THE HISTORY OF COMMERCE. 175 
attacks of sword-law and of want, rendered commercial travelling 
unsafe and exposed. Traffic yet wanted the security of later times and 
these events having occurred, the merchants of a place or country were 
induced to unite for commercial objects, and travel armed and with 
armed attendants, this afterwards contributed principally to the expan- 
sion of commerce; for these combinations brought about the union 
of several cities, and also had the effect of laying the foundation 
of depots and collecting points, held in common, at home and abroad. 
And that which had only been a private affair, afterwards became an 
object of the State, and a means of political importance. 
Lubeck was at length made the principal German trading place ; in 
order to give their commerce more expansion, and by defence more 
security against the constantly occurring attacks on the high roads and 
rivers, on the part of robbers, and on the Northern and Baltic seas on 
the part of the Norman pirates. By contract, most of the great cities 
on the Baltic sea, as well as on the Elbe, Weser, and particularly in 
Northern Germany, and in part also in the Netherlands, to promote the 
common interests of commerce, concluded amongst themselves, in the 
year 1241 with Hamburg and Bremen, an offensive and defensive 
alliance, against the forcible and rapacious interruptions of their 
commerce by land and water, forming the celebrated commercial 
league the German Hanse. Thus united, a considerable land-power 
secured the roads and destroyed several robbers' castles, and its fleet in 
the Northern waters was as powerful as contemporaneously that of the 
Italian cities in the Mediterranean. 
To extend commercial business, the Hanse erected four great 
counting-houses and warehouses as places of trade for their commerce, 
in foreign countries ; — viz., for Netherlands, France, and the rest of 
Southern Europe to connect with the Italian Republics, beginning at 
Bruges in Flanders, extending to Antwerp ; for England at London ; for 
Scandinavia, at Bergen in Norway ; for Russia, Livonia, Poland and 
Prussia, as also to unite with the Black Sea and the East by Kiev ; 
commencing at Novogorod on the Ilinensee, later at Narva, on the Gulf 
of Finland. The number of confederated cities from the mouths of 
the Scheldt to Narowa in Russia amounted at last to 85. In this 
confederation, and united with the three Hanseatic towns Hamburg, 
Bremen, and Lubeck, were Bergen, Wisby, Revel, Riga, Konigsberg, 
Elbing, Dantzig, Thorn, Cracow, Frankfort, Berlin, -Stettin, Cologne, 
Munster, Minden, Bielfield, Osnabruck, Hildesheim, Launeburg, Goslar, 
Brunswick, Quedlinbourg, Halberstadt, Magdeburg and Halle. 
This league was favoured on all sides by Royal and Princely charters 
and privileges, and secured lucrative contracts with several neighbour- 
ing states for free export and import in their countries ; the profit of 
this common traffic gave it firmness and respectability, but especially the 
full division of the trade among themselves. At length almost every 
commercial point in Europe having been drawn within the circle of 
vol. VI. R 
