The Hansa Towns Part 5

After enumerating other advantages to be gained from these allies, he is however obliged to draw his Holiness' attention to a serious drawback on their part, namely, "that the Germans are enormous eaters, which arouses anxiety in respect to supplies when the fleet shall find itself in the hot regions."

A love for feasting meets us repeatedly in the old chronicle reports on the German merchants, and shows that in those days there also held good what Hawthorne has more recently expressed, that the Germans need to refresh exhausted nature twice as often as any other peoples. Then, as now, they were an upright, thorough, ma.s.sive race, not made of too fine a clay and wanting rather on the aesthetic side; a want sure to strike the more finely strung senses of an Italian.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BURGHERS AT TABLE.]

It is certain that the fourteenth century was in many respects the epoch when the Hansa cities flourished most actively. Neither before nor after did they have so many sided an importance for the whole life of the German nation. It was a stirring period in the history of the European continent; when the Minnesingers gave place to the Mastersingers; when learning, hitherto stored up jealously in the monasteries and the libraries of the princes, had found its way out among burghers and laymen; when protectors of art and science were more often simple merchant princes than n.o.ble-born beggars. In a word, it was an epoch when the middle cla.s.s sprang into full being, and took its due and proper place as a link between the n.o.bility and the common people.

Towards bringing about this state of things the Hansa had greatly contributed. If it failed to emanc.i.p.ate itself entirely from the empire, it was yet ever keenly desirous of emanc.i.p.ating itself from its petty suzerains. Thus the burghers of Lubeck, Cologne, Goslar, and other cities were early forbidden to hold posts under the lord of the domain, no matter how lucrative such posts might be. Wismar, engaged on one occasion in a dispute with the Dominican monks concerning the repair of the town walls, and obliged to cede to these ecclesiastics because the lord of the land was favourable to the Church, carefully recorded the occasion in its "town book," "in order," as it wrote, "that it might remember the circ.u.mstance on some future and more favourable occasion."

"To pay them out" is implied though not expressed in the phrase.

With the same insistence and energy the towns made good their claims when it was requisite to protect the burgher in his commerce, this source of life to all the cities. Formerly, it is true, the German merchants had appeared in the foreign markets as "the men of the emperor," but now the emperors had no longer might wherewith to back their right, and more efficient protection was called for. This each found in his own city. Hundreds and thousands of treaties and letters of freedom attest to the fact that the towns recognized their duties towards their citizens and practised them most strenuously. Sometimes these were written out in the name of a princeling, whose signature it was always possible to buy for hard cash; but as time went on the towns gradually took an entirely independent stand, so that from France to the Russian districts of Smolensk the whole continent was overspread with a network of diplomatic and commercial contracts eagerly supported and extended by the towns.

The first thing sought for from the territorial lords, was protection for person and property from the gang of banditti who dwelt in every castle under the leadership of some t.i.tled robber; then protection against the cruel rights of wreckage and salvage, which declared all such goods the property of the territorial lord; further, release from imprisonment for debts and other misdemeanours incurred within the jurisdiction of the city and to be dealt with by itself alone; a.s.sistance in obtaining payment of foreign debts; freedom from the so-called "judgments of G.o.d" in the form of torture, walking on red-hot irons, &c.; regulation and diminution of local taxes and tolls on the lading or unlading of vessels, the weighing of merchandise; permission to fell wood to repair ships; in a word, one and all of the necessary permits to render more easy and profitable the intercourse between towns and nations.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GERMAN TRADE LIFE.]

In each foreign country the Hanseatics had always their permanent settlement, known as the _Kontor_, and for these they had early obtained a species of autonomy that permitted them to exercise jurisdiction according to their native laws over their own country people. Defaulters were judged by Hanseatic rules, and the "common merchant" found a help and support against the foreigners among whom he for the moment resided and with whom he traded.

The shrewd towns knew well how to estimate the value of such foreign settlements, and it is noteworthy that they never accorded reciprocal rights. In vain foreigners pleaded permission to found similar settlements in the Hansa's dominions; the towns always skilfully declined such requests. Thus in Cologne foreign merchants were not allowed to reside longer than six weeks at a stretch, and this only three times in the year; therefore only eighteen weeks in all. Similar and even more restrictive regulations prevailed in the other cities.

It is curious to note that, until the end of the thirteenth century, it was chiefly the inland towns who were the great traders, but when they needed for their trade the highway of the ocean, gradually the maritime ports had taken the place of importance. One of the chief lines of sea traffic was that between Bruges in Flanders and Northern Russia. On this route hundreds of ships sailed annually, all owned by the "Easterlings,"

as the Baltic merchants were called to distinguish them from the inland traders. It was not until the fifteenth century that we find Dutchmen, Zealanders, and Frisians striving to come into serious compet.i.tion with the Hansa.

