The people, however, showed small regard for the denunciations of a distant pontiff, and, irritated by fresh offences, committed by brothers of the Queen, in which Gertrude herself appears to have participated, they murdered her in her own palace, and her children only escaped by the care and fidelity of their tutor. Their uncles fled from the country, carrying with them a large amount of treasure collected by Andrew, who bitterly complained of their ingratitude in a letter to the holy see.

The King shortly afterward married the daughter of Peter of Courtenay, Count of Auxerre, and made a vow to raise another crusade. The Latin Emperor of Constantinople dying about this time, the choice of a successor lay between the Hungarian King and his new father-in-law. It fell upon Andrew, and he was invited to take possession of the imperial crown, but was dissuaded from accepting the honor by Pope Honorius, who had already crowned Peter emperor of the East. Peter was opposed by Theodore Comnenus, by whom he was arrested and thrown into a dungeon. The Pope appealed for assistance to Andrew, then on his way to the Holy Land. Andrew accordingly proceeded to Acre, which he reached after a long voyage, but his expedition partook more of a pilgrimage than of a crusade. He was absent from Hungary four years, and returned to find the whole kingdom in disorder, the treasury emptied, and greedy prelates and magnates devouring the substance of the people.

To replenish his treasury, Andrew appropriated the gold and jewels left by the empress Constantia, whose death, which took place about this time, prevented her establishing her claim. He further supplied his own extravagance, by farming the taxes to Jews, deteriorating the coin, mortgaging the domains belonging to the fortified castles, and selling the crown lands to wealthy magnates.

His eldest son Bela had already gained the respect and affection of the people by the firmness of his character and his love of justice; and Andrew, jealous of his popularity, obliged him to fly the kingdom and seek protection from Leopold, Duke of Austria. The King was, however, at last persuaded to invite him to return, and, in order to secure his throne, he established him at a distance from himself, in the government of Croatia and Dalmatia. Two years later his younger son Coloman took the place of Bela, who was intrusted with the government of Transylvania and of all the country between the Theiss and Aluta. With a weak monarch and an exhausted treasury, the land had become the prey of barbarous invaders, and the disorders of the kingdom had reached such a climax that the magnates resolved to appeal to the mediation of the Pope.

Honorius commanded Andrew to restore the lands which he had parted with in direct violation of his coronation oath, by which he had sworn to preserve the integrity of the kingdom and the honor of the crown. Bela now assembled the nobles and franklins of Hungary, and, supported by them, demanded the restoration of the ancient constitution. The ecclesiastics of Hungary, instigated by the Pope, offered to mediate a peace between the King, who was supported by the great magnates, and his son, who had the voice of the people. The condition of this peace was the Golden Bull of Hungary, which was granted in the year 1222. It was here enacted that, "As the liberties of the nobility, and of certain other natives of these realms, founded by King Stephen the Saint, have suffered great detriment and curtailment by the violence of sundry kings impelled by their own evil propensities, by the cravings of their insatiable cupidity and by the advice of certain malicious persons, and as the 'nobiles' of the country had preferred frequent petitions for the confirmation of the constitution of these realms; so that, in utter contempt of the royal authority, violent discussions and accusations had arisen, ... the King declares he is now willing to confirm and maintain, for all times to come, the nobility and freemen of the country in all their rights, privileges, and immunities, as provided by the statutes of St. Stephen."

1. "That the 'nobiles' and their possessions shall not, for the future, be subject to taxes and impositions.

2. "That no man shall be either accused or arrested, sentenced or punished for a crime, unless he receive a legal summons, and until a judicial inquiry into his case shall have taken place.

3. "That though the 'nobiles' and franklins shall be bound to do military service at their own expense, it shall not be legal to force them to cross the frontier of their country. In a foreign war, the king shall be bound to pay the knights and the troops of the counties.

4. "The king has no right to entail whole counties and the high offices of the kingdom.

