The Hansa Towns

by Helen Zimmern

The first great encounter of the armies took place by sea in the month of June. In number and excellence of ships the Hansa had the advantage. The Lübeckers were still the best shipbuilders of the northern world, and many of the Danish and Swedish vessels sent against them were nothing more than herring-boats and fishing smacks roughly put on a war footing. If victory depended on strength and numbers alone, it seemed assured to the Hansa. Unhappily, among the many secret methods employed by the aristocratic party to break the power of the democratic faction, there existed bribery and corruption of the ship captains. The usual Hanseatic concord was absent.

Indeed, herein is to be found in a great measure the explanation of the ill success of the Hansa. When Jürgen Wullenweber dreamed that he would revive the days and glories of Waldemar Atterdag he forgot that the burgomasters of those days when they set out for battle were followed by an army consisting of the burghers themselves, that, for example, in the struggle for Scania in 1368, no less than sixteen hundred citizens gave up their lives to gain a victory for the League. With the increase of wealth had grown up, as is usual, an increase of luxury and idleness. Citizens of rich Hanseatic towns contented themselves with keeping watch in turns at the city gates, with defending their own city walls, with interfering in street brawls and keeping order in the town. But when it came to active fighting, to going abroad to battle, they preferred to hire the mercenaries with which Germany was overrun, thanks to the disturbed state of the land arising out of the continual wars of Charles V. Hence arose the class known as Landsknechte; hence it came about that in those days German often fought against German, and that all true patriotic sentiments were extinguished. The rich Queen of the Hansa, Lübeck, had of course met with no difficulty in finding numbers willing to serve under her flag and to accept her pay, but these men, as is but too natural, did not fight with that enthusiasm and ardour which men display when the cause is their own. Jürgen Wullenweber was of the old Hanseatic type, but the mould that had formed him was broken. His contemporaries were not up to the level of his noble and patriotic ambition. Had he been ably seconded the whole history of Northern Germany might have been transformed.

As we have said, the fleets met in hostile encounter in the month of June. After some heavy fighting the heavens themselves interposed in the strife. A great storm arose, driving the vessels of the foes asunder. Two days later the decisive combat was fought on land. The place of encounter was Assens, on the island of Fünen, a spot where human sacrifices used to be offered to the great Norse god Odin. This battle of Assens ended in the complete discomfiture of the burgher army, and there followed immediately afterwards another meeting by sea, when the Hansa had to suffer the shame of seeing some of its vessels flee before the enemy, while others capitulated in cowardly fashion.

The consequences of these battles made themselves felt instantly. What Wullenweber had said the previous year when he was yet the victor was now realized, "that it was easier to conquer Denmark than to keep it." For not only Fünen, but Zealand and Scania fell off from the burgomaster's party after the defeat at Assens, and did homage to Christian III. as their king and ruler. Only Copenhagen, Malmöe, and a few small towns refused this allegiance, and still offered an armed resistance. But it was not to be of long duration.

Meanwhile the close of Wullenweber's proud career approached. It is characteristic of the whole course of German history, that the fall of Wullenweber, and the ultimate fall of the Hansa, were due not so much to external as to internal enemies. Petty jealousies, "particularism," to use their own phrase, that is to say, practising a church-steeple policy rather than a wide and liberal one, has ever been a danger to Germany. It defeated the efforts of Wullenweber, as it did those of the patriots of 1848, and of many more before and since.

In July the Hanseatic Diet was called together to consider the state of the League's affairs; and on this occasion a number of the cities, and chief among them the inland ones, found a much desired occasion to vent the wrath and envy which they had long nourished against Lübeck and its democratic dictator. A number of attacks, some of them of the most despicably petty character, were made against Wullenweber. The Lübeckers were told that they had permitted "irregular disorders," and that it was they who disturbed the general concord of the common Hansa. Most bitter of all were the charges launched by Cologne, the town that had long been jealous of the power of her northern sister. Forgetful of the whole course of Hanseatic history, she ventured to say that it would seem strange to the emperor and other princely potentates, that a town like Lübeck should meddle with such great matters as the deposition and installation of kings.

To this taunt Lübeck replied with dignity, pointing out that she had no wish either to change the faith of the kings or to murder them (as Cologne had previously suggested), but that according to treaty she had the right to act as she had done, and that she had acted, not for the sake of exhibiting her own power, but because of the natural, intimate, and needful relationship that existed between Denmark and the Baltic towns. Since olden days no king might be elected in Denmark without the knowledge of Lübeck, and on this they had ever acted.

The men of Cologne were not abashed by this reference to history. They replied that it might be so, and that the Lübeckers had the right they would not deny; but they repeated, it made a strange impression upon kings and princes that the men of Lübeck should make and unmake kings.

Alas! how were the mighty fallen! What a degradation of sentiment in the Hansa when the cause of one was no longer the cause of all!

Some days later, in reply to a similar attack, the Lübeckers replied, in the old bold spirit that characterized the Hansa in its best times, "In one thing they had made a mistake, and that was when they helped two such worthless men as the kings of Denmark and Sweden to power, and had further made them great, in return for which they were now ill repaid."