176 THE HISTORY OF COMMERCE. 
their influence, procured for them treasure and thereby power, to 
command for a century in the North of Europe, and till about the end 
of the sixteenth century to hinder the development of the peculiarly 
active commerce in the countries on the Baltic and Northern seas, against 
the interest of their inhabitants. 
Besides the exchange of the merchandise of the south, coming 
from Italy, the Levant and India, owing to the great activity of the 
Hanse, the products of the North appeared at their principal commercial 
places in abundance ; — viz., corn, flax, hemp, sail-cloth, tar, hides, 
leather and peltry, iron, copper and amber, salt- fish, blubber, tallow, 
soap, and timber from Kussia and the Baltic ; and much wool, 
tin, lead, and leather from England. For a like object, to animate 
and secure commerce against the rapacity of the rude nobility on 
the Rhine and in the Netherlands in the year a.d. 1247, was 
originated the Rhenish league, by the cities of Mentz, Frankfort, 
Aschaffenberg, Oppenheim, Worms, Manheim, Heidelberg, Spire, 
Strasburg, Muhlhausen, Breisach, Basle, Zurich and Freiburg, uniting 
them with the lower Rhine and the cities in its neighbourhood, — 
viz., Bonn, Coin, Wesel, and Aix-la-Chapelle and several Westpha- 
lian towns, which in the fourteenth century, through the Swabian 
league, at whose head stood Ausburg, Ulm, Nuremberg and Ratisbon, 
preserved an advantageous extension. Not only was the commerce 
on the Danube and its commercial connection with Constantinople 
advanced, but also the trade of the cities of Southern Germany and 
the Italian Republics received a considerable impulse. It was at this 
time that Nuremberg and Augsburg, the principal places between 
North and South Germany, flourished in an extraordinary degree, and 
by a varied and notable industrial trade in. a thousand different sorts of 
articles, which are even now carried to all the known countries of the 
globe, their opulence was established. 
About this time, also, through these city unions, many industries 
were created— as, for instance, mining in several countries — in the 
Hartz and Ertzgebirge mountains, which already at this period yielded 
profits in silver, tin, and iron. Next the Netherlands and Germany 
distinguished themselves by a number of valuable "manufactures in 
linen, woollens, leather, paper, glass, iron and steel goods, as also 
by a lively interior traffic, which placed its cities in prosperous 
circumstances ; and when Belgium, Flanders, and Brabant reached 
an eminence in the industrial arts, England gave them the pre- 
ference before other countries, and they not only supplied its early, 
flourishing woollen manufactures abundantly with the raw material, 
but thereby an important commerce was created, for London, with 
its trade with the Hanseatic towns, was already in the fourteenth 
century, next to Bruges, a rich and important trading place. 
Whilst commerce and the arts thus steadily flourished in Europe, 
in the East they sensibly declined, in consequence of the long 