5. "The king is not allowed to farm to Jews and Ishmaelites his domains, the taxes, the coinage, or the salt mines."

The Golden Bull comprised thirty-one chapters, and seven copies were made and delivered into the keeping of the Knights of St. John, the Knights Templars of Hungary and Slavonia, the King, the Palatine, the archbishops of Gran and Colocza, and the Pope. The thirty-first clause gave every Hungarian noble a right of veto upon the acts of the king if unconstitutional. This clause was, however, supposed to give an undue power to the people, and was revoked in 1687.

Those magnates who, by the Golden Bull, were compelled to return the land unjustly alienated by King Andrew, formed a conspiracy to overthrow the monarchy, abolish the constitution, and divide the land among themselves. The conspiracy was discovered in time to prevent its execution, but Andrew lost courage and did not venture to insist on his refractory nobles fulfilling their part in the conditions of the Great Charter. He was, however, compelled to ratify it in a diet held in Beregher Forest, in 1231, where the Golden Bull was signed and sealed with all solemnity in the city of Gran.

Andrew married for a third time in his old age, Beatrice, daughter of the Marquis d'Este, and died in 1234. During his reign the court was first held at a fixed place of residence; it was not only composed of prelates and magnates, but was frequented by learned men, educated at the schools of Paris and Bologna, as well as within the kingdom. The cities acquired importance about this period, and the condition of the serfs underwent some amelioration.



RUSSIA CONQUERED BY THE TARTAR HORDES

ALEXANDER NEVSKI SAVES THE REMNANT OF HIS PEOPLE

A.D. 1224-1262

ALFRED RAMBAUD



Russia was for centuries the chief power of the Slavic race. On its plains and amid the neighboring lands they established a civilization and went through a development not unlike those which transformed Western Europe during the Middle Ages. Slavonia, like Gaul, had received Roman civilization and Christianity from the South. The Northmen had brought her an organization which recalls that of the Germans; and under Yaroslaff, 1016-1054, like the West under Charlemagne, she had enjoyed a certain semblance of unity, while she was afterward dismembered and divided like France in feudal times.

The Tartars seem to have been a tribe of the great Mongol race. They conquered Northern China and Central Asia, and after forty years of struggle were united with other Mongol tribes into one nation by Genghis Khan. His lieutenants subdued a multitude of Turkish peoples, passed the Caspian Sea by its southern shore, invaded Georgia and the Caucasus, and entered upon the southern steppes of Russia, where they came in contact with the Polovtsi, also a Mongol race, the hereditary enemies of the Russians proper.

This summary by the distinguished French academician, M. Rambaud—our leading authority in Russian history with its related studies—presents, with sufficient clearness, the character and tendency of Russia in the thirteenth century, when she was invaded and subjugated by Asiatic hordes.

The Polovtsi asked the Christian princes for help against the Mongols and Turks, who were their brothers by a common origin. "They have taken our country," said they to the descendants of St. Vladimir; "to-morrow they will take yours." Mstislaf the Bold, then Prince of Galitch, persuaded all the dynasties of Southern Russia to take up arms against the Tartars: his nephew Daniel, Prince of Volhynia, Mstislaf Romanovitch, Grand Prince of Kiev, Oleg of Kursk, Mstislaf of Tchernigof, Vladimir of Smolensk, and Vsevolod, for a short time Prince of Novgorod,[57] responded to his appeal.

To cement his alliance with the Russians, Basti, Khan of the Polovtsi, embraced orthodoxy. The Russian army had already arrived on the Lower Dnieper, when the Tartar ambassadors made their appearance. "We have come, by God's command, against our slaves and grooms, the accursed Polovtsi. Be at peace with us; we have no quarrel with you." The Russians, with the promptitude and thoughtlessness that characterized the men of that time, put the ambassadors to death. They then went farther into the steppe, and encountered the Asiatic hordes on the Kalka, a small river running into the Sea of Azov.

