The Hansa Towns Part 2

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 _navete_. 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?

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 pa.s.sed 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 Helose, 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 cla.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 munic.i.p.al inst.i.tutions, 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 ma.s.s 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEDIaeVAL CITY. (_From a drawing by Albert Durer._)]

In the thirteenth century munic.i.p.al 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 a.s.sistance which the rapid progress of the cities in wealth could furnish. Of course circ.u.mstances 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 va.s.sals 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 a.s.sist 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 circ.u.mstances, 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?

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 a.s.sociation of merchants had developed into an a.s.sociation 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 const.i.tution is distinguished by a like principle of flexibility.

A nave 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 n.o.ble men." Undaunted, however, by such objections, the cities continued to form alliances, to make contracts among themselves until these contracts a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sociation.

But our League did not yet officially bear that t.i.tle; 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 cla.s.sed 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] "Oth.e.l.lo," act i. sc. 3.

IV.

THE HANSA FIGHTS.

Whoever looks on the old Schutting at Lubeck, the building whence the herring fishers were wont to start upon their voyages, and notes its armorial bearings, three herrings upon a plain gold shield, should go back mentally a few centuries and call to mind the fact that the badge of this fish is the emblem of a might which many a time set forth from this spot bent upon commerce or needful warfare, and which for generations exercised great power over Northern Europe.

The district of Scania, which forms the southernmost portion of the present land of Sweden, was until 1658 almost exclusively the property of Denmark. The Danes, a turbulent and maritime people, had in the early times of our era been converted to Christianity at the point of the sword by the emperors of Germany, and during the 10th and 11th centuries these emperors exercised a recognized suzerainty over the Danish kings.

Hence German traders easily obtained privileges among a people who were by no means inclined to commerce themselves, but who welcomed none the less eagerly the products that the strangers brought, above all, the heady ale brewed by the Easterlings.

But as the might of the empire declined and the Danes had grown strong, thanks to wise rulers, the people grew restive under the restrictions imposed upon them, and tried to secure their independence. Under Waldemar the Great (1157 to 1182), the country had acquired an important position, which his successors strengthened. This increase of might coincided with the German depression and with the change of course at sp.a.w.ning time that the herring suddenly took in the twelfth century.

Strange that a little fish should have had such great power over mankind; yet it is not going beyond the strict truth to state that the mysterious wanderings of the herring determined throughout several centuries the whole course of northern commerce. During the Middle Ages, upon the appearance of the herring now on this coast and now on that, the wealth and prosperity of the whole districts depended. Herring fishing became a branch of industry that decided the fate of nations. To it the Hansa owes a large portion of its riches and its power; in the herring fisheries, when in the year 1425 the fish began to sp.a.w.n in the German Ocean, the Netherlands found the foundation stone of their wealth and dignity. Indeed, it was said later, with scant exaggeration, that Amsterdam was built upon herrings.

Now, as masters of the Belt and the Sound, the Danes were able, if they chose, greatly to hara.s.s the Hanseatic traders and fishermen. For many years they had not put forth their power, or rather the Hanseatic towns, with the diplomatic astuteness that greatly distinguished them, had averted the possibility of such danger by wise concessions of tributes and privileges. Still disputes would arise, things did not always go off peaceably, and in 1227 the Hansa towns won their first military laurels, defeating the Danes in the battle of Bornhoved and permanently weakening the power of their troublesome neighbours in Northern Germany.

A few years later Lubeck, almost una.s.sisted, threatened in its independence by the Danish king, won a great naval victory over its neighbours; and gained yet another in 1249, when Eric II. had ventured to attack some of its ships upon the open seas. On this occasion the merchant townsmen even seized and sacked Copenhagen and planted their flag in Zealand.

It was no very easy position which the Baltic cities (for it was they who were chiefly threatened) had to maintain against the Danish kings as the power of the latter increased. For with their power, their rapacity and cupidity increased also, and this made them look on the rich commercial towns with a longing desire to absorb them into their own possessions. These, though extensive, were poor, and their inhabitants neither industrious nor prosperous. Further, the Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes were in constant feud with one another, and each of these states turned an eye of greed towards the flourishing Baltic cities, whose possession they coveted. The two Scandinavian powers, in particular, constantly hara.s.sed the German merchants by their scanty comprehension of treaty rights, their breaches of faith, and it was not easy work for the cities to steer clear between the three kingdoms, that were now at deadly feud with one another, now convulsed by civil wars, now united in a policy of rapine.

