The Hansa Towns Part 3

Such a blow was aimed not only at Wisby, but at all the Hanseatic towns; from that moment diplomatic negotiations with Waldemar were no more to be thought of. This act meant war; war at all costs and at all risks.

"In the year of Christ 1361 King Waldemar of Denmark collected a great army, and said unto them that he would lead them whither there was gold and silver enough, and where the pigs eat out of silver troughs. And he led them to Gothland, and made many knights in that land, and struck down many people, because the peasants were unarmed and unused to warfare. He set his face at once towards Wisby. They came out of the town towards him, and gave themselves up to the mercy of the king, since they well saw that resistance was impossible. In this manner he obtained the land, and took from the burghers of the town great treasures in gold and silver, after which he went his ways."

Thus the contemporary chronicler of the Franciscans of St. Catherine at Lubeck. By a skilful _coup de main_ Waldemar had indeed made himself master of Gothland, then under Swedish suzerainty, and of the wealthy city of Wisby. His aim had been booty, and he had it in rich measure in the shape of gold, of fur, and silver vessels.

Legend tells that the year previous to the attack Waldemar had visited Gothland disguised as a merchant, securing the love of a goldsmith's daughter, whose father held an influential position in Wisby, and who, in her loving trustfulness revealed to him the strength and weakness of the island and town, thus helping him to secure the spot that was rightly regarded as the key to the three northern realms.

The inhabitants, unprepared, unarmed, had been unable to offer much resistance. It was a terribly b.l.o.o.d.y fight this that raged outside the walls of Wisby; the site of it is marked to this day by a cross erected on the spot where 1,800 Gothlanders fell.

"Before the gates of Wisby the Goths fell under the hands of the Danes,"[7] runs the inscription.

As was the custom among the conquerors of olden days, Waldemar, it is related, entered the city, not by means of the gates that had been forcibly surrendered to him, but by a breach he specially had made for this purpose in the town walls. The gap too is shown to this hour.

When he had plundered to his heart's content, aided in his finding of the treasure by his lady love, after he had added to his t.i.tles of King of the Danes and Slavs, that of the King of Gothland, Waldemar proceeded to return home in his richly laden ships. But it was decreed that he should not bring his booty to port. A great storm arose in mid-ocean. It was with difficulty that the king escaped with his life; his ships were sunk, his coveted h.o.a.rds buried in the waves.

There are still shown at Wisby the two fine twelve-sectioned rose windows of St. Nicholas' Church, in which, according to tradition, there once burned two mighty carbuncles that served as beacons to light the seamen safely into harbour in the day of the town's prosperity. These stones, it is said, were torn from their place and carried off by Waldemar. The Gothland mariner still avers that on certain clear nights he can see the great carbuncles of St. Nicholas' Church gleaming from out the deep.

As for Waldemar's lady love, whom it is said he abandoned as soon as his purpose was attained, she was seized on by the infuriated townspeople and buried alive in one of the turrets of the city walls, known to this day as the "Virgin Tower."

It is difficult to decide whether Waldemar foresaw the full danger and bearing of his high-handed step; whether he knew what it meant to plunder a city like Wisby, one of the strongest arms of the Hansa. He had certainly thrown the gauntlet down to the towns; he was quickly to learn that the power which some years ago had successfully beaten his predecessors had but grown in strength since that date.

On the first news of Waldemar's treachery, the Baltic cities laid an embargo on all Danish goods, and then called together a hasty council in which it was decreed that until further notice all intercourse with Denmark should be forbidden on pain of death and loss of property. Then they put themselves into communication with Norway and Sweden in order in the event of a war to secure the alliance of these countries, an a.s.sistance that was the more readily promised because their sovereigns were at feud with Waldemar. To defray the war costs it was determined to levy a poundage tax on all Hanseatic exported goods.

A fleet was got ready with all possible speed, and when everything was in order, the towns sent a herald to Waldemar with a formal declaration of war.

In May, 1362, their ships appeared in the Sound, and brilliant success at first attended their arms. Copenhagen was plundered, its church bells carried to Lubeck as the victor's booty. At Scania the cities looked to meet their northern allies, in order in conjunction with them to take possession of the Danish strongholds on the mainland. Here, however, disappointment awaited them. Whether lack of money or fear had deterred the northern kings from keeping their word is unknown; at any rate, they did not put in an appearance with their armies.

