrong done to the foreigner by the native, the foreigner should enjoy the protection of the native laws as though he were a citizen, instead of being treated as heretofore like an alien. "The people of the Emperor" meant in this case the Teutonic merchants who traded on the banks of the Thames long before the German cities had combined to form their famous league, long before they had founded their factories in Russia, Scandinavia, and Flanders.

London was their earliest foreign settlement, and already in the tenth century we find that the Germans enjoyed the same rights when their ships entered British ports as those possessed by the English. In return for this they had at Easter and Christmas to make a donation of two pieces of grey and one of brown cloth, ten pounds of pepper, five pairs of men's gloves, and two barrels of vinegar. The fact that they thus paid toll in kind and not in money is entirely in accordance with the ancient usage of guilds and corporations, and the conditions of medi?val tenures. Gloves as tokens of good faith and submission, and pepper, probably because of its rarity as an Eastern product, were forms of payment frequent in early days.

After this first mention we find that year by year the privileges of the German were extended in England. The kings desired that they should be treated as subjects and friends, and after Henry the Lion had married a daughter of Henry II. of England, the alliance grew yet closer. Thus special privileges were accorded to them with regard to the sale of Rhine wine, of the importation of which into Great Britain we now hear for the first time. It is evident that the commerce of England was largely in the hands of these foreigners, a circumstance the more remarkable when we consider that the English have now for some centuries been the great traders of the world.

What hindered the rise of the British in early days was the feudal system against which the Germans had rebelled. It was a system incompatible with burgher life, with independent industry and enterprise. For many years the English trade was practically restricted to the exportation of wool, skins, lead, and tin. For where there is no middle class there can be no real commerce, and this fact explains the widespread power of the German merchants in England. The lessons they learnt here they carried farther afield; appearing now as the vanguard of civilization, now as the pioneers of Christianity, everywhere as traders desirous to fill their coffers, bearing in mind the maxim that "union is strength," and clinging closely to one another for mutual protection and defence. We must remember that travelling in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries was not what it is to-day. Dangers lurked on all sides for the bold mariner who ventured forth in ships of small size devoid of compass, load-line, chart, and chronometer. It was slow work to make headway under the difficulties put in the mariner's path by the elements alone, such as the darkness of night, fogs and storms, shoals, quicksands, and rocks, to say nothing of the peril from pirates. The fact, too, that, owing to the want of maps, they kept as close as possible to land, increased the risks they ran. Arrived at his destination, the trader would often have to wait long ere he could find a purchaser for his wares, for in those days the merchant himself carried his wares to market; there were no commission agents at the various ports; there were no posts, nor was the art of remitting money understood. In the stormy winter-time, moreover, neither sailors nor merchants cared to venture upon the ocean; and owing to the brevity of the northern summer it often became needful for them to pass the bad season at whatever place they happened to be. Indeed the hazards connected with a winter voyage were so great, that in the very earliest days of union it was determined by common consent that no merchants should send their ships to sea after St. Martin's Day (November 11th), and that they should endeavour as far as possible to be in port by Michaelmas (September 29th). "To sail after Martinmas is to tempt God," writes an old chronicler. With the 11th of November the winter season commenced for the Baltic trading fleet.

Curiously enough a similar custom obtains in Greece to this day. The Greek coasters do not sail on the seas from December 6th till after the New Year; during this time the ocean is hallowed for new trips.[1] The Hanseatics, of course, had to extend the time of exemption in the northern seas. In the year 1391 a Hanseatic Diet ordained that no Hanseatic merchant should sail forth from a western to an eastern, or from an eastern to a western harbour between Martinmas and Candlemas (November 11th-February 2nd). The climatic conditions of certain ports obliged this rule to be extended to St. Peter in Cathedra (February 22nd), if they were carrying "precious goods."

