The treaty not only provided for considerable concessions in matters of navigation and intercourse, but also conceded to the members of the Cologne confederation, comprising about sixty Hansa cities, the right to occupy and to fortify for a period of fifteen years the four chief castles on Skane—Helsingborg, Malmo, Scanov, and Falsterbo—commanding the sound, the most important maritime highway traversed by the Hanseatic vessels.
But the most extraordinary privilege granted by this treaty was that making the subsequent election of a king for Denmark subject to the approval of the confederation—thus assigning to the burghers a right such as no king or emperor of that time exercised over a foreign state. The confederates, however, wisely declined to avail themselves of this dangerous prerogative, not only for political reasons, but also because of the clever negotiations of the youthful queen Margaret, the daughter and heir of Waldemar, who, by the union of Kalmar in 1397, became invested with the triple crown of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The fact remains, however, that the Hansa for the ensuing century and a half maintained its title as the foremost of maritime and as one of the principal political powers—and that entirely unaided and without the sanction of kaiser or empire.
Let us take a very general survey of this glorious period, concerning which many interesting disclosures have recently been made, and endeavor to obtain, if possible, a glimpse of the activity of these busy cities and of the confederation which they formed.
As to commerce, the first task which the confederation set itself to fulfil was the abolition of that early mediæval condition which inclined to regard the stranger in foreign parts as devoid of rights. The efforts of the confederation in this particular resulted in the acquisition of hundreds of privileges, secured either singly or conjointly by the cities. The contents of the treaties are usually the same: (1) Protection of person and goods; (2) abolition of the law which declared forfeit to the feudal lord such goods as, for instance, might happen to fall from a wagon and thereby touch the ground; (3) the abolition of the strand right, which had secured to the owner of the shore land the jetsam and flotsam of wrecked or stranded vessels; (4) the concession of legal procedure to the debtor; (5) liberation from the duel and other forms of the "divine judgment" in legal procedure; (6) the reduction of duties; (7) permission to sell at retail, as for example, cloth and linen by the ell—a privilege previously accorded only to natives. These are but a few of the privileges secured, the most important of which, however, remains to be mentioned. This was the establishment of branches and bureaus in the most frequented commercial centres abroad. On the other hand, the confederation never had the remotest intention of granting similar privileges to the nations from which these concessions had been secured, such as the English, Flemish, Norwegians, Danes, and Russians. On the contrary. In Cologne, for example, foreign merchants were permitted only three times a year and then for a period of three weeks only. Never, perhaps, in history has a monopoly been so rigidly and relentlessly enforced—a monopoly which not only rested upon the nation at home, but which made bold incursions into the sovereignty of foreign states in order to smother their independent trade, or, as in Norway, utterly to stamp it out.
Of the two great avenues of trade, that indicated by the termini Bruges and Novgorod is first deserving of mention. For centuries it was practically used exclusively by merchants of the Hansa, who, moreover, were forbidden to form copartnerships with foreigners, such as Russians and Englishmen. Novgorod, well guarded against pirates and situated in the navigable Volkhov, was at that time in a sense the capital of the much-divided Russian empire. This city, since the day of its founder, Rurik, had been the centre of Russian trade and enjoyed an almost republican independence. From this point diverged the most frequented highways of trade to the Dnieper and the Volga. From Russia the German merchant exported chiefly fine furs, such as beaver, ermine, and sable, and enormous quantities of wax, which to-day, as formerly, is still obtained in the central wooded parts of the country where apiculture is extensively prosecuted. His imports, on the other hand, consisted of fine products of the loom, articles of wool, linen, and silk; of boots and shoes, usually manufactured at home of Russian leather; and finally, of beer, metal goods, and general merchandise. It is evident, therefore, that the German merchant provided Russia—which country was at that time industrially in a very primitive condition—with all the necessaries required.
Bruges, in Flanders, the western terminus of the before-mentioned highway of commerce, was during the last centuries of the Middle Ages approximately what London is to the world of to-day. It was, beside Venice, the actual world-mart of the Continent, a centre where Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Frenchmen, and High- and Low-Germans—a motley throng—congregated to exchange their goods. Thither the Hanseatic merchant transported wood and other forest products; building stones and iron, the latter being still forged in primitive forest smithies; and copper from the rich mines of Falun, the ore from which was usually sold or mortgaged to the Lubeck merchants. From the Baltic countries he imported grain, and from Scandinavia herring and cod—all natural products, in exchange for which he sent to the respective countries his own manufactured goods. In Bruges he represented the entire northern region, both in the giving and the receiving of merchandise, for only through his instrumentality could the gifts of the East, such as oil, wine, spices, silk, and other articles of luxury, which were usually transported through the Alpine passes and thence down the Rhine to Bruges, be distributed among the northern nations. This applies also to the highly prized textiles of Flanders, which in those days were sometimes sold at fabulous prices.