A decree that no German merchant might go into partnership with a Russian, Fleming, or Englishman, no doubt aided greatly this exclusive possession of the Baltic Sea. In Russia waterways led them as far as Smolensk; and, later on, they penetrated even further inland, by utilizing the roads that had been made by the German knights whose seat of might was Pomerania and Livonia. The Marienburg, the chief house of the Order, proved a welcome halting station for the merchant travellers, where they found safety and shelter. Furs were largely obtained from the inner districts of Russia. "They are plentiful as dung there," writes the pious chronicler, Adam of Bremen; adding, "for our d.a.m.nation, as I believe, for _per fas et nefas_ we strive as hard to come into the possession of a marten skin as if it were everlasting salvation."

According to him, it was from this cause and from Russia "that the deadly sin of luxurious pride" had overspread the West.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RENSLAU GATE.]

Wax, that played so large a part in mediaeval religious rites, and was required in great abundance, was furnished by the "honey-trees" of the virgin Russian forests. Leather, skins, tallow, and all species of fat, were also among the chief products of Russia and the exports of the Hansa. In return, they imported into that empire the produce of the looms of Germany, England, and Flanders, the fine Flemish cloths, the coa.r.s.er English and German. Silk, too, and linen were valued goods.

Important also were all manner of worked metal objects, and such wares as town industries manufacture. Beer, too, was a valued and most profitable article of commerce. This drink was brewed in superior excellence in Northern Germany, the hops being grown on the spot.

Contemporary writers tell how outside all the northern cities hop gardens flourished. This beer was never wanting at any carouse in the whole stretch of land from Flanders to Finland; a heavy, heady beverage, which would now be deemed unpalatable and indigestible. Some specimens are preserved to this day in the Danzig _Topenbier_ and the Brunswick _Mumme_. To this thirst for ale Hamburg largely owes its prosperity. For many long years it was the greatest beer-making town of the North, boasting in the fourteenth century no less than five hundred breweries.

From Sweden the Hanseatics fetched copper and iron; in many cases they had acquired the sole possession of the mines. Scandinavia also furnished skins, as well as the various forest products of wood, potash, pitch, and tar. From Blekingen, as at this day, the merchants brought granite, and from Gothland and Bornholm limestone, both stones being required for those building purposes for which the native material of brick did not suffice. Already the Baltic supplied the Netherlands with grain.

The Hansa carried in return to Sweden, Finland, and Russia the requirements of daily life, since these countries possessed neither manufactures nor skilled labour. Down to the altar shrines and the psalters of the Church the merchants brought the evidences of civilized workmanship to these lands. The very furs they had taken thence were returned to their northern homes; of course manipulated and worked up.

Even the English, more advanced in handicraft, submitted to the same _regime_. It used to be said on the European continent in those days: "We buy the fox skins from the English for a groat, and re-sell them the foxes tails for a guilder." With England indeed the Hansa's intercourse was most active, as we shall show more in detail later on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CROSSBOW.]

Danzig owes almost all its splendour to the English trade. This city dealt largely in Austrian and Hungarian products, which were distributed from out its harbour. English crossbowmen received all the wood for their bows from Austria by way of Danzig. They were made from the yew tree, which was considered especially adapted to this end.

What the German merchant obtained as produce from Russia, Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe, not to mention the special productions of his own towns, he distributed either at home or in the world-famed markets of Bruges and London, for the Hansa was then the only intermediary between East and West. For more than three hundred years Bruges maintained its place as the central market for the whole of Europe this side the Alps. Here could be met traders from all parts; the Lombard bankers and money-changers, the Florentine, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Basque, English, Scotch, North and South Germans. It was from Bruges that the Baltic merchant supplied his home and Northern Germany with the products of the East, which the South German had brought from Venice and over the Alpine pa.s.ses along the Rhine. In Bruges he could buy the fruits of the Mediterranean, the silks of Florence, the oils of Provence, the wines of Spain and Italy. These meetings of merchants were wont to take place at stated times, intercourse being thus made surer and easier. This custom laid the foundation for those annual fairs for the exchange of wares, of which one yet survives in Germany in little diminished importance, namely, the great fair of Leipzig, where all the German publishers meet to exchange the intellectual productions of the year.

