Naturally, Wullenweber felt it incumbent to retrieve this check. The elective throne of Denmark had become vacant through the death of Frederick I of Holstein: His son, Christian III, was unfavourably disposed towards the Hanseatic cities. Under those circumstances Wullenweber hit upon the idea of the candidature of Christian II, who had been deposed and afterwards confined to the castle of Sunderburg in the island of Alsen. A condottiere of high birth, Christopher of Oldenburg, accepted the chief command of the expedition. But the bold burgomaster, not satisfied with the restoration of Christian II., offered to Duke Albrecht of Mecklenburg the crown of Sweden at that time borne by Gustavus Wasa. That monarch had committed the blunder of not showing himself sufficiently grateful for the aid lent to him by Lubeck in days gone by.
The beginnings of the campaign were successful. Copenhagen opened even its doors to the Count of Oldenburg. Christian III, however, had secured an able captain in Count Johannes Rantzau, who, leaving the enemy to carry on his devastations in Sealand, boldly came to invest Lubeck, inflicted a bloody defeat on Marx Meyer and captured eight vessels of war. Wullenweber understood that it was time to make concessions; his partners retired from the councils, and on November 18, 1534, the very curious convention with Rantzau was concluded at Stockeldorf by which the Lubeckers were left free to continue warring in Denmark in favour of Christian II, but bound themselves to cease hostilities in Holstein.
The candidates for the Danish throne increased. Albrecht of Mecklenburg and even Count Christopher laid more and more stress upon their pretensions; Wullenweber, in order to conciliate the Emperor, put forward at the eleventh hour the name of a personage agreeable to the House of Hapsburg, namely, Count Palatine Frederick, the son-in-law of Christian II. The war went on with Christian III, whose cause Gustavus Wasa had espoused. Marx Meyer fell into the hands of the enemy; left prisoner on parole, he broke his pledge, made himself master of the very castle of Warburg that had been assigned to him as a residence, and his barbaric and cruel incursions terrified the country all round. The naval battle of Borholm on June 9, 1535, was not productive of a decisive result, a storm having dispersed the opposing fleets, but on June 11 Johannes Rantzau scored a victory on land in Denmark; and finally, on June 16, at Svendsburg, the Lubeck fleet fell without firing a shot into the hands of Admiral Peter Skramon. Added to all these catastrophes, Lubeck was threatened with being put outside the pale of the Empire; the game was evidently lost. Nevertheless peace with Christian III was only signed on February 14, 1536.
Marx Meyer, after a splendid defence, surrendered Warburg, on the condition of his retiring with the honours of war; in spite of their promise, the Danes tried and executed him together with his brother on June 17, 1536. On July 28 of the same year Copenhagen capitulated, after having sustained a twelve months' investment, aggravated by famine. Christian III gave their liberty to Duke Albrecht of Mecklenburg and to Count Christopher, although he inflicted repeated humiliations on the latter. As for the Duke, the adventure left him crestfallen for a long while.
At Lubeck the men of the old regime obtained power once more, Wullenweber having resigned towards the end of August, 1535. In the beginning of October, while crossing the territory of the Archbishop of Bremen, the brother of his enemy, Duke Heinrich the Younger, of Brunswick, he was arrested, taken to the castle of Rothenburg, and put on the rack as a traitor, an anabaptist and a malefactor. After which he was transferred to the castle of Stainbrück, between Brunswick and Hildesheim, and flung into a narrow dungeon, where to this day the following inscription records the event: "Here George Wullenweber suffered, 1536-1537." Finally, on September 24, a court of aldermen summoned at Tollenstein, near Wolfenbüttel, by Heindrich of Brunswick, sentenced the wretched man to suffer death by the sword, a sentence which was carried out immediately, the executioner quartering the body and putting it on the wheel. Such was the deplorable end of the man whose ambition had dreamt the political and commercial domination of his country in the north of Europe. According to a sailor's ditty of old, "The people of Lubeck are regretting every day the demise of Master George Wullenweber." The historian Waitz has devoted three volumes to the career of the famous burgomaster; the purely literary men and dramatic authors, Kruse and Gutzkow, have also seized upon this dramatic figure.--Translator.
[Footnote 22]: Under the name of Wends, the Sclavs settled on the shores of the Baltic, engaged in maritime traffic, and became the founders of the Hanseatic League. In the sixteenth century the kernel of that confederation still consisted of the group of the six Wendish cities: "Lubeck the chief one, Hamburg, Luneburg, Rostock, Stralsund and Wismar."--Translator.
[Footnote 23]: The Hanseatic League had established its most important factories, and above all for the herring traffic, in Schonen; enormous fairs were being held there from the beginning of July to the end of November. The centre of all this commerce was Falsterbo, at the extreme southwest of Sweden.--Translator.
[Footnote 24]: Valentin Eichstedt died in 1600 as Chancellor of Wolgast. He wrote the life of Duke Philip I, an Epitome Annalium Pomerania and Annales Pomeraniae. Johannes Berckmann, a former monk of the order of St. Augustine, and preacher, an eye-witness of the scenes of the Reformation at Stralsund, is the author of a chronicle of that city which was published in 1833 by Mohnike and Gober. Sastrow has now and again borrowed from him for events anterior to his personal recollections; he nevertheless rarely misses an opportunity of attacking his fellow-worker in history. This may have been due to hatred of the popular party and perhaps to professional jealousy, apart from the fact of Berckmann being more favourable to his patron Christopher Lorbeer than to Burgomaster Nicholas Smiterlow. Born about the end of the fifteenth century, Berckmann died in 1560.--Translator.
[Footnote 25]: Robert Barnes, chaplain to Henry VIII, and sent by the latter to Wittemberg in order to consult the theologians on the subject of Henry's divorce from Catherine of Arragon. At his return to London he showed so much zeal for the new faith that Henry sent him to the Tower. He recanted in order to recover his freedom; then overwhelmed with remorse fled to Wittemberg and stayed there several years with Bugenhagen under the name of Dr. Antonius Anglus. Henry VIII, after his rupture with the Pope, reinstated Barnes as his chaplain and entrusted him with the negotiations of his marriage with Anne of Cleves; but when the divorce took place, Barnes was brought before Parliament and was burned July 30, 1540. He wrote the lives of the Roman pontiffs from St. Peter to Alexander III.--Translator.
[Footnote 26]: Arnold Büren, the son of a peasant, took his name from the hamlet of Büren, in Westphalia, in the neighbourhood of which he was born, in 1484. He spent fifteen years at Wittemberg with Luther and Melanchthon. The latter recommended him to the Duke of Mecklenburg, Henry the Pacific, as a tutor to his son Magnus, who was reported to be the most learned prince of his times. To Büren belongs the credit of having restored the prestige of the University of Rostock, seriously impaired by the pest and by the troubles of the Reformation. He died on September 16, 1566. His tomb is in St. Mary's, at Rostock; among the scutcheons adorning it are the Genevese key and eagle.--Translator.