The Russian chivalry, on this memorable day, showed the same disordered and the same ill-advised eagerness as the French chivalry at the opening of the English wars. Mstislaf the Bold, Daniel of Galitch, and Oleg of Kursk were the first to rush into the midst of the infidels, without waiting for the princes of Kiev, and even without giving them warning, in order to gain for themselves the honors of victory. In the middle of the combat, the Polovtsi were seized with a panic and fell back on the Russian ranks, thus throwing them into disorder. The rout became general, and the leaders spurred on their steeds in hopes of reaching the Dnieper.

Six princes and seventy of the chief boyars or voievodes remained on the field of battle. It was the Crecy and Poitiers of the Russian chivalry. Hardly a tenth of the army escaped; the Kievians alone left ten thousand dead. The Grand Prince of Kiev, however, Mstislaf Romanovitch, still occupied a fortified camp on the banks of the Kalka. Abandoned by the rest of the army, he tried to defend himself. The Tartars offered to make terms; he might retire on payment of a ransom for himself and his droujina. He capitulated, and the conditions were broken. His guard was massacred, and he and his two sons-in-law were stifled under planks. The Tartars held their festival over the inanimate bodies, 1224.

After this thunderbolt, which struck terror into the whole of Russia, the Tartars paused and returned to the East. Nothing more was heard of them. Thirteen years passed, during which the princes reverted to their perpetual discords. Those in the northeast had given no help to the Russians of the Dnieper; perhaps the grand prince George II of Suzdal[58] may have rejoiced over the humiliation of the Kievians and Galicians. The Mongols were forgotten; the chronicles, however, are filled with fatal presages: in the midst of scarcity, famine and pestilence, of incendiaries in the towns and calamities of all sorts, they remark on the comet of 1224, the earthquake, and eclipse of the sun of 1230.

The Tartars were busy finishing the conquest of China, but presently one of the sons of Genghis, Ugudei, sent his nephew Batu to the West. As the reflux of the Polovtsi had announced the invasion of 1224, that of the Saxin nomads, related to the Khirghiz who took refuge on the lands of the Bulgarians of the Volga, warned men of a new irruption of the Tartars, and indicated its direction. It was no longer South Russia, but Sozdalian Russia, that was threatened. In 1237 Batu conquered the Great City, capital of the half-civilized Bulgars, who were, like the Polovtsi, ancient enemies of Russia, and who were to be included in her ruin. Bolgary was given up to the flames, and her inhabitants were put to the sword. The Tartars next plunged into the deep forests of the Volga, and sent a sorcerer and two officers as envoys to the princes of Riazan. The three princes of Riazan, those of Pronsk, Kolomna, Moscow, and Murom, advanced to meet them.

"If you want peace," said the Tartars, "give us the tenth of your goods."

"When we are dead," replied the Russian princes, "you can have the whole."

Though abandoned by the princes of Tchernigoff and the grand prince George II, of whom they had implored help, the dynasty of Riazan accepted the unequal struggle. They were completely crushed; nearly all their princes remained on the field of battle. Legend has embellished their fall. It is told how Feodor preferred to die rather than see his young wife, Euphrasia, the spoil of Batu; and how, on learning his fate, she threw herself and her son from the window of the terem. Oleg the Handsome, found still alive on the battle-field, repelled the caresses, the attention, and religion of the Khan, and was cut in pieces. Riazan was immediately taken by assault, sacked, and burned. All the towns of the principality suffered the same fate.

It was now the turn of the Grand Prince, for the Russia of the northeast had not even the honor of falling in a great battle like the Russia of the southwest, united for once against the common enemy. The Suzdalian army, commanded by a son of George II, was beaten on the day of Kolomna, on the Oka. The Tartars burned Moscow, then besieged Vladimir, the royal city, which George II had abandoned to seek for help in the North. His two sons were charged with the defence of the capital. Princes and boyars, feeling there was no alternative but death or servitude, prepared to die. The princesses and all the nobles prayed Bishop Metrophanes to give them the tonsure; and when the Tartars rushed into the town by all its gates, the vanquished retired into the cathedral, where they perished, men and women, in a general conflagration. Suzdal, Rostoff, Yaroslavl, fourteen towns, and a multitude of villages in the grand principality were also given over to the flames, 1238. The Tartars then went to seek the Grand Prince, who was encamped on the Sit, almost on the frontier of the possessions of Novgorod.

