The Hansa Towns

by Helen Zimmern

"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 attitude 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 harassed 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 Lübecker, 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 Lübeck honoured those who contributed to her honour.

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 passage 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-class 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 God 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.