Another source of wealth to the cities arose from the circ.u.mstance that they not only supplied the requirements of the ma.s.s, but were also the purveyors to the princes and the aristocracy. We find in their books that these frequently owed them heavy sums for furs, Flanders cloth, and choice wines. They were also most often their bankers, for the towns and, above all, Lubeck, the centre of cash transactions, were held desirable places for money investments. Even in the distant districts of Sweden people knew no better mode of investing capital than to confide it to Lubeck merchants.

Of course the conditions of trade were vastly different from those of to-day. Above all, the merchant had to act more in person. Posts did not exist, orders and contracts, therefore, could rarely be made by letter, for it mostly required a special messenger to carry these. It was hence almost the rule that the merchant accompanied his wares "over sea and sand," as the phrase went. For the sake of greater security, and in order also to diminish expenses, many would club together to charter a ship. It was usual to interest the captains in the sales of the wares, it being held advisable that every one on board should have an advantage in bringing the goods safe to land and in their profitable disposal.

This custom arose from the dangers that lurked from robbers, while insurance of goods in transit was yet unknown. By interesting captain and crew pecuniarily they were less likely to throw the goods overboard in a storm, or to allow pirates quietly to board and rob the vessels; both matters of common occurrence.

If it was dangerous to travel by water, it was yet far worse to travel by land. Not to mention that there were few roads, that the mud often lay piled wheel high, so that the strongest horses could not pull the carts; the presence of robbers was a constant cause of fear on the road.

Many of these were, as we know, the lordlings of the land in disguise, and hence they naturally turned a deaf ear to the repeated pet.i.tions of the merchants to keep the highways in better order. Added to this, each lord had the right to demand toll for the pa.s.sing of his dominions and the toll stations were often very close together. Thus, for example, within a s.p.a.ce of fifteen miles from Hamburg the merchant encountered no less than nine. Fortunately the tables of tolls in those days were not too complicated. They were generally paid by waggon, or ship load, regardless of contents.

The Middle Ages were ignorant of protective taxes. These impediments to the useful exchange of international produce were reserved for the invention and practice of our more enlightened centuries. It is characteristic that the oath which played so great a part in all mediaeval transactions, social and political, was also employed to settle the toll dues of the traveller. A crucifix was held before him; on this he swore that he was not defrauding, that the weight of his wares, as stated by him, was accurate, and herewith the transaction was completed.

It was, however, necessary to be most careful not to diverge from the toll roads. If a merchant was found on a bye-road his goods were confiscated and he himself imprisoned. On this account, too, companionship was sought after, the leadership of some one familiar with the ground, and hence merchants and merchandize generally moved in caravans.

It is worthy of note that all the trade of that time was strictly legitimate, and what is known as real merchant's business. Speculation hardly existed. Commission and agency dues were not wholly unknown, but happily there was not existent that pernicious scourge of modern trade, the time bargains, which permit merchandize to be sold a dozen times over before it actually exists. It was honest, true trade, which only sold what it could show. Therefore, it could uphold and practise the axiom, "ware for ware, or for cash." In certain districts, for example Russia, barter was more common than money payments. Credit was absolutely forbidden in certain towns and in certain branches of trade.

If credit was allowed the borrower had to find a surety, and to go surety was a grave matter, of which the consequences might easily prove disastrous, entailing loss of property and often of personal freedom.

Payments were usually made in coined money, but bar silver was also employed, especially in Russia, and bills of exchange were not quite unknown. The bills were payable as a rule either at Lubeck or Bruges.

Silver was the chief currency, but in the fourteenth century Lubeck was permitted to coin gold. It made guilders after the pattern of the Florentine ducats. The gold to coin them with was bought at Bruges. We must remember that money had a far higher value in those days than in ours, and that if we want to arrive at a just comparison with our own times, we must multiply the sums by seventy or seventy-five. The most common form of reckoning was the Flemish, _i.e._, one pound, equal to twenty shillings at twelve groats each; in a word, exactly the reckoning that has survived in England to this day. The pound of money was originally a weight. The best money was that of Lubeck, and, above all, the English contracted to be paid in pounds of the "Easterlings," their generic name for the Baltic merchant. As a survival and abbreviation of this phrase we in England say pound sterling to this day. A bad light upon the morality and conditions of the period is thrown by the fact that the petty kings, seeing that their coins were often refused and mistrusted, did not hesitate to coin and give currency to false money bearing the imprint of the League. We come across frequent bitter and often useless complaints on this subject.