It would be tedious to enumerate the quarrels, jealousies, and feuds that agitated these kingdoms during the early years of the fourteenth century; to note in detail the trouble they caused to the Hanseatic traders, and the need they awoke among them of holding together in as close an alliance at home as they had hitherto done abroad. It was necessary to be ever wakeful and mistrustful; and to watch jealously for the faintest signs of an infringement of privileges.

In 1326 a lad of some twelve summers, whose memory was destined to be handed down to posterity as that of a hero of romance, ascended the throne of Denmark. In allusion to the famous fable about the election of a king of the frogs, an old writer speaks of this event as a choice by the frogs of the stork as ruler instead of the log. For Waldemar, as he was called, proved indeed no log and no puppet in the hands of his ambitious barons. As a mere youth he gave evidence of his strength and determination, and under his aegis Denmark acquired great wealth and consideration, and would have attained to yet more had not Waldemar, with mistaken judgment, drawn the reins too tight, until from a wise ruler he became a despot. It was his aim and policy to nationalize his country, to drive away the foreigners who utilized it for their warlike and commercial ends. He found it small and distracted with dissensions; after twenty years' rule he could point to marked success and change, for he had made Denmark respected and feared at home and abroad. History knows him as Waldemar III.,[6] story and song as Waldemar Atterdag, a nickname that well expresses the salient points of his character. For the name of Atterdag, which means "there is yet another day," refers to the king's constant habit of using this expression in the sense that if to-day a goal is not reached, it is not therefore unattainable, that a man must wait, never despair, and never lose sight of his aim.

And Waldemar for his part never did. He pursued his purposes with a strenuousness and a patience, which contrasted favourably with the vacillating att.i.tude of his princely northern contemporaries, and which was only matched and finally surpa.s.sed by the same strenuous and patient policy on the part of the Baltic towns, and especially on the part of Lubeck, their astute and diplomatic leader.

Nor was it only good aims that the king followed with such persistence.

He was an implacable, a relentless enemy, who never forgot an injury, and who waited with cruel calmness the day of vengeance.

In Waldemar's state policy there often appeared mixed motives; considerations of the most personal character were blended with care for the welfare of his state, and when one should alone have been considered, both frequently played a part. It was this that led to his ultimate ruin; like too many clever people he overreached himself.

Therefore, while the early years of his reign were really a blessing to distracted and impoverished Denmark, of the latter part a contemporary chronicler complains that--

"In the times of Waldemar, every tradition of our ancestors, all paternal laws, all the freedom of the Danish Church was abolished. The rest of the soldier, the merchant, the peasant, was so curtailed, that in the whole kingdom no time remained to eat, to repose, to sleep, no time in which the people were not driven to work by the bailiffs and servants of the king, at the risk of losing his royal favour, their lives, and their goods." In a word, Waldemar worked his subjects hard, and even the most patriotic singers cannot present him as a wholly attractive figure. He is rather a character to be feared than loved.

The Hansa was not slow to recognize this. It saw that it was face to face with a man whom no obstacles could deter, to whom even treaty obligations were not sacred, and who was liable to be swayed by incalculable caprice. That it was right in its estimate and its fears Waldemar was not slow to make known, so soon as his power at home was fully secured.

The first attack upon the Hansa towns was made by the Danish king in the shape of interference with their fishing rights on Scania, breaking the contracts which his predecessors, and even he himself, had made, and demanding extortionate fees for the renewal of the time-honoured privileges. Diplomatic negotiations were entered upon, but Waldemar befooled the deputies from the cities, wasting their time with idle discussion of irrelevant matters, and refusing to come to a real agreement. After long and fruitless debate the amba.s.sadors of the Hansa towns departed home anxious and discouraged. Ten weeks after their return the cities were startled by the terrible news that Waldemar, in a time of perfect peace, without previous warning or declaration of war, had suddenly invaded the island of Gothland, and seized, sacked, and plundered the rich city of Wisby, the northern emporium of the Hansa's wealth.