The Burgomaster of Lubeck, Johann Wittenborg, who commanded the Hanseatic fleet, saw himself forced to use the men he had on board for the land attack. He held himself the more justified in doing this since he deemed he had so thoroughly routed the Danes, that from the side of the sea there was nothing to be feared.

This decision was rash, and Wittenborg was to atone for it with his life. Already it seemed as if the stronghold Helsingborgs was in his hands--he had been besieging it sixteen days with great catapults--when Waldemar suddenly appeared with his fleet upon the Scanian coast, surprised the Hansa vessels that had been left with but a feeble crew, and carried off twelve of the best ships, and most of their provisions and weapons. The consequence was that Wittenborg saw himself obliged to return with the remnant of his army to Lubeck.

He found the city embittered against him in the highest degree for his defeat; though it saw that the main guilt of the disastrous end of the war lay with the faithless northern kings. The stern free city deemed it right, not only towards itself, but also to its sister towns, to punish heavily the unsuccessful leader. Wittenborg had hardly landed ere he was arrested, chained, and thrown into a dungeon. Here he dragged out a weary year of imprisonment. In vain some of the cities pleaded his cause, in vain his friends tried to obtain his deliverance. Lubeck was a stern mistress, who knew no mercy, and could brook no ill success. In her dictionary, as in that of youth, according to Richelieu in Bulwer's play, there might be no such word as "fail." Wittenborg had, of course, been at once deprived of his burgomagisterial honours; a year after his defeat his head publicly fell under the executioner's axe in the market-place of Lubeck. Burial in the councillors' church was denied him. He was laid to rest in the cloisters of the Dominicans the spot where all criminals were interred in Lubeck during the Middle Ages; the spot where, down to our own era, all criminals pa.s.sing that way to execution received from the pious monks a soothing drink as last farewell to life. Further, Wittenborg's name is absent from the record of the burgomasters; an omission in this place, which doubtless has the same meaning as the absence of Marino Falieri's portrait among the long row of Doges in the Venetian Palace.

The election of a burgomaster as leader of the troops is quite in character with the spirit of those times. Such trade warriors are not uncommon in the history of the Hansa. Within the roomy stone hall that served as entry and store-room to those ancient dwelling-houses, it was usual to see helmet, armour, and sword hanging up above stores of codfish, barrels of herrings, casks of beer, bales of cloth, or what not besides.

To this day the stranger is shown in the marketplace at Lubeck the stone on which Wittenborg sat before his execution, and in the collection of antiquities is the chair of torture in which he was borne thither. So sternly did the Hansa punish.

There exists an entirely unauthenticated fable that Wittenborg had betrayed his trust in return for a dance with the Queen of Denmark, promising her as a reward the island of Bornholm. That the fable had some currency is proved by the fact that for a long while there survived in Lubeck the expression, "He is dancing away Bornholm," when some one light-heartedly did an unjustifiable deed. The story has given one of the younger German poets, Geibel, the theme for a famous ballad.

Further, it was fabled that twice a year the Burgomaster and council of Lubeck solemnly drank Hippokras out of silver cups made from Wittenborg's confiscated property, repeating the while a Low German distich that reminded them of their stern duty and their predecessor's sad fate. Modern accurate research, pitiless in the destruction of picturesque legends has discovered that these cups were not made till the sixteenth century, and were paid for by a tax levied on Bornholm, then in rebellion.

After the cruel defeat due to Wittenborg, the cities concluded an armistice with Waldemar, an armistice that might easily have been converted into a permanent peace, for the towns were not eager to fight.

It was too great an interruption to trade. Moreover, the war expenses had exceeded their calculations, times were bad, harvests scant, food scarce, and, to crown all, the Black Death had reappeared in Europe and was devastating whole districts.

But Waldemar had resolved to break entirely the power of the Hansa. Once more he befooled it in diplomatic negotiations, and in the midst of the truce attacked its herring settlements at Scania, and captured some merchant vessels that pa.s.sed through the Belt.

The towns held council, Waldemar was offered terms. Yet again he befooled them, and when he soon after married his only child Margaret, celebrated in history as the Semiramis of the North, to Hakon, heir to the thrones of Sweden and Norway, thus preparing the union of the three northern kingdoms under one crown, the towns, alarmed at the mere prospect, felt that now or never they must secure their independence.

