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 448 HANSEATIC LEAGUE HANSTEEN The association framed for defence had become a confederation exercising a sovereign power, aiming at monopoly, negotiating treaties, and declaring war or peace. In 1348 it fought and defeated the kings of Sweden and Norway, and Waldemar III. of Denmark. It subsequently deposed Magnus, king of Sweden, and gave his crown to his nephew Albert, duke of Mecklen- burg. Again, in 1428, it declared war on Den- mark and fitted out a fleet of 248 ships, carry- ing 12,000 troops. To such extent did it carry its arrogance that Niederhoff, a burgomaster of Dantzic, himself declared war against Chris- tian I. of Denmark. When citizens of London, jealous of the privileges of the Hanse factory, insulted the employees of that institution, the league declared war against England, and com- pelled Edward IV. to grant yet more extrava- gant concessions. But influences were growing up which destroyed the league as rapidly as it rose. Its own efforts had abolished piracy, and left commerce safe on the ocean. Its own ex- ample, too, had taught states the value of the commerce they had hitherto disregarded. The league, in short, had laid the foun,dation of that commercial policy which has since become the basis of all political relations. Sovereigns, nat- urally jealous of a power whose military force rivalled their own, began by modifying their previous grants, and ended by repealing them. Such was the case with England, which about 1597 withdrew all privileges from the Hansard merchants. The English and Dutch, finding themselves now strong enough to compel the right to trade in the Baltic, entered into it with little care for the interests of the Han- sards. Meantime the league, finding its mo- nopolies slipping away, made desperate efforts to retain them ; and the cost becoming heavy the maritime towns of the Baltic, so soon as direct trade was opened with the Dutch and English, seceded from the association. The discovery of America and of the passage to India via the cape of Good Hope turned the tide of commerce into new channels, and was the finishing blow to the existence of the league. Its last meeting was held in 1630 for the purpose of receiving the secession of the remaining members. Hamburg, Lfibeck, and Bremen, to which was afterward added Frank- fort-on-the-Main, formed a new association under the name of the free Hanse towns. Napoleon in 1810 embodied them as a Han- seatic department of the French empire ; their independence was acknowledged again in the act for the establishment of the Germanic con- federation (1815), and they obtained a joint vote in the federal diet as the free Hanseatic cities. Frankfort was annexed to Prussia in 1866 ; the three other cities joined the North German confederation in the same year. Lil- beck was subsequently added to the German customs union, while Hamburg and Bremen remained free ports. Each of these three cities now constitutes a state of the German empire, and is represented in the diet. See Sartorius, Geschichte des Ursprungs der deutschen llama (3 vols., Gottingen, 1802-'8), continued by Lappenberg (2 vols., Hamburg, 1830); Bar- thold, Geschichte der deutschen Stddte (4 vols., Leipsic, 1850-'52) ; and Falke, Die Han- sa als deutsche See- und Handelsmacht (Ber- lin, 1862). IIAXSE.V, Peter Andreas, a German astronomer, born in Tondern, Schleswig, Dec. 8, 1795, died in Gotha, March 28, 1874. He early excelled in astronomical studies, and in 1825 became director of the Seeberg observatory near Gotha. The new observatory in the suburb Erfurt of that town was built under his direction in 1859. He wrote a number of works on the prob- lems of physical astronomy, including geodesy. His Fundamenta nova Investigationis Orbita vera, quam Luna perlustrat (Gotha, 1838), formed the basis on which he subsequently calculated his celebrated Tables de la lune (Lon- don, 1857), for which the British government awarded him, on account of their practical value to navigators, a prize of 1,000. In ex- planation of the methods of calculation which he had employed in computing the perturba- tions of the moon, given in his tables, he pub- lished Darlegung der theoretischen Berechnun- gen der in den Mondtafeln angewiesenen Sto- rungen (Leipsic, 1862-'4). Other works of importance are : Berechnung der abwluten Sto- rungen der Planeten (Leipsic, 185 6-' 9) ; Geo- datuche Untersuchungen (1865-'8) ; Tafeln der Egeria (1868) ; and Die Ueimten Quadrate in ihrer Anwendung auf die Geodasie (1868). HANSON, a S. E. county of Dakota, recent- ly formed, and not included in the census of 1870 ; area, 432 sq. m. It is intersected by the Dakota or James river. The surface is some- what diversified, and the soil fertile. HANSSENS, Charles Lonis, a Belgian composer, born in Ghent in 1802, died April 12, 1871. He was a nephew of the composer Charles Louis Joseph Hanssens (1777-1852), and be- came connected with various theatres, and in 1855 professor at the Brussels conservatory of music. His best known opera, Le siege de Ca- lais, was performed in Brussels in 1861, and he produced many ballets and other pieces. HANSTEEN, Christopher, a Norwegian astrono- mer, born in Christiania, Sept. 26, 1784, died there in April, 1873. He studied at the uni- versity of Copenhagen, and in 1815 was ap- pointed professor of astronomy and mathema- tics at Christiania. His Magnetismus der Erde (1819) recapitulated all the authentic facts on terrestrial magnetism, from the earliest times; and in his charts of the lines of equal dip, pub- lished soon after, he showed that there is but one true magnetic pole in each hemisphere. The results of his investigations of the effects of time and temperature in altering the mag- netism of needles are published in his De Mu- tationibus Virgos Magneticas (1842). He made numerous observations in the north of Europe, and between 1828 and 1830 travelled in Siberia for the purpose of examining the region of con-