The Hansa Towns

VII.

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR KILLS THE LEAGUE.

John Wheeler's diagnosis of the condition of the League was too correct. It is true that an ostensibly official document enumerates fifty towns as forming part of the Hansa League in 1603, but we know that at the same time only fourteen had a seat and voice in the Diet and duly paid their fees. Indeed, the more we examine the internal condition of the League at this period the more we wonder, not that it fell asunder, but that it endured so long. It had become utterly disorganized and was decaying fast.

In 1606, the Emperor Rudolph II. evoked a feeling of alarm among all the towns by suddenly demanding to see their charters, and to know whence they derived their privileges and statutes. Thus the results of appealing to imperial aid, in the English complications, bore their inevitable and unpleasant fruit. The emperor's ulterior aim was of course to extract money from the cities, this time in aid of his Hungarian wars. As in the days of their glory, the cities knew how to protect themselves, and how to escape undesirable inquiries by means of subterfuges and evasive answers. Still the first attempt at supervision had been made, and was to bear fruit later.

While matters were in this uncomfortable state, there broke forth the long, terrible strife known to history as the Thirty Years' War. Its causes are to be sought for in those most unhappy differences of doctrinal opinions, which, being rooted in mutual intolerance, a want of fairness of spirit, and of dramatic insight into the needs of divergent mental constitutions, make one man wish forcibly to impose his point of view upon his neighbour, under the conviction that it is the only point of view, and hence the true one. This intolerant and narrow spirit, which more fatally divides individuals and nations than any other form of human folly, had reached its climax in the century of the Reformation, when not only were Protestant and Catholic opposed to one another, but Protestants were also divided among themselves, Calvinist and Lutheran persecuting each other with an acrimony quite out of proportion to the gravity of the questions at stake.

The details of this most deplorable war fall outside our province, and belong to the history of Germany proper. We can but touch on it as it concerns our League. When hostilities commenced, the Hansa were to realize what even the shadow of a great name implies. Power after power made overtures to the League to make common cause with them. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, was the first. As early as 1621, he sought an alliance with the cities, and he counted the more on an affirmative reply, that his enmity to Denmark was shared by the League. But they refused his offer, saying they wished to enter into no unequal bond, assuring the king however, at the same time, that they desired to remain good friends with him, and to continue their commercial intercourse.

The fact was that, seeing the agitated and disordered condition of affairs in Germany, the Hanseatic League hardly felt it wise to take any definite step at this juncture.

Gustavus Adolphus, however, was the more disappointed at their refusal, since he had been led to expect different treatment from them. Since the time he had ascended the throne, his relations with the League had been friendly. An old chronicler tells us how some time before the king's marriage, the "honourable Hansa towns" sent ambassadors to Sweden to conclude a treaty with Gustavus Adolphus about the Protestant religion, and also to treat with him concerning trade privileges. Indeed, the latter seems to have been their chief aim. But as they wanted to keep it secret, says the writer, they professed that they had been sent to congratulate the king upon his marriage. Gustavus Adolphus received them in solemn audience, standing and with uncovered head; no small honour to pay to a confederation of trading towns. Beside him stood his mighty Chancellor, Oxenstjerna. After the king had accorded them a cordial and formal reception, he gave them the traditional presents, usually only awarded to nobles. Further, he accorded them free board at the cost of the city of Stockholm, as often as they did not eat at his royal table. In order that no mistake might arise regarding quantity, he informed them that in the matter of meat alone, they could count on six oxen, twenty-one fat sheep, one reindeer; and as to drink, on four barrels of good wine, and three hundred and sixty Swedish dollars to cover their other expenses. "This royal treatment mightily pleased the honourable delegates," writes our chronicler, and no wonder, when we remember that the men of the Hansa were famed for the amount they could eat and drink. No wonder, too, that Gustavus Adolphus thought to find in them ready allies, if only in return for his good hospitality.

That the King of Denmark, their old foe, should also have courted their alliance, seems yet stranger. He too, was refused. So was France, who, in 1625, sent delegates to the Hanseatic Diet to sound the members as to her chances of success, in forming an offensive and defensive alliance with these once so powerful merchants.

