The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries

by James J. Walsh

The Germans then, who in the train of the Emperor went down into Italy saw the working of this League of Lombard cities, talked about it on their return, and were naturally tempted to essay what might be accomplished by the same means on German territory. These two elements, the incentive of the crusades and the stimulus of the example of the [{418}] Italians, must be considered as at the basis of Hansa, though these were only seeds, and it was the nurture and fostering care of the German mind which ever since the days of Tacitus had been noted as the freest in Europe, that gave the League its wonderful development.

It is difficult to tell how many towns belonged to the Hanseatic League during the Thirteenth Century but at the end of this period, Hansa, as it came to be called, was, as we have said, in its most flourishing condition and we know something definite of its numbers a little more than half a century later. In 1367 deputies from all the towns met in the large council chamber of the famous town hall at Cologne to discuss certain injustices that had been committed against the members of the League, or as the document set forth "against the free German merchants," in order to determine some way of preventing further injuries and inflict due punishment. Altogether the deputies of 77 towns were present and declared most solemnly "that because of the wrongs and the injuries done by the King of Denmark to the common German merchant the cities would be his enemies and help one another faithfully." The distant and smaller cities were not expected to send troops or even naval forces but promised to give contributions in money. Such cities as did not take part in this movement were to be considered as having forfeited their membership and would no longer be permitted to trade with the members of Hansa.

Lest it should be thought that the cities were incapable of enforcing any such boycott with effect, the story of the town of Lübeck must be recalled. Lübeck on one occasion refused to join with the other Hansa towns in a boycott of certain places in Flanders which had refused to observe the regulations as to trading. One of these was to the effect that such vessels as were lost on a coast did not become the property of the people of the neighborhood, though they had a right to a due share for salvage, but a fair proportion must be returned to the citizens of the town that suffered the loss. Lübeck was at the moment one of the most powerful commercial cities in Germany, and her citizens seemed to think that they could violate the Hansa regulation with impunity. For 30 years. [{419}] however, the Hansa boycott was maintained and so little trading was done in the city that according to one old writer "the people starved, the markets were deserted, grass grew in the street and the inhabitants left in large numbers." Such a lesson as this was enough to make the Hanseatic decrees be observed with scrupulous care and shows the perfection of the organization.

The outcome of the war with Denmark demonstrates the power of the league. The King of Denmark is said to have scorned their declaration of war, and making an untranslatable pun on the word "Hansa" called the members of the League "geese who cackled much but need not be feared." The fleet of the League, however, succeeded in shutting off all the commerce of the coast of Denmark and though there was a truce each winter the war was renewed vigorously, and with summer many of the Danish cities were ransacked and plundered. At the end of the second year Denmark was exhausted and the people so weary of war that they pleaded for peace, and Valdemar had to accept the terms which the "geese" were willing to offer him. This triumph of the common people over a reigning monarch is one of the most striking passages in medieval history. It comes about a half century after the close of the Thirteenth, and is evidently the direct result of the great practical forces that were set in movement during that wonderful period, when the mighty heart of humanity was everywhere bestirring men to deeds of high purpose and far-reaching significance.

As a matter of fact, Hansa became, very early in its career, one of the firmest authorities in the midst of these troubled times and meted out unfailingly the sternest justice against those who infringed its rights if they were outsiders, or broke the rules of the League if they were its members. It was ever ready to send its ships against offenders and while it soon came to be feared, this fear was mingled with respect, and its regulations were seldom infringed. It is a most interesting reflection, that as its English Historian says, "never once in the whole course of its history did it draw the sword aggressively or against its own members." While it was ever on the look-out to increase its power by adding new cities to the League, cities were not forced to join and when it meted [{420}] out punishments to its members this was not by the levying of war but by fines, the refusal to pay these being followed by the "declaration of boycott," which soon brought the offender to terms. War was only declared in all cases as a last resort, and the ships of the League were constantly spoken of and designated in all documents as "peace ships," and even the forts which the League built for the protection of its towns, or as places where its members might be sure of protection, were described as "Peace Burgs."