It is amusing, however, to find in the older records an exceptional clause to the effect that herrings and beer, two of the most important exports of the coast towns, could not possibly be subjected to these restrictions. The herring, that much prized fasting dish, to the preparation and distribution of which the Hansa attached such value, had necessarily to be despatched before February 22nd in order that it might arrive at its destination before Lent. A no less important reason determined the transport of beer, which was brewed in most of the export towns, and which might easily spoil in a more advanced season of the year. These reasons caused the cities to decide that a ship laden with beer, herrings, or dried cod, might go to sea on St. Nicholas Day (December 6th) if it were ready laden by that date.

But this was the exception. The rule was for the trader to winter wherever he happened to be. In the long, cheerless evenings men liked to associate with compatriots who spoke the same tongue, and had the same interests and customs. These men of the Middle Ages were specially distinguished by their social instincts. They were bound together also by the element of a common religion, by the desire to worship together, to fulfil, perchance, some holy vow made in an hour of great danger, to bury, with the familiar rites of his own Church and country, some less fortunate comrade who had expired on foreign soil. Thus were formed those Guilds, or Hanse, as they were called, of merchants on alien soil, clustering, as a rule, around a church erected by them, and having besides a general living and storehouse for the safe custody of their goods. There is nothing strange in the fact that such settlements should have been formed; what is strange is the power they acquired in the course of time, until at last, in some places, they dictated terms to the natives of the country; nay, they even made and unmade their rulers, until in the end their sway extended from Bergen in the north to Venice in the south, from Novgorod and Smolensk in the east to York and London in the west.

NORMAN VESSEL FROM BAYEUX TAPESTRY.

The free ocean, owned by no king or ruler, has from earliest times been the highroad of nations, and in the life and movement of the last eighteen hundred years the Baltic takes a scarcely less important place than the lovelier, more poetical, and oft-sung Mediterranean. Even to-day it is more frequented than most of the seas; the traffic through the Sound being second to that of no other strait.

The Baltic has had its singers too. We need only turn to the strong, rugged Norse Saga to find that sea extolled as the nurse of mighty heroes, or the scene of giant combats; and the wilder element that pervades these heroic tales is in keeping with the rugged iron-bound coasts that skirt its waters, which do not invite the cooing of idyls, nor lap the fantasy in luscious dreams. Here all is stern life and movement; here man must fight hand to hand with nature if he would extort from her even the bare necessities for his daily nourishment.

The contrast between the North and the South is nowhere more strikingly seen than in the different characteristics of the two seas, and the races they have produced. Nor could these characteristics be better illustrated than by a comparison between the great commercial Republics of Italy and the Hanseatic federation of Germany. The former, though individually great, never became a corporate body. Jealousy and rivalry were ever rife among them, and in the end they destroyed themselves. Where nature is kind men can better afford to be cruel, and need not hold together in such close union. Thus it was here.

But if the Baltic is at a disadvantage compared with the Mediterranean in climate as well as in size, it is not inferior in wealth and variety of its produce. Mighty rivers, watering many lands discharge themselves into its bosom, and produce upon their banks rich and needful products, such as wheat and wool. In the earth are hidden costly metallic treasures, while the sea itself is a well of opulence from the number and diversity of the fish that breed in its waters.

It has been well said that since the days of the Hansa, possession of the Baltic and dominion of the sea are synonymous terms. The Hansa, the Dutch, and the English have necessarily played the first r?le in the Baltic trade. But the trade dates from an even earlier time. Thanks to coins accidently dropped, and after long years unearthed, we learn that by way of the Volga the Northmen brought to their distant home the treasures of the far East-spices, pearls, silks, furs, and linen garments; and that following the course of the Dwina, the Dnieper, and the Oder, they found their way to Constantinople, the Black Sea, and even the Caspian.

Canon Adam, of Bremen, a chronicler of the eleventh century, in one of those farragoes of fact and fiction in which our forefathers read history, tells of a great trading city at the month of the Oder, "Julin, the greatest town of heathen Europe."[2] "It is a famed meeting-place for the barbarians and Greeks[3] of the neighbourhood, inhabited by Slavs and other barbarians. Saxons, too, may live there if they do not declare themselves Christians; for the town is rich in the wares of all Eastern peoples, and contains much that is charming and precious."