George II could neither avenge his people nor his family. After the battle, the Bishop of Rostoff found his headless corpse. His nephew, Vassilko, who was taken prisoner, was stabbed for refusing to serve Batu. The immense Tartar army, after having sacked Tver, took Torjok; there "the Russian heads fell beneath the sword of the Tartars as grass beneath the scythe." The territory of Novgorod was invaded; the great republic trembled, but the deep forests and the swollen rivers delayed Batu. The invading flood reached the Cross of Ignatius, about fifty miles from Novgorod, then returned to the southeast. On the way the small town of Kozelsk (near Kaluga) checked the Tartars for so long, and inflicted on them so much loss, that it was called by them the "wicked town." Its population was exterminated, and the prince Vassili, still a child, was "drowned in blood."

The two following years, 1239-1240, were spent by the Tartars in ravaging Southern Russia. They burned Pereiaslaf and Tchernigoff, defended with desperation by its princes. Next Mangu, grandson of Genghis Khan, marched against the famous town of Kiev, whose name resounded through the East and in the books of the Arab writers. From the left bank of the Dnieper, the barbarian admired the great city on the heights of the right bank, towering over the wide river with her white walls and towers adorned by Byzantine artists, and innumerable churches with cupolas of gold and silver. Mangu proposed capitulation to the Kievians; the fate of Riazan, of Tchernigof, of Vladimir, the capitals of powerful states, announced to them the lot that awaited them in case of refusal, yet the Kievians dared to massacre the envoys of the Khan. Michael, their Grand Prince, fled; his rival, Daniel of Galitch, did not care to remain.

On hearing the report of Mangu, Batu came to assault Kiev with the bulk of his army. The grinding of the wooden chariots, the bellowings of the buffaloes, the cries of the camels, the neighing of the horses, the howlings of the Tartars rendered it impossible, says the annalist, to hear your own voice in the town. The Tartars assailed the Polish Gate and knocked down the walls with a battering-ram. The Kievians, supported by the brave Dmitri, a Galician boyar, defended the fallen ramparts till the end of the day, then retreated to the Church of the Dime, which they surrounded by a palisade. The last defenders of Kiev found themselves grouped around the tomb of Yaroslaff. Next day they perished. The Khan gave the boyar his life, but the "Mother of Russian cities" was sacked. The pillage was most terrible. Even the tombs were not respected. All that remains of the Church of the Dime is a few fragments of mosaic in the Museum at Kiev. St. Sophia and the Monastery of the Catacombs were delivered up to be plundered, 1240.

Volhynia and Galicia still remained, but their princes could not defend them, and Russia found herself, with the exception of Novgorod and the northwest country, under the Tartar yoke. The princes had fled or were dead: hundreds of thousands of Russians were dragged into captivity. Men saw the wives of boyars, "who had never known work, who a short time ago had been clothed in rich garments, adorned with jewels and collars of gold, surrounded with slaves, now reduced to be themselves the slaves of barbarians and their wives, turning the wheel of the mill and preparing their coarse food."

