[713] As to the process of evolution, see a good summary in Robertson's View of the Progress of Society in Europe (prefixed to his Charles V), Note xvii to Sect. I.
[714] The Spanish Hermandad was originally an organisation of cities set up in similar fashion. E. Armstrong, Introduction to Major Martin Hume's Spain, 1898, p. 12.
[715] Lübeck was founded in 1140 by a count of Holstein, and won its freedom in the common medieval fashion by purchase. Hamburg bought its freedom of its bishop in 1225. Hallam, Middle Ages, 11th ed. iii, 324. Many Dutch, supposed to have been driven from their own land by an inundation, settled on the Baltic coast between Bremen and Dantzic in the twelfth century. Heeren, Essai sur les Croisades, 1808, pp. 266-69, citing Leibnitz and Hoche. Cp. G.H. Schmidt, Zur Agrargeschichte Lübecks, 1887, p. 30 sq.
[716] "The league ... would scarcely have held long together or displayed any real federal unity but for the pressure of external dangers" (Art. "Hanseatic League" in Ency. Brit., 10th ed. xi, 450).
[717] Cp. Ashley, as cited, i, 104-112; Schanz, as cited, i, 331.
[718] Cp. W. von Ochenkowski, Englands wirtschaftliche Entwickelung im Ausgange des Mittelalters, 1879. pp. 177-82, 221-31. Cp. the author's Trade and Tariffs, pt. ii, ch. ii, § 1.
[719] Hallam, Middle Ages, iii, 335. On private war in general see Robertson's View, note 21 to § i.
[720] Ashley, i, 108, 109.
[721] Whereas in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries England and Flanders had freely exchanged trading privileges, in the fifteenth century they begin to withdraw them, treating each other as trading rivals (Schanz, i, 7, 8).
[722] Ashley, i, 110.