Hansa

“ Then turning quickly to Olaf, she said: "And here is my own pet reindeer 'Friska' for you."
So the children, in the gladness of their hearts, kissed the little maid, and Olaf whispered, "Forgive me that slap, dear Hansa!"
Father Peder stood thoughtfully quiet a moment, then, turning to the children, he said:
"See, little ones! I gave my last mark for Hansa, and knew not where I should find bread for you all afterward; but the dear child has brought only good to us since. I am getting old, and my arms grow too weak to swing the heavy ax, and I thought, often, soon must my little ones go hungry. ”

“ Then Hansa, clinging closely to Niels the while, told him all that had befallen her, and of the pleasant home she had found, and added, boldly;
"Father, let me take these kind friends some gifts; we have so much, and I wish to make them happy."
"Take what you want, child," said Haakon. "And see! here is a bag of silver marks; give it to Peder Olsen, and say that each year I will fill it anew for him, so that he shall never more want." Then, turning to Niels, he added: "Go you, too, with Hansa. Surely those kind people will give you a home as well. ”

“ Ah! those were lonely days for Niels and little Hansa. The Lapp women were kind, taking good care of the little ones in Haakon's absence, and would have coaxed them away to their tents to play with the other children; but Niels remembered his gentle-voiced mother, and would not go with those women who spoke so harshly, though their words were kind. Hansa and he were happy alone together. Each season brought its own joys to their simple, childish hearts ”

“ They flooded the German market with English cloths, and when the Hansa resisted, Elizabeth expelled the members of the League from England. In 1601 an Englishman could say of the Hansa towns: “Most of their teeth have fallen out, the rest sit but loosely in their head.” Of the great League soon only three towns remained as Hanseatic members, Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg. ”

“ But Haakon said, gruffly: "No, Niels may not go; he must stay at home to guard the tent."
"Never mind, Hansa," whispered Niels; "I shall not be lonely, and you will have so many things to tell me and to show me when you come home, for father will surely buy us something at the fair; and perhaps," he added, bravely, seeing that Hansa still lingered at his side, "perhaps father will love you if you go gladly with him." ”

“ The war which culminated with the peace of Spralsunde in 1370 raised the League to the rank of a first-class sea Power. Encouraged by its success in crushing and humiliating Denmark, the Hansa had little hesitation in measuring itself against England. The towns became associated through the Victualling Brothers with an active form of corsair warfare on English shipping.
By its triumph over the Danes, the Hansa secured a practical monopoly of the shipping and trade of the Baltic and North Sea, which it held almost unimpaired for nearly two hundred years. ”

“ In 1869 the Germania was again despatched under his command from Bremerhaven, in company with the Hansa, a sailing vessel. Lieutenant Payer and other Austrian savants accompanied Captain Koldewey. The attack was again made along the eastern shores of Greenland. As far as the 74th degree the two vessels kept company; but at this stage it happened unfortunately that a signal from the Germania was misinterpreted,162 and the Hansa left her. Soon after, the Hansa was crushed by masses of drifting ice, and her crew and passengers took refuge on an immense ice-floe seven miles in circumference. ”

“ The history of the Hansa towns exhibits the citizens doing everything to dissemble the feelings of disaffection that inevitably came to them as the result of their appreciation of the fact, that they could rule themselves so much better than they were being ruled, and that they could accomplish so much more for themselves by their commercial combination with other cities than had ever been done for them by these hereditary princes, who claimed so much yet gave so little in their turn. ”

“ The dark rock coast of East Greenland was visible for the first time from Cape Broer Ruys to Cape James.
By sailing, towing, and warping, the Hansa made slow progress through the ice. The captain and two officers and two sailors made an attempt to land on August 24, but were obliged to return to the ship without having accomplished their mission. On the 25th of August the Hansa reached within thirty-five nautical miles of Sabine Island. The ship was continually subjected to dangerous ice pressure, and often forced southward by the drifting ice-fields. ”

“ Niels was a wonderful boy, the neighbors said, and little Hansa, by the time she was twelve years old, could spin and weave, and embroider on tanned reindeer-skins (which are used for boots and harness) better than many a Lapp woman. Besides, she was so clever and good that every one loved her. Every one, alas! but Haakon, her father. He was not openly cruel; with Gunilda's death the blows had ceased, but Hansa seemed to look at him with her mother's gentle, reproachful eyes, and so he dreaded and disliked her.
One summer's day he said, suddenly: "Hansa, to-day the great fair in Lyngen is held ”

“ The assertion of Hanseatic influence in the two decades, 1356 to 1377, marks the zenith of the League’s power and the completion of the long process of unification. Under the pressure of commercial and political necessity, authority was definitely transferred from the Hansas of merchants abroad to the Hansa of towns at home, and the sense of unity had become such that in 1380 a Lübeck official could declare that “whatever touches one town touches all.” ”

“ In fact the nature of the League, the relations of the cities to one another, geographical as well as political, hindered the Hansa from ever becoming a territorial power like Switzerland{495} and the United Provinces. In the history of the Baltic lands it takes for some ages a position at least equal to that of any kingdom. But it is only casually and occasionally that its triumphs can be marked on the map. ”