The most important and strangest offer of all was the wooing of the imperial delegates in the name of Spain, at the Diet held at Lübeck, in 1627. It appears that Spain stood in need of a friendly commercial navy in order to carry on her colonial trade, as well as of a friendly maritime power with which to meet the Netherlands. This idea was in accord with Duke Wallenstein's project to gain empire over the Baltic by means of an imperial navy, thus to surround the imperial crown with a new lustre, and the more surely to hold within bounds the recalcitrant inland princes. It was not from pure ill will or haughtiness that Wallenstein so terrified Stralsund, the town which he besieged so long and mercilessly, nor from pure love of well-sounding titles, that he styled himself "General and Admiral of the Baltic and North Seas."

The two imperial delegates, who appeared before the Hanseatic Diet at Lübeck deigned to speak the quaint formal language that was traditional with the Hansa League. They were begging for a favour, and so deemed it wise to assume no masterful tones. The emperor's word was said to be addressed "to the honourable councillors and other members of the worthy city of Lübeck, regarding it as the head of the most ancient Hansa League." The ambassadors put before the assembled Hanseatic deputies, that the Holy Roman Empire, in its entirety, and the venerable German Hansa towns in particular, had suffered grievously from the restraint on free navigation which had been imposed on them by foreign potentates; and that the German nation had thus the bread taken out of their very mouths. Therefore it was the emperor's earnest and ardent desire to befriend the towns, and to restore the nation to its former reputation and grandeur. A most useful alliance would be proposed to them, and this proposal did not come from a foreign power, but was put forward under the emperor's patronage and protection. The facts were these,—Spain had for some time past declared itself willing to enter into an agreement, that all the merchandise, whether exported from or imported into the Spanish dominions, should only pertain to the natives of the German Empire or to Spanish subjects.

The emperor through his ambassadors admitted that this proposal had at first sight seemed to him somewhat grave, and requiring consideration, but those competent to judge had demonstrated to him, that such direct importation of Spanish and Indian wares into Germany would benefit, not alone the Hansa towns, but the whole of Germany, and would serve to compensate for the privations and sacrifices imposed by the most unhappy war.

The emperor went on to add, that he had ever noted in Lübeck a very true and German frankness and fidelity, and that he did not doubt that Lübeck would carefully consider this proposal, in concert with the sister towns, in order that, after the compact had been duly concluded between the emperor and the King of Spain, it might be openly confirmed with the help and advice of the Hansa towns.

This was the smooth speaking in which the Hansa's imperial masters chose to indulge when it suited their imperial purpose. But decrepit, weakened though the Hansa was, it was not easy to catch it napping. Our wary merchants felt convinced there was some ulterior motive at the bottom of this sudden graciousness, and considered the imperial proposal very carefully and thoroughly. What could it mean, that of a sudden these jealous Spaniards were willing to share the monopoly of their whole colonial trade with the Hansa towns? Our cities feared the Spaniards, even when they came laden with gifts. When we recall, said these traders, the incessant and endless annoyances which our merchants have endured during two centuries while doing business with Spain and Portugal, the arrogant demands, the petty frauds and meanness of the Spanish consuls in the Hanseatic towns, we must confess that this previous knowledge of the character of our would-be allies does not lead us to trust their new, gracious, and friendly offers. They remembered, further, how a certain consul, called De Roy, was never named in their minutes, other than as the "arch enemy of the Hansa towns." They recalled, too, the project of a maritime commercial company (an Amirantazgo), proposed some time back by Spain between the Low Germans and Netherlands, which had revealed to the acute Hanseatics that Spain was deficient in ships and in capital, and that its real purpose was to obtain a fleet for itself on terms as cheap as possible. No, decidedly, the Spanish offers were not to be thought of.

Moreover, the Hanseatics very naturally feared an inevitable breach with their Scandinavian neighbours if they accepted. They foresaw, too, that their adhesion to the plan would give the emperor a sort of right to interfere in their commerce and internal arrangements. They had a wholesome fear, not without cause, of being placed under the most Catholic protectorate of Spain, and, looking ahead, thought they beheld, hidden beneath these velvet offers, the claws of the terrible, abominable Inquisition.

The whole project was therefore allowed to remain a project. To the imperial spokesmen were presented respectively four thousand and two thousand dollars, and the Diet resolved to place the proposal ad referendum. This meant that it was shelved once and for ever.

