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 and an early victory in most of these trading communities. But this victory was the beginning rather than the end of strife, for the social ferment which followed on the religious revolt inevitably produced a division between the richer and poorer classes. It bore little relation to differences on religious questions, though here as elsewhere in the sixteenth century every movement tended to assume a theological garb, and the rich naturally favoured conservative forms of religion, while the poor adopted novel doctrines. Thus risings at Hanover in 1533, at Bremen in 1530-2, and at Brunswick in 1528 were directed partly against the old Church and partly against the aristocratic Town Councils. The chief of these municipal revolutions occurred at Lübeck and Stral-sund, but, although the triumph of the democracy was accompanied by a good deal of iconoclasm, and Wullenwever, the leader of the Lübeck populace, was accused of Anabaptism, the struggle was really social and political, or, according to Sastrow, the burgomaster of Greifswald, between the respectable and the disreputable classes. In both cities the oligarchic character of the Town Council was abolished, and power was transferred to demagogues depending on the support of the artisans; but the importance of these changes consists not so much in their constitutional aspect, though this was of considerable significance, as in the effect they produced upon the external policy of the Hanseatic League.

That famous organisation had lost much of the power it wielded in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Its position was based on a union between the so-called Wendic cities of the Baltic and the towns of Westphalia and the Netherlands, and upon the control which they exercised over the united Scandinavian kingdoms, and thus over the whole trade of the Baltic and the North Sea. The most potent voice in the confederation had hitherto been that of Lübeck, but the development of Bruges and Antwerp under the fostering care of their Burgundian rulers provoked a bitter rivalry between the Flemings and the League; Lübeck insisted upon the exclusion of Dutch trade from the Baltic, and the Dutch naturally resented this limitation of their commerce. At the same time this loosening of the bond between the eastern and western cities weakened the League's hold on the Scandinavian kingdoms; and Christian II, who had married Charles V's sister, conceived the idea of utilising his Burgundian allies for the purpose of breaking the domination of the Baltic cities. The plan was ruined by Christian's vices, which gained him the hatred of all his subjects and enabled the Lübeckers, by timely assistance to Christian's uncle, Frederick, Duke of Holstein, to evict their enemy from the throne of Denmark and Norway; similar aid was rendered to Gustavus Vasa, who in the same year (1523) drove Christian out of Sweden; and thus the union of the three Scandinavian kingdoms which had lasted since the Peace of Kalmar (1397) was permanently broken up.

Christian, however, was not content with his defeat, and with a