In November, 1367, deputies from the Baltic and inland towns met in conclave in the large council chamber of the Town Hall of Cologne, a meeting that became the foundation act of the recognized and open const.i.tution of the Hanseatic League, and on which account the hall still bears the name of Hansa Room. It seems certain that here for the first time was drawn up an Act, modified, renewed, altered in course of time, but yet always the fundamental basis of the League. There is no older Hanseatic doc.u.ment than this of the congress known as the Cologne Confederation, when the deputies of seventy-seven towns met to declare most solemnly that "because of the wrongs and injuries done by the King of Denmark to the common German merchant, the cities would be his enemies and help one another faithfully." It was decided that such cities as were too weak or too distant to help actively in the war, should do so by the contribution of subsidies. It was further enacted that such cities as would not join in the war should be held as outside the League, with whom its burghers and merchants should have nothing more in common, neither buying from, nor selling to, them, nor allowing them to enter their ports, or unlade goods in their domains.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RATH-HAUS, COLOGNE.]

Waldemar was warned of what the cities had resolved against him. He replied with an untranslatable pun, in which he likened the Hansa to a flock of geese, who deafened him with their cackle. Warned once more, Waldemar threatened the cities that he would complain of them to their spiritual and temporal lords; among them the Pope and the emperor. The cities had forestalled him. They had sent copies of a letter, stating their grievances against a king whom they denounced as "a tyrant and a pirate," to some thirty spiritual and temporal lords. In the letter to the emperor, Lubeck, whence all the letters were dated, excused itself in particular for not responding to Charles's recent invitation to join his Roman expedition on the plea of its home difficulties, while humbly giving thanks for the honour done it by the offer. It also justified itself for not paying during the past year to Waldemar a tax decreed by Charles, since this king, it wrote, "seeks to withdraw your town of Lubeck from the emperor and the empire." It grieved to state that the emperor lived too far off to shield by his arms his weak and neglected flock in the northern region of the empire. Therefore the emperor's most gracious majesty must not take it amiss if the cities, with G.o.d's help, did something towards their own protection.

Worded with all the servile language of the period, Lubeck yet in this letter made it pretty evident to its supreme ruler that it meant to stand on its own feet, as it knew too well how unsteady were its sovereign's.

Yet, again, Waldemar was warned of the growing strength, the earnest purpose of the League, and this time he seems to have been alarmed, for he tried to detach from it many of its members, and to win them over to his own cause. He received from the towns with whom he opened negotiations, the following reply, which proves how perfected and tightly secured were already the reciprocal engagements of the League.

"The Hanseatic League," they said, "having resolved on war, they must submit themselves to that general resolution which bound them all."

The cackling geese whom Waldemar had despised seemed to have grown into formidable eagles overnight. Lordlings and princes too, many of whom had private injuries to avenge, had joined the League or promised their support. The Hansa had set up a rival and successful king in Sweden, and it now proposed nothing less than to dismember Denmark, and to distribute its provinces to its own friends and allies. It did not desire to retain possession of it. It was ever its policy to restrict actual possessions, but to seek that these should be as far as possible in the hands of friends who would grant it the concessions and privileges needful for commerce. Thus could be applied to it what a Roman said of the peoples he subjugated, "I do not ask for gold; I only desire to rule over those who have gold." With this difference, however, that the Hansa, without wishing to conquer provinces, wished to draw to itself whatever profits could be found therein.

It was on the Sunday of Quasimodo, April 16, 1368, that all the Hansa ships were to meet in the Sound for a combined attack on Zealand. The Easter days approached. All Northern Germany awaited anxiously the moment for the decisive combat to commence; when suddenly the cities learnt that on Maundy Thursday Waldemar had secretly fled from his dominions, alarmed by the decision and strength shown by his enemies. In a ship laden with much treasure he had landed on the Pomeranian coasts to go further east and avoid the impending squall, leaving a viceroy in his stead, whom he authorized to conclude peace or carry on war.

