1831. ] . The Hanse Towns. 507 



But a new source of alarm roused the war again. Valdemar despair- 

 ing of the seizure of the Baltic by arms, attempted it by intrigue, and 

 gave his daughter, the famous Margaret, the Semiramis of the North, to 

 Haquin, heir of the crowns of Sweden and Norway. This extraordinary 

 union of power in the hands of an enemy, so active and inveterate as the 

 Danish king, would have exposed the Free States to imminent hazard. 

 The merchants of the league, had already become warriors, they now be- 

 came diplomatists. Their first act was to raise an insurrection in Sweden, 

 which finally deposed its king. Their next was to prevent the elevation 

 of his son to the throne, by giving it to Albert, Duke of Meckienbourg. 

 Their fleet put to sea at the same time, and Valdemar, thus cut off from 

 land and sea, had no resource but to fly for his life. 



Human nature may rejoice in this triumph, for it was the triumph of 

 intelligence, manliness, and a sense of right, over plunder, cruelty, and 

 wrong. But the vigour which man learns when left to the natural 

 workings of his own understanding, was still more conspicuous in the 

 progress of the war. Valdemar had fled to the Emperor, Charles the 

 Fourth, and a succession of haughty decrees were issued against the 

 League. But the merchants persevered, in defiance of the Imperial au- 

 thority. The pope launched his bulls against the League, and excommu- 

 nicated all who bore arms against the will of Charles. Yet, in an age of 

 profound superstition, when the pope was supreme monarch of Europe, 

 and when its kings were proud to hold his stirrup, the bold traders of 

 the Elbe and the Baltic listened with disdain, or answered with open 

 defiance, to the anathemas of a throne which never forgave, and which 

 combined in itself more of the elements of power than any sovereignty 

 ever witnessed by man. 



It was to counteract the imperial and papal hostility that the cele- 

 brated conference of Cologne was summoned, and the Hanseatic League 

 first assumed its complete form. Seventy-seven cities subscribed to the 

 declaration of war against the King of Denmark. The declaration was 

 followed with military promptitude. While their troops and fleets pur- 

 sued Valdemar with open war, their money and influence raised insurrec- 

 tions in his territories and those of his allies. The League, inflamed by vic- 

 tory, at length loftily declared its determination to dismember the Danish 

 kingdom, which still extended largely over the provinces to the south of 

 the Baltic. They sent expeditions against the coasts of Scania and Zea- 

 land, took Copenhagen by storm, and laid it waste, seized on Elsineur, 

 and were thus complete masters of the entrance of the Baltic. But 

 while war thus thundered round the shores of the inland sea, and threw 

 Sweden and Denmark equally into terror, a new fleet swept the Danes 

 from the ocean, ranged the coast of Norway, where Haquin now reigned, 

 landed at all points, and ravaged the whole sea line. Two hundred 

 towns or villages were burned ; and hostilities were pursued until the 

 king, on the point of seeing his capital fall into the hands of those bold 

 and irresistible avengers, renounced his right to the Swedish throne, re- 

 cognized Albert of Meckienbourg as king, and submitted to all the com- 

 mercial claims and privileges of the League. Valdemar fled from Den- 

 mark, and was driven, like a mendicant, to solicit subsistence from the 

 German dukes. The regency of Denmark gave up the fortresses of 

 Scania as an indemnity for the plunder of Wisby, and Valdemar, as a last 

 humiliation, subscribed to this treaty, before he was suffered again to set 

 foot within his kingdom. Emergencies often make men, and among the 



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