1912] on the Effects of the Thirty Years' War. 377 



a promise being held out to creditors who had made loans to agricnl- 

 turists of various classes of repayment of their capital within ten 

 years, and in return the debtors were relieved of three-quarters of the 

 interest due from them since the troubles of tlie War began, while for 

 the payment of the remaining quarter they were to be allowed a ten 

 years' respite. But, like many another decree of the Diet, this decree, 

 which does not seem to have stood on any firm footing, when it was 

 not either anticipated or superseded by the action of particular 

 governments, remained ineffectual. 



Although, then, it may be conceded that the intolerable burden 

 of debt placed upon the land was not wholly due to the War, but 

 began to weigh down the cultivators even before the outbreak of 

 hostilities, yet it was enormously increased by the conflict, which thus 

 crippled, and in many parts of the Empire paralysed, its most im- 

 portant and widespread industry, and with it the vitality of the 

 greater part of its population. 



Let us turn from the country to tlie towns. Here, again, it would 

 be futile not to allow that some of the causes which contributed to 

 the all but general downfall of the commercial prosperity, and hence 

 of the political influence, of the German towns were in operation 

 already before the outbreak of the War. For many a decade it was 

 only by holding together at home against the encroachments of the 

 territorial sovereigns that the fifty-one free towns of the Empii-e had 

 preserved their autonomy behind their ancient walls ; and their 

 prosperity had been sapped at its base ever since the change in the 

 great trade routes of the world had set in in the 15th century, and 

 since in the IGth the nations who followed the Spaniards and Portu- 

 guese as the leaders of Oceanic intercourse — the French, the Dutch, 

 and the English — had begun to distance German maritime trade. The 

 day of the Hanseatic merchants seemed gradually drawing to a close 

 even in what they had come to regard as German waters ; the English 

 merchant adventurers were busy in the ports of both North Sea and 

 Baltic, and the surviving representatives of the Great League were 

 subjected to Danish dues in a land which that League had once re- 

 garded as subject to its irresistible control. The Thirty Years' War, 

 however, put an absolute end to the corporate activity of the Han- 

 seatic League, and this, not only because of foreign competition, 

 but, primarily, because the pressure of the War on the inland towns 

 belonging to the League prevented them from helping to maintain 

 its organization by their contributions. 



When, at the height of the Lnperial ascendancy in the period 

 after the Danish War, the ambition of the House of Habsburg, urged 

 on by the brooding genius of AVallenstein, sought to win over the 

 decadent League to an alliance which would have placed its mercan- 

 tile and naval resources at the disposal — or, why not say at the mercy 

 — of the Imperial power, the ofifer was declined. In lieu of it, the 

 Emperor was besought to allow the members of the League to con- 



