506 The Hanse Towns. [MAY, 



The cause was finally victorious ; but the land was a wilderness once 

 more. It must be filled. Colonies of civilized Germans were marched 

 into the fields which had been tenanted by the fallen tribes ; walls and 

 towns were built ; ships and harbours followed j and those settlements 

 in the desart soon rose into the rank of members of the great commer- 

 cial league. 



At Cologne, in 1364, was held the first general assembly of deputies. 

 This assembly gives an extraordinary idea of the extent and power to 

 which the association had arrived in an age antecedent to nearly all the 

 chief discoveries of European science, to all regular polity, and all gene- 

 ral knowledge. It represented the principal cities of the immense shore 

 spreading from the Scheld to Livonia. The cities of the interior eagerly 

 solicited leave to send deputies, and the assembly laid down the laws 

 of commercial empire. It is on this occasion that we find the phrase 

 Hanse Towns first applied to the league. In the Low Dutch, hanse 

 signifies a corporation ; and the word itself is presumed to be a corrup- 

 tion of hands the natural and common emblem of united strength or 

 fidelity. It had been used before by Hamburgh and Lubeck, in the 

 charter granted to their factory in London, by Henry II., in 1 267. But 

 it was now* applied to the whole association, and henceforth superseded 

 every minor title. 



The assembly had been summoned by the necessity of providing for 

 war against Denmark, once the head of the piratical states, and now 

 evidently extending its ambition to the overthrow of the Hanseatic pri- 

 vileges, and, as the natural consequence, to the seizure of northern sove- 

 reignty. All history is but a repetition of the same men and things ; 

 and Valdemar the Third, the King of Denmark, might have been a 

 prototype of Napoleon, in his love of conquest, his successes, and his 

 double flight from the throne. Valdemar had found Denmark fallen 

 from its ancient supremacy, and he determined to raise it to a supremacy 

 still higher than it had ever attained. But in a realm intersected every- 

 where by great waters, he could do nothing without a fleet ; he created 

 one. Wisby, a city in the Isle of Gothland, had grown to singular 

 opulence by being the depot of the chief trade between the Hanse Towns 

 and the North. It had acquired a still more honourable distinction by 

 being the cradle of that code of maritime law on which the chief codes of 

 commercial Europe have since been constructed, and which has earned 

 the praise of all the great civilians. But the pirate king saw nothing in this 

 celebrated spot but its wealth and its weakness. He made a sudden de- 

 scent on the coast, under pretext of assisting the Swedish king, whose 

 yoke the citizens had thrown off. The place was stormed, the people 

 were mercilessly slaughtered, and Valdemar carried off a booty which, 

 in those days, was equivalent to the possession of a kingdom. But a 

 formidable reverse soon followed. In the destruction of the city, every 

 commercial establishment of the North felt a wound; their goods had 

 been carried away, their merchants and agents slain, and their privileges 

 insulted and annulled. The whole Hanseatic alliance instantly prepared 

 for war. Holstein, Bremen, Lubeck, Hamburgh, the Prussian ports, the 

 whole trading republic, strained every effort for retribution. They sailed 

 for Gothland with a large fleet, and swept every thing before them. 

 Gothland was taken, Wisby was freed from the presence of the pirates, 

 the Danish fleet was beaten in sight of its own capital, and Valdemar was 

 driven to demand a truce. 