If we look for the causes which rendered the defeat of the brave Russian nation so complete, we may, with Karamsin, indicate the following: 1. Though the Tartars were not more advanced, from a military point of view, than the Russians, who had made war in Greece and in the West against the most warlike and civilized people of Europe, yet they had an enormous superiority of numbers. Batu probably had with him five hundred thousand warriors. 2. This immense army moved like one man; it could successively annihilate the droujinas of the princes, or the militia of the towns, which only presented themselves successively to its blows. The Tartars had found Russia divided against herself. 3. Even though Russia had wished to form a confederation, the sudden irruptions of an army entirely composed of horsemen did not leave her time. 4. In the tribes ruled by Batu, every man was a soldier; in Russia the nobles and citizens alone bore arms: the peasants, who formed the bulk of the population, allowed themselves to be stabbed or bound without resistance. 5. It was not by a weak nation that Russia was conquered. The Tartar-Mongols, under Genghis Khan, had filled the East with the glory of their name, and subdued nearly all Asia. They arrived, proud of their exploits, animated by the recollection of a hundred victories, and reinforced by numerous peoples whom they had vanquished, and hurried with them to the West.

When the princes of Galitch, of Volhynia, and of Kiev arrived as fugitives in Poland and Hungary, Europe was terror-stricken. The Pope, whose support had been claimed by the Prince of Galitch, summoned Christendom to arms. Louis IX prepared for a crusade. Frederic II, as emperor, wrote to the sovereigns of the West: "This is the moment to open the eyes of body and soul now that the brave princes on whom we reckoned are dead or in slavery." The Tartars invaded Hungary, gave battle to the Poles in Liegnitz in Silesia, had their progress a long while arrested by the courageous defence of Olmutz in Moravia, by the Tcheque voievode Yaroslaff, and stopped finally, learning that a large army, commanded by the King of Bohemia and the dukes of Austria and Carinthia, was approaching. The news of the death of Oktai, second Emperor of all the Tartars, in China, recalled Batu from the West, and during the long march from Germany his army necessarily diminished in number.

The Tartars were no longer in the vast plains of Asia and Eastern Europe, but in a broken hilly country, bristling with fortresses, defended by a population more dense and a chivalry more numerous than those in Russia.

To sum up, all the fury of the Mongol tempest spent itself on the Slavonic race. It was the Russians who fought at the Kalka, at Kolomna, at the Sit; the Poles and Silesians at Liegnitz; the Bohemians and Moravians at Olmutz. The Germans suffered nothing from the invasion of the Mongols but the fear of it. It exhausted itself principally on those plains of Russia which seem a continuation of the steppes of Asia. Only in Russian history did the invasion produce great results.

Batu built on one of the arms of the Lower Volga a city called Sarai (the Castle), which became the capital of a powerful Tartar empire, the "Golden Horde," extending from the Ural and Caspian to the mouth of the Danube. The Golden Horde was formed not only of Tartar-Mongols or Nogais, who even now survive in the Northern Crimea, but particularly of the remains of ancient nomads, such as the Patzinaks and Polovtsi, whose descendants seem to be the present Kalmucks and Bashkirs; of Turkish tribes tending to become sedentary, like the Tartars of Astrakhan in the present day; and of the Finnish populations already established in the country, and which mixed with the invaders.

Oktai, Kuluk, and Mangu, the first three successors of Genghis Khan, elected by all the Mongol princes, took the title of "great khans," and the Golden Horde recognized their authority; but under his fourth successor, Kublai, who usurped the throne and established himself in China, this bond of vassalage was broken. The Golden Horde became an independent state, 1260. United and powerful under the terrible Batu, who died in 1255, it fell to pieces under his successors; but in the fourteenth century the khan Uzbeck reunited it anew, and gave the Horde a second period of prosperity. The Tartars, who were pagans when they entered Russia, embraced, about 1272, the faith of Islam, and became its most formidable apostles.

