The Hansa Towns

by Helen Zimmern

V.

THE LEAGUE IN THE NETHERLANDS.

The successive losses of factories and Hanseatic liberties in the kingdoms of the North and East, were of themselves a fatal shock to the prosperity of the League. It must be remembered that the great privileges attained by the League in times past in England, the Netherlands, France, and Spain, were all based on the monopoly acquired by them in trading in the products of Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. This monopoly, as we have seen in the last chapters, had been seriously threatened; factories had been forcibly closed, natives and strangers had competed with the Hanseatics; the League's prerogatives and charters had been trodden under foot and disregarded.

All the efforts made by the Hanseatics at the end of the fifteenth century and in the early years of the sixteenth to expel from the Baltic waters their various competitors, had ended in failure. It obviously followed that, with the loss of this monopoly, the privileges extorted on the strength of it would vanish also; and this was speedily the case, for under what pretence of preference could the League now invoke special favours at the hands of the Eastern nations?

These general causes of failure in the West were destined to be complicated in the case of the Netherlands with the adverse fate which befell the town of Bruges at the end of the second period of our story, and of which we have already spoken. The disaster which deprived the town of its commercial importance also contributed to ruin the Hanseatic factory established in that city. Then the Hanseatics themselves were not wholly blameless, seeing how at Bruges they repeatedly revolted against paying the tax enforced for storage of goods, a tax that was a regular condition in the statutes of the League, and which was exacted in all its foreign settlements; and, besides this, there are also other circumstances to be reckoned with, of a more general character. The closing of the factory of Bruges was one of many signs of the course of events. A new spirit was abroad affecting commerce and progress in all directions, a spirit against which, as we have said, the League resolutely set its face, and which it refused to recognize until it was too late.

After the invasion of the territory of Bruges in 1488 and the ten years' blockade of the harbour of Sluys, by the Emperor Frederick III., to avenge the confinement of his son, the city found her trade almost ruined. Two important branches were lost to her, by the Italians who brought their own silk stuffs to the rival market of Antwerp and by the Flemish cloth-workers who had settled in England and likewise sent their goods thither.

Under these circumstances the Hansa could scarcely hope for the continued prosperity of Bruges. The tumultuous activity that had hitherto reigned in the factory gave place to a death-like silence. The profit that was lost to the town fell chiefly to the lot of Amsterdam and Antwerp, but partly to the fairs held annually in various localities of the Netherlands, which benefited by this abandonment and which came gradually to attract to themselves all the business of the East.

It must not be supposed, however, that the Hanseatic Diet did not observe with dismay the visible and rapid decline of the prosperity of this once flourishing factory; but what could they do to hinder the general desertion of its merchants? Could they, reduced as they were in strength and influence, restore to the city of Bruges its character of general depôt for the West? Could they remove the obstruction of the Zivin, ordered by the emperor, which, by a canal had connected Bruges with the sea? Were they not themselves so weakened that their own members refused to pay the imposed dues, violated all the factory laws, and traded and made common cause with the natives?

In vain did various diets send ambassadors to Bruges to recall to the minds of the faithless traders the laws under which they were constituted and by which they were bound to abide. In vain did the alderman of the factory itself plead with the men living under his charge. The spirit of individualism and insubordination was abroad, and since the League could no longer ensure its old profits to its foreign members, these no longer found it to their own interests to obey its behests, many of which they rightly felt to be antiquated. Add to this, that the failure to pay the appointed taxes made negotiations often impossible for lack of means, and it will be seen how crippled and handicapped was the League in its relations with Bruges.

The Baltic towns, ever the most public-spirited and perhaps also the most commercially enlightened recognizing this state of affairs, had in 1530 combined on a fixed tariff, which they thought should be paid to the factory at Bruges for its maintenance. But the other cities would not listen to this, and the absence of concord, that of late had made itself felt and heard too often in the councils of the League, was manifest again on this occasion. Town after town stated through its deputies that it would not contribute to this general tax unless some special favour were granted to it, unless some special merchandise were allowed to pass free into the Netherland domains; the merchandise named being usually that in which the bulk of the town's trade consisted. If ever an association gave practical exemplification of the homely saying of "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face," the League was doing it at that moment.