Thus did the Hansa flourish until the close of the Middle Ages. With the discovery of America and of the passage to India trade was diverted into new channels; it became transoceanic and, not without some culpability on the part of the Hanses themselves, fell into the hands of the now more favorably situated countries of Western Europe—Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, and, finally, England. Equally detrimental to the Hansa was the political transformation wrought at this time, especially as regards the rapidly growing power of the princes, who, with all the influence at their command, sought to abrogate all special privileges and to foster a levelling process in order that they alone might be exalted. One city after another sank into utter dependence upon the sovereign rulers of the respective provinces, who, in their turn, began to take an interest in economic affairs, thus contributing to widen the breach between these respective cities and the league. It was under these circumstances that Gustavus Vasa declared of the Hansa that "Its teeth were falling out, like those of an old woman." The Hollanders, especially, had long been converted from allies into formidable rivals. The most important and decisive factor of this decadence, however, was the victorious opposition to the Hanseatic monopoly now brought to bear by the hitherto commercially oppressed nations, England and Russia, who simply closed the doors of the bureaus and abrogated the privileges of the German merchants of the league. The condition of the Hansa was akin to that of a healthy, vigorous tree, set in poor soil and deriving its sustenance from the weakness of the home rulers and the primitive or defective economic conditions of foreign countries. As soon as these negative mediæval conditions were swept away by the storms of the Reformation the tree gradually but surely fell into decay. With this later stage there is associated the historic tragedy of Jürgen Wullenwever, that genial and daring democratic innovator, who, in an endeavor to conquer Denmark in order to restore the prestige of the Hansa, was betrayed by his patrician fellow-burghers and hanged.
The Hansa, though in a stage of increasing decrepitude, now lingered on until the final crash came in 1630, when all the members dissolved their allegiance to the league. Only the three Hanse towns of Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck renewed the compact, which, however, to-day is purely nominal. The Hansa had fulfilled its great historic mission. It had impressed the stamp of German culture upon the North; given German commerce the supremacy over that of all other nations; protected the northern and eastern boundaries of the empire at a time when the imperial power was impotent and the State disrupted; and maintained and extended the prestige of the German flag in the northern seas. Said a great German writer: "When all on land was steeped in particularism, the Hansa, our people upon the sea, alone remained faithful to the German spirit and to German tradition."
MAMELUKES USURP POWER IN EGYPT
A.D. 1250
SIR WILLIAM MUIR
From A.D. 969 to 1171 the Arabian dynasty of caliphs called Fatimites—because they professed to trace their descent from Fatima, the daughter of Mahomet—reigned in Egypt. Their downfall was due to their own decline into imbecility, through which they fell into the hands of Turkish viziers who, keeping their nominal masters in subserviency, themselves assumed the actual rule.
For several generations the caliphs of Bagdad, under whose sway the Fatimites were now reduced, had attracted to their capital slaves from Turcoman and Mongol hordes. These slaves they used both as bodyguards and as contingents to offset the dominating influence of the Arab soldiery in their affairs. In the end the slaves superseded the Arab soldiers altogether, and from bondmen became masters of the court. They stirred up riots and rebellion and hastened the fall of the effete caliphate.
Under the Eyyubite dynasty in Egypt, which Saladin founded about 1174, the same practice was followed with the same results. The Eyyubites were strangers in Egypt, and welcomed the support of foreign myrmidons. Slave dealers bought children of conquered tribes in Central Asia, promising them great fortunes in the West. These children, together with prisoners of war from the eastern hordes, streamed into Egypt, where they were again bought by the rulers, who thus unwittingly prepared the way for their own destruction. The military body created by Saladin, called mamelukes ("slaves;" literally "the possessed"), obtained ascendency in the manner here related by Muir.
The thousands who, with uncomely names and barbarous titles, began to crowd the streets of Cairo, occupied a position to which we have no parallel elsewhere. Finding a weak and subservient population, they lorded it over them. Like the children of Israel, they ever kept themselves distinct from the people of the land—but the oppressors, not, like them, the oppressed. Brought up to arms, the best favored and most able of the mamelukes when freed became, at the instance of the Sultan, emirs of ten, of fifty, of a hundred, and often, by rapid leaps, of a thousand. They continued to multiply by the purchase of fresh slaves who, like their masters, could rise to liberty and fortunes.
The sultans were naturally the largest purchasers, as they employed the revenues of the state in surrounding themselves with a host of slaves; we read, for example, of one who bought some six thousand. While the great mass pursued a low and servile life, the favorites of the emirs, and specially of the crown, were educated in the arts of peace and war, and, as pages and attendants, gradually rose to the position of their masters—the slave of to-day, the commander, and not infrequently the sultan of to-morrow.