Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/46

Rh 32 the Baltic. Its foundation coincided with the beginning of the general advance of the Low German tribes of Flanders, FriesLind, and Westphalia along the southern shores of the great inland sea, the second great emigration of the colonizing Saxon element. In 1140 Wagria, in 1142 the country of the Polabes (Ratzeburg and Lauenburg), had been annexed by the Holtssetas (the Transalbingian Saxons). From 11G6 onwards there was a Saxon count at Schwerin. Frisian and Saxon merchants from Soest, Bardewieck, and other localities in Lower Germany, who already navigated the Baltic and had their factory in the distant isle of Goth land, settled in the new town, where Wendish speech and customs never entered. About 1157 Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, forced his vassal, the count of Holstein, to give up Liibeck ; and in 1163 he removed thither the tottering episcopal see of Oldenburg (Stargard), founding at the same time the dioceses of Ratzeburg and Schwerin. He issued the first charter to the citizens, and deliberately constituted them a free Saxon community having its own magistrate, an inestimable advantage over all other towns of his dominions. He invited the traders of the towns and realms of the north to visit his new market free of toll and custom, provided his subjects were promised similar privileges in return. From the very beginning the king of Denmark granted them a settlement for their herring fishery on the coast of Schoonen. Adopting the statutes of Soest in Westphalia as their code, Saxon merchants exclusively ruled the city. In concurrence with the duke s reeve they recognized only one right of judicature within the town, to which nobles as well as artisans had to submit. Under these circumstances the population grew rapidly in wealth and influence by land and sea, so that, when Henry was attainted by the emperor, who had come in person to besiege Ltibeck, Barbarossi, &quot;in consideration of its re venues and its situation on the frontier of the empire,&quot; fixed by charter, dated September 19, 1188, the limits, and en larged the liberties, of the free town. Evil times, however, were in store when the Hohenstaufen dynasty became more and more involved in its Italian projects. In the year 1201 Liibeck was conquered by Waldernar II. of Denmark, who prided himself on the possession of such a city. But in 1223 it regained its liberty, after the king had been taken captive by the count of Schwerin. In 1226 it was incorporated as an independent city of the empire by Fre derick. II., and took an active part with the enemies of the Danish king in the victory of Yornho vd, 1227. The citizens, distinguished by the firmness and wisdom with which they pursued their objects, and fully conscious that they were the pioneers of civilization in the barbarian regions of the north-east, repelled the persistent encroachments of their dynastic neighbours alike in Holstein and in Mecklenburg. On the other hand their town, being the principal emporium of the Baltic by the middle of the 13th century, acted as the firm ally of the Teutonic knights in Livonia. Genera tion after generation of crusaders embarked to found new cities and new sees of Low German speech among alien and pagan races; and thus in the course of a century the commerce of Liibeck had fully supplanted that of West phalia. In close connexion with the Germans at Wisby, the capital of Gothland, and at Riga, where they had a house from 1231, the people of Liibeck with their armed vessels scoured the sea between the Trave and the Neva. They were encouraged by papal bulls in their brave contest for the rights of property in wrecks, and for the protection of shipping against pirates and slave-hunters. Before the close of the century the statutes of Liibeck were adopted by most Baltic towns having a German population, and Wisby raised her protest in vain that the city on the Trave had become the acknowledged court of appeal for nearly all these cities, and even for the German settlement in Russian Novgorod. In course of time more than a hun dred places were embraced in this relation, the last vestiges of which did not disappear until the beginning of the 18th century. Hitherto only independent merchants, individual Westphalian and Saxon citizens, had flocked together at so many out-lying posts. From about 1299 Liibeck presided over a league of cities, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald, and some smaller ones, commonly called the Wendish towns. A Hansa of towns became heir to a Hansa of traders simultaneously on the eastern and the western sea, after Liibeck and her confederates had besn admitted to the same privileges with Cologne, Dortmund, and Soest at Bruges and in the Steelyards of London, Lynn, and Boston. Such progress of civic liberty and federal union held its own, chiefly along the maritime outskirts of the empire, rather against the will of king and emperor. Nevertheless Rudolf of Hapsburg and several of his successors issued new charters to Liibeok. Charles IV., who, like his son after him, deliberately opposed all confederacies of the Franconian and Swabian towns in Upper Germany, surrendered to the municipal government of Liibeck the little that remained of imperial jurisdiction by transferring to them the chief responsibility for preserving the public peace within the surrounding territories. Under these circumstances the citizens, like independent members of the empire, stood valiantly together with their sister towns against encroaching princes, or joined the princes against the lawless freebooters of the nobility. As early as 1241 Liibeck, Hamburg, and Soest had combined to secure their common highways against robber knights. Solemn treaties to enforce the public peace were concluded in 1291 and 1338 with the dukes of Brunswick, Mecklen burg, and Pomerania, and the counts of Holstein. From Liibeck families, the descendants of Low German immigrants with a certain admixture of patrician and even junker blood, arose a number of wise councillors, keen diplomatists, and brave warriors to attend almost incessantly the many diets of the league, to decide squabbles, petty or grave, of its members, to interfere with shrewd consistency when the authorities in Flanders, or king and parliament in England, touched their ancient commercial privileges, to take the command of a fleet against the kings of Norway or Denmark. Though the great federal armament against Waldernar IV., the destroyer of Wisby, was decreed by the city representatives assembled at Cologne in 1367, Liibeck was the leading spirit in the war which ended with the surrender of Copenhagen and the glorious peace concluded at Stralsund on 24th May 1370. Her burgomaster, Brun Warendorp, who commanded in person the combined naval and land forces, died bravely in harness. In 1368 the seal of the city, a double-headed imperial eagle (which in the 14th century took the place of the more ancient ship), was expressly adopted as the common seal of the con federated towns (civitates maritimss), some seventy of which had united to bear the brunt of the strife. By and by, however, towards the end of the 15th century, the power of the Hanseatic League began slowly to decline, owing to the rise of Burgundy in the west, of Poland and Russia in the east, and the emancipation of the Scandinavian kingdom from the fetters of the union of Calmar. Still Liibeck, even when nearly isolated, strove manfully to preserve its predominance in a war with Denmark (1501-12), sup porting Gustavus Vasa in Sweden, lording it over the north of Europe during the years 1534 and 1535 in the person of Jiirgen Wullenwever, the democratic burgomaster, who professed the most advanced principles of the Reformation, and engaging with Sweden in a severe naval war (1563-70). Before the end of the century the old privileges of the London Steelyard were definitely suppressed by Elizabeth. As early as 1425 the regular