Nor did the Diet have cause to regret its decision, for soon after the King of Denmark, at that moment trying to ingratiate himself with them, sent for their perusal letters which he had intercepted. These communications were from the emperor, authorizing Count Tilly to secure the cities of Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, Stade, &c. So much for the sincerity of this monarch's vaunted friendship.

And now the war storm long brewing broke over Northern Europe. Germany was to pay heavily for her want of religious unity, or at least the want of mutual forbearance among her people. At first the Hansa towns had hoped that as usual their claims for neutrality would be regarded, but Tilly refused to listen to this, probably owing to his secret instructions from the emperor. All the northern towns had to suffer the full horrors of the war-curse, and they suffered hardly less at the hands of their friends than at those of their enemies. Both proved equally merciless. In order to escape having a military occupation within its walls, Rostock had once to pay 100,000 dollars, and another time 150,000 dollars, Wismar was taxed to the sum of 200,000 dollars; and Hamburg a sum yet higher. Magdeburg's fate was even more sad; it was besieged by the imperial army, pillaged, and given to the flames.

Imperial authority had never appeared so redoubtable to these free cities, or so injurious to their religious liberties and their political integrity. Wallenstein and Count Schwarzenberg even went the length of demanding the Hansa's ships, in order to use them for pursuing the foes of their imperial master upon the high seas, and it is easy to understand how, in presence of an armed force of a hundred thousand men, it was vain for the Hanseatic Diet to object that their deputies had received no instructions which could warrant them in acceding to such a proposal.

The ports of Rostock, Warnemunde, and the town of Wismar were all occupied by the Imperialists, who were also engaged in besieging Stralsund.

The history of this siege and the heroism displayed by this city are among the most notable features in the Thirty Years' War. Wallenstein had rightly judged it as most important for his purpose from its geographical position, and had determined it should be his. As Schiller says in his play Wallenstein's Lager, he had sworn—

This town which, thanks to some succour from outside, succeeded in wearing out the enemy, proved what bravery can do even under the most unfavourable conditions. At the same time the episode throws a fierce light on the low condition into which the League had fallen. In vain did the city of Stralsund appeal to the Diet and to the sister cities for help. It was only after long reflection and many debates that it was decided to advance to this unlucky friend the meagre sum of fifteen thousand dollars, and this at interest of 5 per cent.

These merchants, once princely and noble, at least in their dealings among themselves, had sunk to shopkeepers even in the domestic circle. The fact is, that defeat and terror had paralysed and prostrated them. Instead of making such a firm resistance as they would have done in the past, they had now recourse only to the feeble weapons of tears and entreaties in order to procure some gentler treatment for those of their members who had fallen into the enemy's hands. Most frequently, too, these humiliating steps proved quite futile, and were answered according to the temperaments of the generals-in-chief—brusquely and rudely by Tilly, politely and cunningly by Duke Wallenstein.

Meanwhile matters went from bad to worse for the Hansa towns and for Germany. Even when the empire achieved victories, the people had grown too impoverished and too enervated to profit by them. The story of this long-confused conflict of thirty years' duration is one of the saddest and most depressing in European history.

When in 1648 the peace of Westphalia was at last concluded, it nominally restored calm to the whole northern world, including the Hansa towns. But the League to all intents and purposes was at an end. The peace could restore neither its power, nor its union, and the confederation which seemed to have sunk in deep sleep during the war, awoke from its long repose only to find itself deprived of nearly all its members, and powerless to continue any longer its enfeebled existence.

VIII.

THE SURVIVORS.

Although the peace of Westphalia found the Hansa hopelessly broken, yet it was not until after this event that the various members fully realized their condition. Until then they had anticipated a resuscitation with the advent of political calm. When the Hanseatic deputies had assembled at the Diet of 1628, the last of which an official record exists, they had voted to postpone to a more convenient season all proposals that were brought forward for consideration. This Diet revealed the confusion into which the Hanseatic accounts had fallen. Still even on this occasion various cities pleaded for re-admission into the union. It throws a sad light upon the character of the delegates to read that those of Brunswick, reporting to that city the history of this Diet, should lay great and detailed stress upon the fact that they had not been regaled with the customary wine of honour and the wonted supply of cakes!