Meanwhile Yaroslaff, brother of the grand prince George II, was his successor in Suzdal. Yaroslaff, 1238-1246, found his inheritance in the most deplorable condition. The towns and villages were burned, the country and roads covered with unburied corpses; the survivors hid themselves in the woods. He recalled the fugitives and began to rebuild. Batu, who had completed the devastation of South Russia, summoned Yaroslaff to do him homage at Sarai, on the Volga. Yaroslaff was received there with distinction. Batu confirmed his title of grand prince, but invited him to go in person to the Great Khan, supreme chief of the Mongol nation, who lived on the banks of the river Sakhalian or Amur. To do this was to cross the whole of Russia and Asia. Yaroslaff bent his knees to the new master of the world, Oktai, succeeded in refuting the accusations brought against him by a Russian boyar, and obtained a new confirmation of his title. On his return he died in the desert of exhaustion, and his faithful servants brought his body back to Vladimir. His son Andrew succeeded him in Suzdal, 1246-1252. His other son, Alexander, reigned at Novgorod the Great.

Alexander was as brave as he was intelligent. He was the hero of the North, and yet he forced himself to accept the necessary humiliations of his terrible situation. In his youth we see him fighting with all the enemies of Novgorod, Livonian knights and Tchuds, Swedes and Finns. The Novgorodians found themselves at issue with the Scandinavians on the subject of their possessions on the Neva and the Gulf of Finland. As they had helped the natives to resist the Latin faith, King John obtained the promise of Gregory IX that a crusade, with plenary indulgences, should be preached against the Great Republic and her proteges, the pagans of the Baltic. His son-in-law, Birger, with an army of Scandinavians, Finns, and western crusaders, took the command of the forces, and sent word to the Prince of Novgorod: "Defend yourself if you can; know that I am already in your provinces." The Russians on their side, feeling they were fighting for orthodoxy, opposed the Latin crusade with a Greek one.

Alexander humbled himself in St. Sophia, received the benediction of the archbishop Spiridion, and addressed an energetic harangue to his warriors. He had no time to await reinforcements from Suzdal. He attacked the Swedish camp, which was situated on the Ijora, one of the southern affluents of the Neva, which has given its name to Ingria. Alexander won a brilliant victory, which gained him his surname of Nevski, and the honor of becoming, under Peter the Great, the second conqueror of the Swedes, one of the patrons of St. Petersburg. By the orders of his great successor his bones repose in the monastery of Alexander Nevski.

The battle of the Neva was preserved in a dramatic legend. An Ingrian chief told Alexander how, in the eve of the combat, he had seen a mysterious bark, manned by two warriors with shining brows, glide through the night. They were Boris and Gleb, who came to the rescue of their young kinsman. Other accounts have preserved to us the individual exploits of the Russian heroes—Gabriel, Skylaf of Novgorod, James of Polotsk, Sabas, who threw down the tent of Birger, and Alexander Nevski himself, who with a stroke of the lance "imprinted his seal on his face," 1240. Notwithstanding the triumph of such a service, Alexander and the Novgorodians could not agree; a short time after, he retired to Pereiaslavl-Zaliesski. The proud republicans soon had reason to regret the exile of this second Camillus. The Order of the Swordbearers, the indefatigable enemy of orthodoxy, took Pskof, their ally; the Germans imposed tribute on the Vojans, vassals of Novgorod, constructed the fortress of Koporie on her territory of the Neva, took the Russian town of Tessof in Esthonia, and pillaged the merchants of Novgorod within seventeen miles of their ramparts. During this time the Tchuds and the Lithuanians captured the peasants, and the cattle of the citizens. At last Alexander allowed himself to be touched by the prayers of the archbishop and the people, assembled an army, expelled the Germans from Koporie, and next from Pskof, hanged as traitors the captive Vojans and Tchuds, and put to death six knights who fell into his hands.

This war between the two races and two religions was cruel and pitiless. The rights of nations were hardly recognized. More than once Germans and Russians slew the ambassadors of the other side. Alexander Nevski finally gave battle to the Livonian knights on the ice of Lake Peipus, killed four hundred of them, took fifty prisoners, and exterminated a multitude of Tchuds. Such was the "Battle of the Ice," 1242. He returned in triumph to Novgorod, dragging with him his prisoners in armor of iron. The grand master expected to see Alexander at the gates of Riga, and implored help of Denmark. The Prince of Novgorod, satisfied with having delivered Pskof, concluded peace, recovered certain districts, and consented to the exchange of prisoners. At this time Innocent IV, deceived by false information, addressed a bull to Alexander, as a devoted son of the Church, assuring him that his father Yaroslaff, while dying among the Horde, had desired to submit himself to the throne of St. Peter. Two cardinals brought him this letter from the Pope, 1251.

