Curiously enough such alliances were in direct contravention of the existing laws of the German Empire. At the Diet held in Worms, 1231, the princes had expressed marked disapproval of such leagues, in which they clearly recognized a dangerous rival power. But the cities seemed little troubled by this interdict. They, on their part, recognized that the time had come for a firm union, and adhesion of the weak against the strong, and more and more, as they saw that the empire threatened from within and from without was visibly falling asunder. For what respect could be felt for a crown which was at last actually put up for sale to the highest bidder, and acquired by the rich but otherwise impotent brother of the English Henry III., Duke Richard of Cornwall?
ROBBER KNIGHTS. (From Fritoch.)
The towns of the Rhine were the first to form themselves into an alliance, a fact that can scarcely surprise us when we remember how thickly set is that lovely river with the now ruined strongholds of what erst were robber lords. And the Baltic towns were not slow to follow in their wake, forming a League "for the benefit of the common merchant." These cities even settled the contingent which each town had to place at their common disposal, a great stone of possible stumbling being skilfully avoided by a phrase which occurs in a contract of 1296: "If the fight goes against a prince who is lord of one of the cities, this city shall not furnish men, but only give money." The Rhenish section alone was able to put into the field some eleven hundred crossbowmen and six hundred stout galleys; no mean army in those days.
In a word, the times were out of joint, and the people had to help themselves, and did so. Sprung from modest sources, having its origin in true neighbourly feeling, what was at first a mere association of merchants had developed into an association of cities. The banner under which they had grouped themselves bore the device "freedom for the common merchant at home and abroad," and this device became the elastic but durable bond, which, keeping them together, made them a mighty power. Its very elasticity was the cause of its strength, giving it that facility of expansion and freedom from rigidity which in more modern times has made the glory and the might of England, whose constitution is distinguished by a like principle of flexibility.
A naïve North German chronicler of the thirteenth century telling of the various alliances formed, writes: "But the matter did not please the princes, knights, and robbers, especially not those who for ever put forth their hands for booty; they said it was shameful that merchants should rule over high-born and noble men." Undaunted, however, by such objections, the cities continued to form alliances, to make contracts among themselves until these contracts assumed the extent, dignity, and importance of those made by the towns with their foreign settlements.
Thus, by slow degrees, cautiously, but very surely, the Hanseatic League took its origin, and thus it grew until it became an independent popular force, a state within a state. Like everything that the Christian Middle Ages called into life, the Vehmgericht (Vehmic Tribunal), Gothic architecture, the knightly orders, it bore strongly the impress of individuality.
The origin of the name of Hansa is wrapped in some mystery. The word is found in Ulfila's Gothic translation of the Bible, as signifying a society, a union of men, particularly in the sense of combatants. He applies it to the band of men who came to capture Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Later on Hansa occurs as a tax on commercial transactions, and also as the sum, a very low one, which the various cities paid as their entrance fee into the association.
But our League did not yet officially bear that title; it acquired it from the date of its first great war with Waldemar of Denmark and the peace of Stralsund (1370). Then it won name and rank at the point of the sword, and after this it came to be classed among the most redoubted powers of the period, being thus by no means the first, and probably not the last, example of the lift given to civilization by so barbarous a thing as the powder cart.