All that was achieved on this occasion was that the cities of Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg, were charged with the protection of the Hanseatic interests, in the name of all the other cities, so far as such interests could at present be said to be at stake.

Yet another Diet was summoned in February, 1630, at Lübeck. On this occasion there occurred what of late had not been unusual, namely, that no Hanseatic delegates appeared, with the exception of those of Bremen and Lübeck.

It is a picturesque historical invention, but, unfortunately, like most picturesque legends, quite untrue, that on this occasion all the members of the most ancient German Hansa put in an appearance, and in Lübeck's Hansa Saal decreed, in all solemnity, its own dissolution; that, in short, the Hansa was present at its own funeral. As the Hansa never had an actual foundation day, so it had no day of dissolution. As its growth had been gradual, the result of time and circumstance, so was its decay. It had been built up imperceptibly, it passed away almost as imperceptibly.

After the Diet of 1630, and again in 1641, the three cities above named—Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg—made still closer their friendly alliance, erecting a species of new Hansa upon the ruins of the old. With great modifications this compact survived down to our own times, and was not dissolved until forcibly rent asunder, as disturbing to Prussian ambition and to Prussian ideas of protective trade. For these cities kept up a species of free trade, while all the rest of Germany was protective, and to this day, though despoiled and shorn of their honour, the cities call themselves proudly the Hanseatic towns. In those days their main endeavour was to save as much as possible from the general wreck, and to try and keep alive the spirit of the League, of which most ambitiously they retained the name. They believed, indeed the other cities believed too, that with the restoration of peace they could establish themselves upon the old foundations.

The discussions on this occasion were most animated. It was a stormy sitting, but it produced no real result. Too many different and absolutely conflicting opinions were advanced. The only conclusion that was arrived at was the choice of a certain Dr. Brauer, of Lübeck, to fill the honoured post of Hanseatic Syndic.

Vain honour truly, a very sinecure. For our poor old League, already in its death throes, did not survive this Diet. After eighteen sittings had been held it was made manifest that no accord could be arrived at, and the city of Lübeck even doubted if it were worth while to draw up an official report of the proceedings. Respect for ancient usages, however, prevailed, and the minutes were therefore drawn up in all due form. But they had no fact to record, except that the assembly had not been able to arrive at a unanimous opinion on any one point put forward.

Speaking of this final moment, the eminent historian of the League, Sartorius, writes—

"The constituent elements of the League had been united together in silence, and it was also without noise that they were decomposed. No one could be astonished at this end, which for some time past have been foreseen by any intelligent person."

"Sic transit gloria mundi" might have been written on its tomb. Its glory had been great and real indeed.

No less a person than the eminent philosopher, Leibnitz, in 1670, advised the imperial authorities, of course without result, to revive German trade by the re-establishment of the Hanseatic towns. The profound indifference of the empire was a fact too great to be overcome. The Emperor Charles VI. even went the length of formally forbidding his subjects to trade with the two Indies by way of England and Holland. At no single princely court of the whole realm was there to be found a sound view of commerce and commercial requirements. In the midst of such apathy and ignorance it was a real piece of good fortune for Germany that, at any rate, the three cities of Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg, were allowed to keep their independence.

It was in these cities, then, gradually as trade revived and the disastrous effects of the Thirty Years' War were somewhat overcome, that wealth concentrated itself. Here too was still to be found commercial knowledge, activity, and enterprise, while the old name of Hansa was discovered to have sufficient power left to conjure with. That German industry still found foreign outlet, that it still survived, and proved profitable, was henceforward due solely to the three remaining Hansa towns.

The empire, meanwhile, whenever it did not harry them by attempts at futile restrictions or by foolish criticism of their policy, ignored them entirely. This was always for the cities the happiest course, allowing them free room to act as they, with their commercial knowledge and insight, thought fittest.