It is this hero of the Neva and Lake Peipus, this vanquisher of the Scandinavians and Livonian knights, that we are presently to see grovelling at the feet of a barbarian. Alexander Nevski had understood that, in presence of this immense and brutal force of the Mongols, all resistance was madness, all pride ruin. To brave them was to complete the overthrow of Russia. His conduct may not have been chivalrous, but it was wise and humane. Alexander disdained to play the hero at the expense of his people, like his brother Andrew of Suzdal, who was immediately obliged to fly, abandoning his country to the vengeance of the Tartars. The Prince of Novgorod was the only prince in Russia who had kept his independence, but he knew Batu's hands could extend as far as the Ilmen. "God has subjected many peoples to me," wrote the barbarian to him: "will you alone refuse to recognize my power? If you wish to keep your land, come to me; you will see the splendor and the glory of my sway." Then Alexander went to Sarai with his brother Andrew, who disputed the grand principality of Vladimir with his uncle Sviatoslaf. Batu declared that fame had not exaggerated the merit of Alexander, that he far excelled the common run of Russian princes. He enjoined the two brothers to show themselves, like their father Yaroslaff, at the Great Horde; they returned from it in 1257. Kuiuk had confirmed the one in the possession of Vladimir, and the other in that of Novgorod, adding to it all South Russia and Kiev.

The year 1260 put the patience of Alexander and his politic obedience to the Tartars to the proof. Ulavtchi, to whom the khan Berkai had confided the affairs of Russia, demanded that Novgorod should submit to the census and pay tribute. It was the hero of the Neva that was charged with the humiliating and dangerous mission of persuading Novgorod. When the possadnik uttered in the vetche the doctrine that it was necessary to submit to the strongest, the people raised a terrible cry and murdered the possadnik. Vassili himself, the son of Alexander, declared against a father "who brought servitude to freemen," and retired to the Pskovians. It needed a soul of iron temper to resist the universal disapprobation, and counsel the Novgorodians to the commission of the cowardly though necessary act. Alexander arrested his son, and punished the boyars who had led him into the revolt with death or mutilation. The vetche had decided to refuse the tribute, and send back the Mongol ambassadors with presents.

However, on the rumor of the approach of the Tartars, they repented, and Alexander could announce to the enemy that Novgorod submitted to the census. But when they saw the officers of the Khan at work, the population revolted again, and the Prince was obliged to keep guard on the officers night and day. In vain the boyars advised the citizens to give in: assembled around St. Sophia, the people declared they would die for liberty and honor. Alexander then threatened to quit the city with his men and abandon it to the vengeance of the Khan. This menace conquered the pride of the Novgorodians. The Mongols and their agents might go, register in hand, from house to house in the humiliated and silent city to make the list of the inhabitants. "The boyars," says Karamsin, "might yet be vain of their rank and their riches, but the simple citizens had lost with their national honor their most precious possession," 1260.

In Suzdal also Alexander found himself in the presence of insolent victors and exasperated subjects. In 1262 the inhabitants of Vladimir, of Suzdal, of Rostof, rose against the collectors of the Tartar impost. The people of Yaroslavl slew a renegade named Zozimus, a former monk, who had become a Moslem fanatic. Terrible reprisals were sure to follow. Alexander set out with presents for the Horde at the risk of leaving his head there. He had likewise to excuse himself for having refused a body of auxiliary Russians to the Mongols, wishing at least to spare the blood and religious scruples of his subjects. It is a remarkable fact that over the most profound humiliations of the Russian nationality the contemporary history always throws a ray of glory.