Waldemar's cowardly att.i.tude could not of course alter that of the cities. In that same month of April the war began and raged all the summer, the Hansa meeting with but little resistance. With the winter came a truce, after the fashion of those times, but in the summer war was renewed and for two years the Hansa ships hara.s.sed the Danish coasts and waters, sacked their cities and plundered their treasures. The treacherous attack on Wisby was avenged with interest, and the war proved so profitable to the League that it settled in congress that it should continue until the Danes sued abjectly for peace. Its leader was once more a Lubecker, Brun Warendorf, the son of the Burgomaster. He died in battle, but the memory of his gallant deeds remains in the stately monument the town erected to him in the choir of St. Mary's Church. Thus Lubeck honoured those who contributed to her honour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RATH-HAUS, TANGERMUNDE.]

By the close of 1369, Denmark was exhausted and the people weary of war.

They pleaded for peace. On this the seventy-seven cities, whom Waldemar had derided as geese, dictated their terms. It was indeed a peace such as few kings have signed in the deepest degradation of their empire. For the term of fifteen years they claimed two-thirds of the revenues of Scania, the possession of its strongholds, the free pa.s.sage of the Sound, and the right for the same fifteen years to veto the choice of a Danish ruler, besides a number of other valuable concessions and privileges; terms, in short, as humiliating for Denmark as they were glorious for the League. The last paragraph of this remarkable Treaty of Stralsund, which put the Hansa in the position of a first-cla.s.s power, ran thus:

"Our king, Waldemar, shall seal to the cities the above terms of peace with his great seal, if he would remain with his kingdom and not give it over to another ruler. If it should be that our lord and king; Waldemar, desires to abdicate his land of Denmark during his lifetime, we will and shall not suffer it, unless it be that the cities have given their consent, and that he has sealed to them their privileges with his great seal. Thus, too, it shall be if our lord and king, Waldemar, be carried off by death, which G.o.d forfend. Then, too, we will accept no ruler but in council with the cities."

It is evident from this paragraph that the Hansa still mistrusted Waldemar, and feared he would by some subterfuge evade the treaty obligations made in his name by his appointed viceroy.

And they had probably not gauged him falsely.

It was further settled that Waldemar must sign this doc.u.ment within sixteen months: if he did not do so within this period, the Danish council and kingdom would nevertheless be bound to keep its terms "even if the king did not seal."

But abject though these stipulations were, complete as was the submission of Denmark to the League which they implied, Waldemar signed them within the appointed time. He saw that he was defeated, friendless, and alone. In vain had he scoured the mainland, and recounted his woes to all who would listen, in vain had he begged or bribed for help against his enemies. He had made himself too much hated, and even those who promised aid failed at the last to keep their word.

With the signature of peace Waldemar also signed away his position, nay, perhaps his life. Broken in hope and spirits, his health gave way. Four years later (1375) he died, after he had just appealed in vain to the towns to restore to him his castles in Scania.

With the peace of Stralsund the German merchants had established the supremacy of the Hansa over Scandinavia, and laid the foundation for that power over the northern kingdom, which, in the words of King Gustavus Vasa, places "the three good crowns at the mercy of the Hansa."

Thus ended the Hansa's great war against the King of Denmark--a war that marks an important era in its history and development.

The League henceforth took a changed position, not only in its own fatherland, but in the face of all Europe, for nothing succeeds like success. Flanders, France, and England, had all to recognize that a new power had arisen in the north of Germany. For the war had proved, not only how valiantly the League could fight if need arose, but also how well organized it was; how it held together for the common weal; how it would be not only unwise, but dangerous to resist its demands for trade privileges and concessions.

A curious juxtaposition of events was afforded by this chapter of history; a German emperor was busy in the interests of Rome, striving to bring back the Pope from his long exile at Avignon, and obtaining dubious victories over the great Italian family of the Visconti; while meantime a league of cities in his own empire was carrying on a successful war against the kings of the north, dethroning and defeating them. And so far from raising a hand to aid them, the emperor, on paper, at least, and by word and protestation, was taking part with Waldemar against his own subjects. A curious, a unique condition of things truly.

And herewith we have brought the history of our League to the close of what is known as its first period, dating from its origin to the peace concluded with Denmark.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Some writers reckon Waldemar as the fourth of his name, counting as the third Waldemar the impostor, who for some years ruled over the land under that name. I have preferred to follow the more generally adopted reckoning.--H. Z.

[7] "Ante portas Wisby in manibus Danorum ceciderunt Gutenses."