But as time went on, and the political state of Germany grew more and more abject, it naturally came about that the Germans grew less and less respected and feared in the foreign markets, the foreign people with whom they had to deal knowing full well that there was no real power to back them. They had to see all other strangers preferred before them and the name of German become a by-word. Indeed they would be scornfully asked what was meant by German, seeing there was no land really so styled, and that the country which once bore that name was split up into a vast number of small principalities. No wonder that this condition of things did not help on German trade. No wonder that under these circumstances the foreign policy of the new League, or rather of the union of the three towns, for league it could not be called, was a policy of weakness, almost of cringing, far different indeed from that of their predecessors, who had played with thrones and deposed kings. Where once they commanded they had now to plead or flatter, and if these methods failed they were driven to observe the mores mundi, to use their own phrase, and let fly silver balls, unlike the heavy balls used in olden times, that is to say, they had to bribe.

After the French Revolution and the European disorders of that time, the Hansa towns by common accord of Russia and France were declared to be perpetually neutral, a gift of doubtful value. The cities were soon made to feel what was meant by owing their existence to aliens.

A little later Napoleon the Great was frequently on the point of giving away the Hansa cities, even before he had appropriated them to himself. In 1806 he offered them as compensation for Sicily, and, according to Lord Yarmouth, would have given them to Hanover if thereby he could have procured the peace with England. Sometime after they were destined by him to serve as the footstool of the throne he designed for his brother Louis in North Germany.

While he was making up his mind they were held by his soldiers, and these days of French occupation were spoken of to their dying days by the burghers in accents of terror. At last, in 1810, quite suddenly and without previous warning, "without due regard and courtesy," as was pleaded afterwards at the Congress of Vienna, Napoleon incorporated the Hansa towns with the empire.

It was well for them that this period was of short duration, for trade was in those days a matter of no small difficulty. Napoleon's mania regarding the continental system had reached its culminating point. Commerce was carried on either by submitting to grave sacrifices owing to the blockade, or by smuggling on a colossal scale. Neither method brought with it prosperity or calm.

Then dawned the memorable year of 1813, and with it came the first check in Napoleon's victorious path. The citizens of the three Hansa towns were among the first in Germany to put on armour and draw the sword for the liberation of themselves and of their suffering fellow-countrymen. Great oppression, happily for mankind and progress, often produces a strong recoil. Enthusiasm knew no bounds; German courage, which seemed dead, was revived.

Alas! it was a false hope. Reaction once more got the upper hand after Germany was liberated from Napoleon's yoke, and it is a question whether the yoke of the native rulers was not even heavier to bear than that of the foreign usurper. It was certainly less liberal.

The three Hansa towns, however, fortunately for them, managed to secure their independence, though not without a struggle. There were not lacking neighbours who gazed at them with covetous eyes, nor others who would have looked the other way had some power appropriated them.

At the Congress of Vienna Lübeck was all but given away to Denmark. But this was more than the Hanseatic delegates present in the assembly could stand. Accustomed of old to lift up their voices boldly, and not to fear crowned or anointed heads, they fiercely denounced this project as a deed of darkness, and appealed so strongly to the consciences of those present, reminding them of the everlasting shame attending a broken word or promise, that they actually succeeded in bringing them round to their point of view. The project was abandoned.

Thus the towns remained virtually free, while nominally attached to Germany, and continued, as of old, as willing, as they were able, to serve their country with the talents that had been entrusted to their keeping. Their flag again appeared on all the seas, their commerce extended in all lands, they even succeeded in concluding favourable trade alliances in virtue of the old Hanseatic firm of "the Merchants of the German Empire."

But, as ever before, they were not backed by the nation or by any real power at home, and now that they were only three towns they could not act as in the days of old, when their number extended across Europe.

But since the many hundred little states of which Germany consisted have been all absorbed by Prussia, and incorporated under the collective name of Germany, even the three Hansa towns, the last to resist and to stand out for their autonomy, have had to succumb to the iron hand of Prince Bismarck and the Prussian spiked helmet. Hamburg still keeps up a semblance of independence, but it is but a shadow, and even that shadow is rapidly vanishing from its grasp. Military, protectionist Germany does not care to have in its confines a town where free trade and burgher independence are inherited possessions. The name of Hansa towns, the title of Hanseatic League, is but a proud memory, one, however, to which modern Germany may well look back with satisfaction, and from the story of the "common German Hansa" it can still, if it chooses, learn many a useful lesson.

NOTE.

EPILOGUE.