Unfortunately, the lessons of peace that were thus taught by commerce were not to bear fruit abundantly for many centuries after the Thirteenth. It is practically only in our own time that they have been renewed, and the last generation or two, has rather plumed itself over the fact that trade was doing so much to prevent war. Evidently this is no guarantee of the perpetuation of such an improvement in national or international morals, for the influence of Hansa for peace came to be lost entirely, after a few centuries. The cities themselves, however, that belonged to the League gradually became more and more free, and more independent of their rulers. It was thus, in fact, that the free cities of Germany had their origin, and in them much more of modern liberty was born than has ever been appreciated, except by those whose studies have brought them close to these marvelous medieval manifestations of the old spirit of Teutonic freedom.

The names of most of the cities that were members of the Hansa League are well known, though it is not easy to understand in the decrepitude that has come over many of them, how they could have been of so much importance as has been claimed for them in the Middle Ages. All the cities of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea were united together, and while we think of these as German, many of them really belonged to Slav people at this time, so that the membership of a number of Russian cities is not surprising. While the Rhenish cities were important factors in the League, Cologne indeed being one of the most important, Bremen and Hamburg and both the Frankforts, and Rostock, and Lübeck and Stralsund, and Tangermünde and Warnemunde, were important members. Novgorod was founded by Hansa for the purpose of trading [{421}] with the Orientals, and the Volga, the Dnieper, the Dwina, and the Oder were extensively used for the purpose of transporting goods here and there in central Europe. One of their most famous towns, Winetha in German, Julin in Danish, disappeared beneath the waters of the Baltic Sea and gave rise to many legends of its reappearance. It is hard to realize that it was so important that it was called the Venice of the North, and was seriously compared with its great southern rival.

A good idea of the intimate relations of the Hansa towns to England and the English people can be obtained from the article on the subject written by Richard Lodge for the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. A single paragraph of this compresses much of the external and internal history of the "Rise and Development of Hansa." It was rather to be expected that the commercial relations between England and the various cities situated along the North Sea, as well as the Baltic and up the Rhine, would be active and would have to be submitted to careful regulation. Unless the modern mind is actually brought directly in touch, however, with the complex yet very practical state of affairs, which actually existed, it will utterly fail to appreciate how thoroughly progressive and enterprising were these medieval peoples. Enterprise and practicalness we are apt to think of as the exclusive possession of much more modern generations. Least of all would we be apt to consider them as likely to be found in the Thirteenth Century, yet here they are, and the commercial arrangements which were made are as absolute premonitions of our modern thought as were the literature and architecture, the painting, even the teachings of science at the same period.

"The members of this League (Hanseatic) came to England mostly from Cologne, the first German town which obtained great importance both at home and abroad. Its citizens possessed at an early date a guild-hall of their own (in London), and all Germans who wished to trade with England had to join their guild. This soon included merchants from Dortmund, Soest and Munster, in Westphalia; from Utrecht, Stavern and Groningen, in the Netherlands, and from Bremen and Hamburg on the North Sea. But, when at the beginning of the Thirteenth Century, the rapidly rising town of Lübeck [{422}] wished to be admitted into the guild, every effort was made to keep her out. The intervention of Frederick II. was powerless to overcome the dread felt by Cologne towards a possible rival to its supremacy. But this obstacle to the extension of the League was soon overcome. In 1260 a charter of Henry III. assured protection to all German merchants. A few years later Hamburg and Lübeck also were allowed to form their own guilds. The Hansa of Cologne, which had long been the only guild, now sinks to the position of a branch Hansa, and has to endure others with equal privileges. Over all the branch Hansas rises the "Hansa Alamanniae," first mentioned in 1282.

This article gives additional information with regard to the many and varied influences at work at the end of the Thirteenth Century. It furnishes in brief, moreover, an excellent picture of the activity of mind and power of organization so frequently displayed during this period in every branch of life. This is after all the highest quality of man. The development of associations of various kinds, especially such as are helpfully purposive, are the outcome of that social quality in man's mind which is the surest index of his rational quality. Succeeding centuries lost for some almost unaccountable reason much of this faculty of organization and the result was a lamentable retrogression from the advances made by older generations, so that it was only in quite recent years that anything like this old international comity was reestablished.