This town of Winetha, of whose exact site we are no longer sure, since it has been destroyed by the encroachment of the Baltic, was, and is still, a favourite theme of song and legend with German writers. It is fabled that it was destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrha, because of its sins; for its inhabitants had grown hard and proud and disdainful, trusting in wealth, and despising God. On fine and calm days mariners can, it is said, behold the city, with its silver ramparts, its marble columns, its stirring, richly-dressed population, leading, beneath the ocean, the life which they led while their city was still on firm ground. Every Good Friday this splendid city, with its towers, palaces, and walls, is permitted to rise from the ocean, and sun itself in the daylight, to be again submerged on Easter Day, by this annual fall recalling to all who might else forget it the severe justice of God.

The extract given above from the old writer impresses on us a fact we must bear well in mind, namely, that the Baltic mainland littoral at the time the Teutonic merchants began to ply their trade upon its coast was not a German possession, but inhabited and owned by a Slavonic people, who clung to their pagan creed long after their neighbours in the East and West had become converted to the new religion. And, as usual to this day, it was the trader who preceded the missionary, and gave the natives the first idea of a different code of ethics and morality. In the missionary's track, as at this day, followed the soldier, enforcing by the sword the arguments that reason had failed to inculcate. It was thus that German merchants had founded on Slavonic soil the various cities and ports that were later to be the pride and strength of the Hanseatic Union. Nor did they rest content with the coast that bounded their own lands. They traversed the narrow ocean, touching Finland, Sweden, and Russia, and they established on the isle of Gothland an emporium, which, in the first Christian centuries, became the centre of the Baltic trade, and in which "people of divers tongues," as an old writer calls these visitors, met to exchange their products.

A glance at the map will show why this island assumed such importance. At a time when the mariner was restricted to short passages, not liking for long to lose sight of the shore, this spot naturally made a most favourable halting-place on the road to Finland, Livonia, or Sweden. It is evident from the chronicles that the Germans soon acquired and exercised great power in this island, and that they were accorded special privileges. Thus Pope Honorius II. granted them his protection for their town and harbour of Wisby, in acknowledgment of the part they had played in the conversion of the pagan nations.

There are many testimonies to the ancient wealth and commercial importance of the island of Gothland; among them the amount of Roman, Byzantine, Anglo-Saxon, and German coins still found on its soil, as also the number of ruined churches, many of them of great size and architectural beauty, dotted over its area. To this day the island, impoverished and depopulated, owns a church to every six hundred inhabitants. The churches have fallen into sad decay, but yet remain to testify of past prosperity and glory.

As the number of travelling merchants from various cities increased on its shores, it was natural that they should hold together more and more in a tacit offensive and defensive alliance against the aliens, and that when they returned home from their voyages they should speak of the mutual benefits rendered and the help that lay in union. Some influential persons among them doubtless brought pressure to bear upon the rulers and magistracies of the various cities to give their informal union an official character. Thus much is certain, that after a time the merchants from various cities who traded with the Baltic had united into a federation having a common seal and conforming to a common law, so that by the middle of the thirteenth century the Hanseatic League was practically consolidated, although this name for the association only occurs later.

So far, however, the Union only exercised rights abroad. It was from Wisby also that the reaction was to come for union at home; but this was a little later, when its strength was well matured and established.