The once proud and mighty Hanseatic League is dead now, quite dead. There remains of it only a noble memory, the record of a high and fearless spirit which resisted tyrants petty and great, a spirit which recognized the value of independence, and strove with all its strength to attain and to maintain this boon. We have traced it from its earliest dawn to its recent complete demise; there but remains for us to speak its funeral oration. This is soon accomplished, since whether for men, for nations or associations, if their deeds speak not for them more eloquently than human words, the latter shall avail them little.

The chief title of the Hanseatic League to remembrance is that it was the means of spreading higher culture throughout wide tracts of the European continent, many of them, in those early times, still sunk in utter barbarism; that it introduced Western customs and civilization into all domains of private and social life for millions upon millions of people. This association is a bright spot that strikes the eye, as it looks back across the long, dark abyss of ages past, and we welcome it the more gladly because the bond that held this League together was neither force nor fear, but free will and clear insight into the advantages and necessity of mutual help. To quote the pertinent words of Mrs. Sinnett: "These free cities of Germany rise like happy islands amidst the wide-wasting ocean of violence and anarchy. Not by war and spoil, but by industry, enterprise, and prudent economy, did they accumulate the wealth that enabled them to heal so many of the wounds inflicted on their country by the iron hands beneath whose grasp art, science, even agriculture, by which they subsisted, was perishing. By the unions which the cities formed amongst themselves they stemmed the torrent of violence and anarchy that was threatening to turn their country into a desert peopled by hordes of robbers and slaves; they lent the most effectual aid to the Church in her efforts for the peace and civilization of Europe; yet they held the balance most firmly against the too great preponderance of her power, and rescued the human mind from the injurious subjection which she sometimes claimed as the price of her benefits when society had outgrown the leading strings that guarded its infancy, and felt as a galling restraint what had once been a needed protection. The cities built asylums for the widows and orphans whom the nobles and warriors had made desolate; they stretched out often a helping hand to the poor knight, who was regarding them with envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness, taking him into their pay as a soldier, and enabling him to get a comparatively honest living, instead of wringing 'from the hard hands of peasants their vile trash,' or filling some menial office at the court of a prince, and picking up the crumbs that fell from the great man's table. Behind their walls and bastions the young tree of civil liberty, which was perishing in the open country, took root and flourished; there, even whilst striving only at first for riches and their peaceful enjoyment, did men learn to prize the blessings of social order, justice, and peace. These cities were not mere aggregations of men within a narrow space, such as may have existed among the most barbarous nations; they were organic bodies animated by a living spirit—a spirit of enlightened intelligence, courage, and self-reliance, which best supplied what was defective in the religious system of the time, and gave a more healthy and manly tone to the character both of individuals and of society. The Church, it cannot be denied, sometimes taught men, in the pursuit of an imagined perfection, to trample on the impulses, and violate the duties of nature; in these little republics, on the contrary, though originally they had only the attainment of temporal good in view, they rose insensibly to higher objects, and not only cultivated the social virtues more effectually, but in their struggle to maintain their place in the world, fought in many instances a more successful fight against the sins of the flesh, through the discipline of the manifold cares of an active life, than the recluse of the cloister, with all his fastings and flagellations. Among the happy influences belonging to these miniature states was the ardent attachment of the free citizens of the Middle Ages to the little spot which they had hedged in from the wide wilderness of slavery around, where the individual, if not of noble birth, was usually the mere helpless victim of arbitrary power. Freedom and honour, the respect of his fellows, the happiness of domestic life, the interest and excitement of active business, the joviality of social intercourse, a thousand ties entwined around him, connected him closely with the city, and even the house of his birth; for in those days it was common for men to live and die beneath the same roof under which they had been born. The merchant regarded his native town with a pride fully equal to that of birth and chivalry in the privileged classes, and little envied, we may suppose, the life of the solitary feudal lord in his castle, or the anxious and dependent position of the courtier. The citizen of a humbler class showed, by parading on all occasions the tools and emblems of his trade with the same complacency with which a soldier displays his sword, or the noble his armorial bearings, that he knew his position and was content with it, and felt none of that weak shrinking from his appointed place in society or uneasy longing after another, which has since been the epidemic malady of the middle classes."

For two centuries and more this guild of merchants made the German name respected in European lands, the German flag respected in European waters. When the empire had fallen to pieces and there was no union, no cohesion left, the Hanseatics remained German and held together staunchly and nobly. Though the time of their existence was brief, yet it was all-important, not only for their own land, but for all Europe.