“ Hansa must have been a great enlightener for the Teutonic peoples. The History of the league shows over and over again their political rulers rather interfering with than fostering their commercial prosperity. These rulers were always more than a little jealous of the wealth which the citizens of these growing towns in their realm were able to accumulate, and they showed it on more than one occasion. ”

“ Let us go by ourselves and play,"—and away they ran.
"Come," said Olga to Hansa; "though they have run away, they will not be happy without us,"—which wise remark showed that she knew boys pretty well; and the two little maids went hand in hand, and sat down beside the boys.
"We have no room for two girls here," said Olaf, and he gave poor Hansa a very rough push.
"What can you do to make us like you?" said Erik.
"I can tell stories," said Hansa. "Listen!"
And she told them a wonderful tale, far better than grandmother's Sunday best one. ”

“ He was not dwelling on the personal advantages likely to accrue to him from this great victory, nor even on its military aspect; he was thinking that now at last he could secure his Baltic ports and gain for Russia that enormous trade once in the hands of, and so jealously guarded by, the Hansa League. The Russians, long treated as barbarians by the industrious and crafty Germans, had sold their goods to the great Hansa station at Novgorod always at a great loss, despite their persistent efforts to cheat, or bartered them for the English and Flemish cloths which could have been made in Russia. ”

“ They were forced to hold together, in order to protect themselves against their former protectors. They fortified their cities, formed corporations, watched over law and morality, and founded those powerful leagues, the first of which, the Hansa, dates from 1241. ”

“ See Kohlrausch for the theory that contact in foreign cities is the probable cause of the policy of union (History of Germany, Eng. tr., p. 260; cp. Ashley, Introd. to Economic History, i, 104, 110) . As to the origin of the word, see Stubbs, i, 447, note. The hans or hansa first appears historically in England as a name apparently identical with gild; and, starting with a hansa or hanse-house of their own, English cities in some cases are found trading through subordinate hansas in other cities, not only of Normandy but of England itself. ”

“ Niels liked to bind the sheaves, and did his work so deftly that he was always welcome. He it was, too, who made such a wonderful "scarecrow" that not a bird dared venture near. But little Hansa laughed and said: "Silly birds! the old hat cannot harm you. See! I will bring my flowers close beside it." Then the reapers, laughing, called the ugly scarecrow "Hansa's guardian."
"HANSA'S GUARDIAN."
So the years went by, and the children lived their quiet life, happy with each other. ”

“ I have only acted historically, for I said to myself on my accession, that the tasks which the Hansa attempted to solve by itself, and which it could not solve because the strong Empire was not at its back, and the defensive and executive power of the Empire did not exist, must unquestionably at once fall on the shoulders of the newly-arisen German Empire ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Hansa was now better off than it had been for many years, but the improvement was destined to be fleeting. The Merchant Adventurers did not accept the reversal of their good fortune without a struggle. They accumulated evidence of the malpractices of their enemies and clamoured their discontent with a vigour and pertinacity which showed that the Easterlings would never again enjoy an unchallenged supremacy in the North Sea trade. ”

“ Already at the close of the thirteenth century the young institution of the Hansa received its initiation in warfare in a conflict with the kingdom of Norway, which country was compelled to purchase peace at the price of new and greater concessions to the league. ”

“ In the 15th century the League, with increasing difficulty, held a defensive position against the competition of strong rivals and new trade-routes. In England the inevitable conflict of interests between the new mercantile power, growing conscious of its national strength, and the old, standing insistant on the letter of its privileges, was postponed by the factional discord out of which the Hansa in 1474 dexterously snatched a renewal of its rights. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Such was the commercial league of ‘the Hansa’, formed first of all by a few principal ports, Lübeck, Danzig, Bremen, and Hamburg, lying on the Baltic or North Sea, but afterwards increased to a union of eighty or more towns as the value of mutual support and obligations was realized.
Law in the Middle Ages was personal rather than territorial—that is to say, a man when he travelled abroad would not be judged or protected by the law of the country to which he went, but would carry his own law with him. ”

“ But long oppression had made the people timid, and their support was largely passive, and could not, without energetic leaders, be made to as [485] sert itself. The upper estates were yet too powerful. Christian had, by his devotion to Luther's teachings, also added the clergy to the number of his enemies, and by his championship of Dutch and native commerce he had incensed the Hansa. His uncle, Duke Frederick, of Holstein, took advantage of his many blunders, made alluring promises to the nobility, allied himself with the Hansa and began a war against his nephew. ”

“ Many portions of the Empire are even to-day not so thickly inhabited as they were before the war. Industry and commerce had migrated to England, France, and Holland; and Leipzig and Frankfort were the only German towns that had retained any trade worthy of mention. The Hansa, with its fleets of warships and merchantmen, was but a memory of [Pg 28] the past. Königsberg had no longer a ship of its own; the trade of Dantzig and Stettin was almost entirely carried in foreign bottoms ”

“ The war with the Hanseatic cities had come to an end long before, by the peace of Kalmar, (1285) . The formidable weapon which they wielded, in their ability to cut off supplies, gave them so great an advantage that King Erik had no choice but to accept their terms. King Magnus of Sweden, who, according to mutual agreement, had been selected as umpire negotiated peace, on the conditions that King Erik should return to their owners all ships which had been captured, pay an indemnity of six thousand marks and greatly extend the commercial privileges of the Hansa. ”