Putting out capital at interest was not wholly unknown in those days, notwithstanding the prohibitions of the Church which, founded on the text in St. Luke vi. 54, and the Fourteenth Psalm ("qui pecuniam non debet ad usuram"), forbade all usury business. The Jews early held this branch of trade in their hands. Rates of interest varied from 6 to 10 per cent. Loans, too, were made to princes, foreign and native, and to cities, upon industrial enterprises. Wholly erroneous is the notion that capital was inactive, kept in a strong box or an old stocking. That great riches were acc.u.mulated is proved by some of the old wills and account books. Fortunes of a quarter of a million were not unknown. A single merchant would often own not only many farms in different and distant parts of the country, but whole villages and townships. As for the men themselves, we encounter them in every part of the continent, the artisan as well as the merchant. Thus, for example, Germans seem the favourite shoemakers; we hear of them in this capacity as far off as Lisbon. Then, as now, they were renowned as bakers, and no one knew better how to salt and preserve herrings and cod-fish.

In Livonia, Esthonia, Gothland, rich merchants died whose nearest heirs had to be sought in far off Westphalia. For instance: A worthy shoemaker became burgher of Lubeck; then visited Rome and San Jago di Compostella as a pilgrim, and afterwards being named shoemaker to the German knights, had as his chief debtor for goods supplied a cavalier who fought in Sweden. Thus diverse, many-coloured, and full of adventure were lives in those times, which we are too often tempted to think sleepy and stay-at-home.

It is difficult to gain an idea of the full extent and nature of mediaeval trade, but this too was far more rich and varied than we suppose. Though there was no activity outside Europe, still it can well stand beside our modern commerce, and as regards honesty, thoroughness of produce and workmanship, it unhappily far eclipses it. Certainly the list of articles imported and exported in their variety of needful and needless objects, their luxury and magnificence, goes far to disprove our notions of the greater simplicity of life in the Middle Ages. For supply means demand, and meant this yet more emphatically with our practical forefathers.

Apart from the evidences of figures and statistics, the evidences of wealth and luxury can also be found in the yet extant monuments of the time, and, above all, in the churches. In the Middle Ages the one converging point of ideal life was the Church. Everything that went beyond the immediate practical needs of daily existence, every form of charity, every endeavour after culture, every striving of artistic and scientific activity had in those days a religious foundation.

Imagination, too, came to the aid of this tendency in the shape of the possible and probable dangers encountered by "sea and sand," by the town traders. Thus in 1401 we find merchants and shippers at Lubeck founding "an eternal brotherhood and guild to the honour of G.o.d, of Mary His beloved mother, and all the saints; above all, the holy true helper in need, St. Nicholas, that they may aid and comfort the living and the dead, and all those who seek their rightful livelihood on the water, many of whom, alas! perish in water troubles, are thrown overboard or expire in other ways, dying unconfessed and without repentance; for on account of their agonies they could feel neither remorse nor penitence for their sins, and who have none who pray for them except the general prayers."

Such guilds were by no means rare. Legacies, too, were left for similar ends, by which thousands of our money were willed away: churches, monasteries, and holy foundations of all kinds raised or aided to pray for the benefit of the souls of the dead.

Nor were distant pilgrimages unknown. The merchant would go in person, combining business and religion on the road, or he would send a subst.i.tute, who for a certain sum would visit Rome, the Holy Land, San Jago in Spain, or Rocamadour in Guyenne. Such pilgrims by profession were frequent. St. Peter, St. James, after them St. John, then St.

Nicholas and St. Clement as patron saints of merchants, shippers and fishermen, and among the women saints St. Catherine, were the chosen objects of North German piety. In no town was lacking a leper house, a refuge for those troubled with that plague of the Middle Ages, happily now almost unknown in Europe. These were dedicated to the Holy Ghost and to St. George, the slayer of dragons.

Above all, worship was paid to the Virgin Mary. All the munic.i.p.al churches were dedicated to her. There is not a town that has not its church of "Our Lady." The munic.i.p.al council were put under her especial protection. To this day the so-called Beautiful Door of the Mary Church at Danzig bears the inscription in golden letters: "Queen of Heaven, pray for us!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOHE-THOR, DANZIG.]

