The Hansa Towns

by Helen Zimmern

King John assented, but no sooner did he feel himself firmly seated on his throne than he too forgot all his treaty promises, and once more demanded that all Hanseatic commerce with Russia should cease. He defiantly styled himself "Lord of the Baltic," assigning as his claim to this title the fact that to the Swedish crown had passed the heritage of the Hansa, both on the seas and in the Livonian colonies.

An Imperial Diet assembled at Speyer shortly afterwards and discussed these new complications, and professed great anxiety for the welfare of those deluded subjects of the empire, the Hanseatics. It also made sympathetic reference to the fate of Livonia, and made no secret of its embarrassment and annoyance at seeing now the Muscovite, now the Pole, now the Swede in possession of the Baltic.

But the anxiety and the sympathy did not go beyond words. The Hansa was weary; the empire was impotent to aid. It is true that Sweden had offered to restore to the Germans all the portion of Livonia she had taken for herself in return for the costs of war, but even this proposal was allowed to drop. When, by 1579, the Swedes perceived that the empire made no effort to regain its lost possession, they quietly assumed that none would ever be made, and their assumption did not prove erroneous.

Curiously enough, at the diet held at Frankfort, in the autumn of 1570, presided over by the Emperor Maximilian who was ever well inclined to the Hansa, and repeatedly urged them to unity, there was also present the infamous Duke of Alva, the Catholic butcher, who murdered human beings to the glory and honour of God. It was he who urged that by all possible means the exportation of armour and fire-arms should be hindered, lest the Muscovite, in possession of a European army, should one day bring sorrow not only to the Netherlands, but to all Christendom.

The German merchant world was to blame, in the first instance, for the loss of the prosperous colony; and that this was perfectly understood by outsiders is proved by the rough utterance of a Tartar Khan who had been imprisoned together with a Livonian. Spitting into the face of the latter, the barbarian said, "It serves you German dogs quite right that you have lost your province; you first put into the hands of the Muscovite the rod with which he whipped us, now he has turned it against yourselves and whipped you with it."

But the League's troubles were not at an end with the loss of Livonia and their Russian trade. They were to learn by bitter experience, what individuals too have to learn, that mankind cannot resist the temptation to kick the man or nation that is down.

Bitter ingratitude was first to be shown them by their ally, Denmark, in return for all the heavy sacrifices they had made on her behalf. Lübeck was treated with overbearing contempt, while the neutral cities were punished, as perhaps they more justly deserved, for their cowardly policy. Thus Rostock, which had furnished the Swedish admiral with food supplies in 1566, was forbidden to trade thenceforth with Scania; Hamburg, whose ships had been captured engaged in the same unpatriotic business, had to pay a hundred thousand dollars to regain them; and Danzig, too, was fined the same sum by the King of Denmark for a like offence.

But the keenest humiliation was yet in store for Lübeck herself, in King Frederick's behaviour concerning the Island of Bornholm, so long the Hansa queen's special possession. First a Lübeck governor was formally ejected by the Danes, then the inhabitants of the island, encouraged in insubordination by seeing how the authorities at Copenhagen dealt with their masters, refused to pay their dues, finally one of the towns even forcibly ejected some Lübeck traders. It was ominous that King Frederick opposed all mention of Bornholm during the treaties for peace. Suddenly, on the 7th of September, 1575, he informed the city of Lübeck, "that as the fifty years' possession, accorded to them by his grandfather, would have expired on the 19th of the month, he intended to retake possession of the island." On the city's replying that the peace of Hamburg had extended their right of possession which they held for unpaid Danish debts, King Frederick was not ashamed to reply to the council of Lübeck, that they should reasonably consider that this treaty was invalid since his father, who had made it, was not at that time crowned, and neither he nor his councillors had been consulted in the matter. Frederick did not for a moment consider that the Hansa had in all respects acknowledged the "uncrowned king," and had helped him into his kingdom.

Lübeck felt too weak, too exhausted, seriously to resist the king's claims. It sent an embassy to Copenhagen, begging for the extension of the possession, held by them as a pledge, for another forty, thirty, twenty, fifteen, eight, seven, six, five, or at least one year. Thus low had the Queen of the Hansa sunk, thus was she broken, that she could beg so abjectly. She begged in vain. King Frederick was deaf to entreaties; he saw his rival's weakness, and he profited by it. Had they not had enough return for helping Frederick I. to power by holding the island fifty years? Lübeck was forced to yield; the only concession that was made to her was, that Frederick graciously permitted her to convey one hundred tuns of Rhenish wine free of duty through the Sound for the space of ten years, to supply the town cellar of the capital. In the summer of 1576 Bornholm was formally delivered over to the Danes, and the Hansa lost yet another source of wealth.

For a while the League still strove to carry on some trade with Russia, at first by Reval, then by Narwa, but in 1587 the latter town was finally taken by the Swedes. By good fortune Lübeck and its friends found in the Czar, Feodor Ivanowitch, a prince inclined to deal favourably with them. Indeed, so well disposed was he, that in the year 1586 he reduced the existing custom dues by half in their favour, and placed at their entire disposal once more the factories Novgorod and Plestrow. But in recovering the possession of their establishments, the Hansa were far from recovering their monopoly, which time and events had undermined for ever. Annoyances without end awaited them from the Swedes and the Poles, whose territories they had to cross to arrive at their settlements. They were made to pay heavy transit tolls; their goods were subjected to annoying, and often disastrous delays; their ships were often captured and ransacked by Swedish and Polish pirates, who were well aware that their devastations were regarded with no evil eye by the home authorities.