The other stream of Hanseatic trade terminated at London. The German merchant sent thither chiefly French wines and Venetian silks. It was he who attended to this traffic—not the consumer or the producer. In exchange for these commodities he took English wool—the output being already at that time very extensive—transporting it to the mills of Flanders. Such was at that time the commercial relation of Germany to England. If the latter country to-day, by virtue of its incomparably favorable geographical position, has become the first naval and commercial power, it was in an economic sense at that time absolutely dependent upon Germany, which country, after the loss of its political supremacy, outstripped all other nations in the contest for economic supremacy—excepting perhaps the Arabians and the republics of Northern Italy, who controlled the trade in the Orient and the Mediterranean. Naturally the English merchants were jealous and frequently brought complaints before their kings and parliaments; but the latter, despite occasional contentions, ever and again upheld the foreign invader. The reason is not far to seek: like the kings of the north, they could not dispense with the silver chests of the Hanseatic towns and merchants, who on more than one occasion secured their loans by appropriating the products of the tin mines or the duties on wool, or by taking in pawn crown and jewels.
It is evident, therefore, that the greatest source of wealth to the Hansa was this intermediary traffic. Several other important commercial connections will be touched upon later. Casual mention should here be made, however, to the trade with Scotland, Ireland, Brabant, and France, whose annual markets were regularly attended by the Hansa merchants. While the trade of the cities of the league found such wide extension abroad, however, the traffic with their nearest neighbors, the High-Germans, was very weak. Their domestic trade, indeed, was confined chiefly to the plains of Northern Germany, extending southward to Thuringia and eastward to the Oder and the Vistula, where Cracow constituted the last outpost. The great High-German communities along the Main and the Danube pursued different political and economic interests. Being chiefly manufacturing cities, they formed only temporary unions. Dependent rather upon the south of Europe, they were also differentiated from their northern brethren by their coinage, inasmuch as they accepted gold as their standard, whereas the Low-Germans preferred silver money, especially that of Lubeck. Of course each Hanse town formed the nucleus of the local intercourse; and thither came noblemen and peasant to barter the produce of the fields for the merchandise of the city, and to invest, or probably more frequently to borrow, money. Lubeck and Bruges were in those days the money centres of Northern Europe, and their councillors and commercial magnates were the bankers of kings and princes.
The methods of transportation and intercourse at that time were very different from those of to-day. There was no postal service, no insurance, very sparse circulation of bills, and very little of that agency—or commission—business, which relegates to a third party the transportation and management of goods. Trade was very largely a matter of individual enterprise, demanding in a far greater measure than to-day the personal superintendence of the merchant. Usually the latter himself travelled well-armed across sand and sea to distant lands, trusting in God and upon his strong right arm. As master of a vessel he did not fail to interest his crew in the safety of the ship and cargo by allotting to them part of the profits. Indeed, his journey was far more perilous than it is to-day. Upon the public highway he was subject to the attack of the robber barons, who held him prisoner against heavy ransom; and in the innumerable hiding-places of the rock-bound northern coast his course was followed by the watch-boats of pirates. The occupations of highway robbery and piracy were at that time still regarded among wide circles as excusable. Dozens of feudal castles, the retreats of robber barons, were destroyed by the soldiers of the municipalities, and dozens of freebooting vessels were annihilated, the robbers themselves being executed with axe or sword or thrown overboard. The piracy of that age reached its acme in the notorious "Society of Equal Sharers" or "Brotherhood of Victuallers." This consisted of an incongruous aggregation of noble and plebeian blades, who, despite their excessive brutality, nevertheless possessed some genuine knightly characteristics, the hardihood and bravery of the true mariner, and a boundless love of adventure. Formed during the eighth decade of the fourteenth century for the purpose of assisting the King of Sweden against the martial queen Margaret of Denmark, its immediate object at that time was the supplying of victuals to the beleaguered city of Stockholm—whence its name. When, upon the surrender of the city and the establishment of peace, the immediate object of the society had been fulfilled, the attraction of freebooting proved too strong for these wild companions, whose excesses now assumed an increasingly alarming form. For more than a half century they remained the terror of the northern seas. Almost annually the cities were compelled to send out vessels against them, which, however, were not always so successful as the celebrated Bunte Kuh ("Brindled Cow") of Hamburg, which captured the most dangerous of the piratic captains, Claus Stoertebeker and Godeke Michel, with their followers and their fabulous treasures, and brought them to Hamburg. Tradition has it that for three days the public executioner stood ankle-deep in the blood of the condemned. Nevertheless, the seafaring public did not suspect the presence of a robber behind every bush or cliff. After all, an undisturbed voyage was the rule rather than the exception; sensational occurrences, of course, then, as now, playing an important part in the reports of the time.
To these social disorders must be added elemental dangers of all kinds, such as the tides and shallows of the North Sea—the shallow waters contiguous to the coast being chiefly navigated—dangers against which neither compass nor chronometer was then available. Even buoys and lighthouses were comparatively rare or inadequate at a time when nautical knowledge itself was still extremely defective. It was therefore not astonishing that shipwrecks were of daily occurrence and were of course followed by all the evils of that cruel and barbarous "Strand law" which, despite all papal edicts and voluntary treaties, could not be abrogated, but was actually carried out by the Archbishop of Bremen himself.