What really, in the first instance, led the Germans from their inland towns to the shores of the Baltic was the desire to benefit by the great wealth that lay hidden in its waters in the form of fish, which could be obtained in return for the mere labour of fishing. At a time when all Europe was Catholic, or of the Greek Church, and fasts as well as feasts strictly observed, the sale of fish was an important industry, and, above all, of salted fish, since our forefathers were ignorant of the art of preserving these creatures fresh by means of ice. Now, from the beginning of the twelfth century until the beginning of the fifteenth, when they once more altered their course, each spring and autumn the migratory fish, and especially that most prolific and valued of fish, the herring, came in great shoals to the shores of Scania,[4] the isle of Rügen, and the coasts of Pomerania, tempting the inhabitants of the strand and near inland hamlets out on to the waters to secure these treasures. Nor had nature herewith ceased her bounties. At certain points of the littoral there were salt springs, in which the precious draught could at once be pickled; and it is certain that the art of preserving the gifts of the ocean from decay was familiar to the Slav inhabitants of these districts long before it was known to those of the German Ocean. Already, in the eleventh century, "salt Kolberg" was famed as an emporium for salted herrings; and the words of a Polish poem of rejoicing at a victory won over its inhabitants in 1105 are extant to this day. It has more historical than literary value. "Formerly," so jubilantly sang the conquerors of the harbour, "they brought us salt and stinking fish, now our sons bring them to us fresh and quivering."

Salted herrings became an acknowledged form of tax or tribute, as also a medium of exchange for inland produce, and it was the value of these small fish that really first roused the cupidity of the inland dweller and caused them to compete with and finally oust the pagan Slav. And Wisby for a time was their great emporium, whence they extended their power, founding among other towns Novgorod on the Lake of Olm. It was to Wisby that association dues were paid; it was in Wisby that common money was deposited. They were kept in the German Church of Our Lady Maria Teutonicorum. For the churches in those times were buildings as much secular as religious, being not only places of worship, but also banks, storehouses, market-places, and sanctuaries. Four aldermen, selected from important cities of the League, namely, Wisby, Lübeck, Soest, and Dortmund, had each a key to the common treasure. The rules laid down in common council, over which these aldermen presided, and whose execution they enforced, were stringent in the extreme. For example, according to an old principle of Teutonic laws, a city was made responsible if a trader suffered malignant shipwreck or was robbed of his goods within its domain, and if these things occurred they were bound to help the sufferers to recover their goods or safety.

That it was not always an easy task for the towns to execute this command may be gathered from the fact that in the earliest times even the Church looked on flotsam and jetsam as its legitimate dues; indeed, the revenues of some monasteries and churches were distinctly founded on this. Even Papal authority, even excommunication in later days, could not for a long while break the force of a barbarous and cruel custom. All the booty the waves cast on the shore was designated by the well-sounding term of strandgut (property of the shore), and was regarded as a gift from Providence. The dwellers on the Baltic shore held so na?ve a belief with respect to this matter that in their daily prayers they innocently asked God to give them a good harvest of strandgut.

Lübeck in 1287, demanding from Reval, on the basis of its treaties, the restitution of stranded property, is told frankly by the governor of the city that "however many and long and large letters they may send him across the seas," yet his vassals would hold to the rights of their land, and "if," he adds, "on your letters or your prayers your goods are restored to you, I will suffer my right eye to be put out."

Still by steady persistence the German cities got their will, and of course they exercised it first on members of their union. The defaulting city had to pay a fine of something like two to three hundred pounds of our money to the common fund of the Union, and, in event of a recurrence, was threatened with expulsion from the community. This punishment was called unhansing, and it was inflicted several times, and was only atoned for by the heaviest penalties not only of money tributes, but often of pilgrimages to some distant sacred shrine, to wipe out the disgrace that the city had drawn down, not on itself alone, but also on its brethren of the League, by the fact that there could be such a black sheep among them.

Such, briefly, was the empire that, by the middle of the thirteenth century, was exercised by a community of German men of commerce, who had their seat of control, not at home, but on a foreign soil. Such, briefly, was the rise of these powerful merchants who not only dared to dictate terms to distant cities, but were absolutely obeyed. Such, briefly, was the transformation of bands of pirates and adventurous traders into a peace-loving and industrious association.

Let us now take a rapid glance at what had occurred meantime in the Holy Roman Empire and the towns.

It is of importance to the study of the Hanseatic confederation to 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.

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 na?veté. 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?

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 Helo?se, 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.

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."

MEDI?VAL CITY.

(From a drawing by Albert Dürer.)

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?

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 na?ve 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.