These churches and religious buildings of all kinds, many of which survive to this day amid surroundings to which they have grown strange, speak more eloquently of the Hansa's might than piles of old parchment records. All Scandinavia can show nothing to compare with these architectural monuments, and we can well comprehend that the Northman entering the Elbe, the Trave, or other Baltic rivers, and seeing the lighthouses, churches, and mighty buildings of the towns, were awed by the Germans' wealth and power and strength, much as we are impressed now-a-days when we first set eyes upon Eternal Rome. These buildings resembled each other in externals; in each we find the same tall graceful steeples rising into the heavens, the same proud, defiant battlements and turrets, the same high-gabled many storeyed, small-windowed houses, the same tendency to employ bricks as building materials, and to use coloured varieties as ornamentation. Of this method of building and decoration the Holstenthor of Lubeck is a well-preserved example, as indeed these double gates to the towns were also a characteristic feature. One, a round tower, resembling greatly the Castel St. Angelo of Rome, situated on the south side of Rostock, was so strongly built that even the mechanical contrivances of our days found it hard work to demolish it when modern progress required its removal.

Art was then almost exclusively the handmaiden of religion, and hence it is also in the churches we have to seek evidences of what the Hansa could produce in this respect. Metal gravestones, rich bindings, cunning iron work, attest its taste. Evidence of a love of painting is found in many works now preserved in museums of the pre-Holbein day. And, incredible though it may seem, they were so famous for gla.s.s painting that early in the fifteenth century men came from Italy to Lubeck to learn perfection in the craft.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOLSTENTHOR, LuBECK.]

Of their domestic architecture little, unhappily, remains to us, the practice of building with wood having wrecked most of the cities. Such houses as survive, however, testify to the national love of cunning carvings and inscriptions of didactic purpose. For it is the keynote of that time to express in artistic form its ardent faith and activity, and its somewhat rough-and-ready philosophy. Theorizings and abstractions were little understood. Thus in old legal codes we see the punishments to be inflicted pictorially portrayed. Contempt and mocking also took tangible form, and the clergy were by no means exempted from such satire. Notwithstanding all the piety of the age, the people were ever on their guard against the encroachments of the wily priests. The deeds of Reynard the Fox--that favourite national comic epic, so wholly in keeping with the Hansa spirit of practical good sense and business cunning--was a favourite theme for weaving into arras and carpet; and it was common to give a distinct hit at the clergy in the person of the sly beast.

It was the custom to depict the Last Judgment in the court of justice of each guildhall. That painted in 1341 for Hamburg led to a long lawsuit before the Papal Court at Avignon, because the local dean and chapter saw in it personal allusions. Thus devoutness did not impede the townspeople from rigidly retaining their mental independence of view and action.

Science and literature--such as those ages could boast--were, like art, more or less pressed into the service of the Church. The only exception is to be found in the few popular folk-tales, all comic, like the deeds of Eulenspiegel, and in the town chroniclers who were in the pay of the munic.i.p.al council; but activity was not great in this latter domain. In most cities, schools were attached to all the parishes, in which the children of the wealthy cla.s.ses learned reading, writing, some arithmetic, singing, and a little Latin. These inst.i.tutions were founded in defiance of the priests, who loved to keep the people in the darkness and enslavement of ignorance.

Nearly all the merchants and many artizans could read and write, even if they did not practise these arts with great facility. Business letters were indited either in Latin or German, for the latter tongue was more widely diffused for commercial purposes than in our day.

But if the wealth of the towns led them to encourage the gentler aspects of life, it also enabled them to give expression to less refined tastes, and refinement of taste was never a speciality of these rather coa.r.s.e-grained and boorish Teutons. The Middle Ages were essentially a time of animal enjoyment and license; the people loved life and all life could offer on the material side. We come across constant records of carouses and feasts, at which the manners and customs were--to our ideas, at least--most gross. No occasion for merry-making, which meant largely eating and drinking, was allowed to slip by unheeded. Nor were these occasions few, for the Catholic Church, with its endless list of saints, furnishes easy and constant excuses for holiday-making, as we see to this day in Catholic countries.

When guilds, corporations, or a.s.sociations met for convivial intercourse, this was pursued according to established rules, some of which survive in the student _corps_ of German universities. Breaches of regulation were punished by extra rations of beer that were paid for by the delinquent. Entrance fees were defrayed by giving a feast to all members. In short, they ate hard and drank yet harder, with the result that nightly drunken brawls were frequent, the quieter folk often lodging complaints concerning disturbed sleep or rioting beneath their windows between the younger burghers and the watchman. Occasionally a man is banished for molesting the town guard, while intoxicated and disorderly, for undue license was not winked at by the town council.

This was also the epoch when flourished those civic games which furthered the sentiment of brotherhood, and served, besides, to improve the youth of the city in the use and practice of arms. Among these, the May games, May processions, May empires, took a foremost place. They had their origin in the pagan conception of spring as a fair youth, who, in victorious duel, overcame the treacherous winter.