To appreciate to its full extent the influence exercised upon Europe in general by the Hanseatic League, we must carry our minds back, and compare Europe as it was when the League took its rise, with Europe as it was when the League declined. The Hansa made its appearance in history at a time when barbarism, violence, religious fanaticism, political and civil slavery, and dire intellectual darkness overspread the whole continent, when liberty and industry, as we understand them, were unknown. The constant and active communication kept up by the cities of the Hansa, not only among themselves and with all parts of Germany, but with the most distant countries, awoke and kept alive the intelligence of the people. To the Hanseatics, as to the Italians of the same epoch, was reserved the honour of dispelling the obscurity that reigned in the mental and material world. The Hansa's glory only pales before that of the rival Italian mercantile associations from the fact that its energies were somewhat too exclusively confined to money-getting. Had these communities arisen in a period of literary culture, or among the glorious relics of the art of a brighter age, these cities would have presented several more salient points of resemblance to the republics of Greece and Italy. It cannot, however, be denied that in many of their institutions they improved on the model set by the Italian cities, and this more especially in all matters relating to morality and rectitude. But they were less grand and large in their policy than their Trans-Alpine brethren, and unfortunately for themselves, their commercial maxims were always narrow and selfish. Monopoly was their watchword, their grand aim. And it was largely in consequence of this narrow policy that their ruin overtook them. They perished of that disease whereof corporations are apt to perish, namely, egotism, the centrifugal force which is perpetually tending to rend asunder all human society, and must inevitably do so, when not restrained by some powerful antagonistic action.

It is strange that, while so rich commercially, the Hanseatic League lacked political ambition. Had they possessed it, there is little doubt they might have made themselves independent masters of all Northern Germany. But they seem never to have forgotten that they were merchants. They were held down by petty motives, smallness of views. Here, again, they were unlike the Italians, among whom the trader could develop into the aristocrat, as is abundantly proved by the history of the Medici and other famous great houses. The reason must be sought, no doubt, in the different native temperament of the two nations—the one innately refined, the other rougher and more boorish. Though the civic pride of the Hanseatics was highly flattered when the kings of the North and the princes of Germany trembled before them, they confined their ambitions entirely to gaining commercial advantages.

Certain it is that the two powers—the Hanseatic and the Italian Republics—each in their respective sphere of action, helped on the progress that has changed the entire face of this hemisphere, and that they did this by no other means than that of their commercial activity.

For this is the great power of commerce, if practised in its best and highest spirit, that it is able to work veritable miracles, bringing into contact the extremes of civilization, enlarging and disseminating ideas, and helping forward towards that universal brotherhood of man, that universal peace and goodwill, which is, and must be, the highest ideal of humanity. Not till war is really rooted out from among us, not till what is for the benefit of one is held for the benefit of all, not until a generous altruism reigns supreme, can mankind be said to be thoroughly civilized. Trade and commerce, though apparently egotistic factors, work strongly towards this end, even though their action proceed merely from motives of self-seeking. War is so serious an interruption to trade that men will seek to avert it, even out of a simple regard for their own pockets. By fair smiling peace, not only traders, but all the world is benefited and made happier. Once let nations fully understand and recognize its incalculable benefits, and even the lowest and most squalid souls will struggle to uproot this remnant of a barbaric spirit which can never evince itself as aught but an evil.

The Hansa uprose in a rough age, and hence had to work with the rough-made methods of its time; but in its time and in its way it did a good work, and posterity cannot withhold from it either gratitude or admiration. Its policy, its laws, its constitution, its commerce, its immense credit, the sway which it once exercised, the able magistrates, merchants, and mariners whom it produced—all these have vanished, unable to resist the torrent of time that engulfs good and bad alike. But its influence and example have remained, while much of its spirit, like many of its ideas and rules, have become incorporated into the general stock of the ideas of humanity.

Of the League itself, it is true there remains only an illustrious name. For Germany, which gave it birth, there remain memories both of pride and regret—memories that should serve as a spur to noble and useful emulation.

"The History of Commerce," says Montesquieu, "is the history of the intercommunication of peoples." The story of the Hanseatic League is an eloquent testimony to the truth of these words.