At the moment that Alexander went to prostrate himself at Sarai, the Suzdalian army, united to that of Novgorod, and commanded by his son Dmitri, defeated the Livonian knights and took Dorpat by assault. The khan Berkai gave Alexander a kind greeting, accepted his explanations, dispensed with the promised contingent, but kept him for a year near his court. The health of Alexander broke down; he died on his return before reaching Vladimir. When the news arrived at his capital, the metropolitan Cyril, who was finishing the liturgy, turned toward the faithful and said, "Learn, my dear children, that the Sun of Russia is set, is dead."

"We are lost," cried the people, breaking forth into sobs. Alexander, by this policy of resignation, which his chivalrous heroism does not permit us to despise, had secured some repose for exhausted Russia. By his victories over his enemies of the West he had given her some glory, and hindered her from despairing under the most crushing tyranny, material and moral, which a European people had ever suffered.



THE SIXTH CRUSADE

TREATY OF FREDERICK II WITH THE SARACENS

A.D. 1228

SIR GEORGE W. COX



For six years after the end of the Fifth Crusade—in which the crusaders, forgetting their vows, instead of delivering Jerusalem sacked Constantinople—the Christians of Palestine were protected by a truce with Saphadin, who had succeeded his brother Saladin in power. This truce was broken by the action of the Latin Christians, Pope Innocent himself, who had been the leading spirit of the Fifth Crusade, continuing to make known his designs for the recovery of the Holy Land. Between the Fifth and the Sixth Crusades occurred that which was in some respects the strangest manifestation of the crusading mania, whereby the inspiration of the Pope and other preachers of a new crusade carried some fanatics to the maddest extremes. This movement, or series of movements, is known as the "Children's Crusade," 1212.

In response to the appeals of certain priests who went about France and Germany calling upon the children to perform what, through wickedness, their fathers had failed to do, and assuring them of miraculous aid and success, fifty thousand boys and girls, braving parental authority, gathered together and pervaded both cities and countries, singing: "Lord Jesus, give us back thy Holy Cross," and saying, "We are going to Jerusalem to deliver the Holy Sepulchre." Some of them crossed the Alps, intending to embark at Italian ports; others took ship at Marseilles. Many were lost in the forests, and perished with heat, hunger, thirst, and fatigue. Some, after being stripped by thieves, were reduced to slavery, and a remnant, in sorrow and shame, returned to their homes. Of those who sailed, some were lost by shipwreck, and others sold as slaves to the Saracens. "No authority," says Michaud, "interfered, either to stop or prevent the madness; and when it was announced to the Pope that death had swept away the flower of the youth of France and Germany, he contented himself with saying: 'These children reproach us with having fallen asleep, while they were flying to the assistance of the Holy Land.'"

Innocent now called a general council of the Church—the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215—for the purpose of stimulating a new crusade. "The necessity for succoring the Holy Land," said his letters of convocation, "and the hope of conquering the Saracens, are greater than ever. We renew our cries and our prayers to you to excite you to this noble enterprise."

The Sixth Crusade, which was inspired by the Pope and preached in France by his legate, Robert de Courcon, was divided in the sequel into three maritime expeditions. The first, 1216, consisted mainly of Hungarians under their King, Andrew; the second, 1218, was composed of Germans, Italians, French, and English nobles and their followers; and the third, 1228, was led by Frederick II in person. The first two produced no considerable advantage for the Christians; while Frederick, involved in the Hohenstaufen struggle with the papacy, evaded his crusading vows made long before. Innocent III died in 1216; Honorius III, the next pope, died in 1227; and his successor, Gregory IX, urged Frederick on to fulfil his promise. The Emperor embarked in 1227, but when he had been only three days at sea, by reason of his own illness or the sickness of his troops—accounts are not agreed—he returned to port. The Pope, furious at his conduct, excommunicated him. But in the following year, notwithstanding the ban, Frederick set sail for Palestine, and the story of this expedition is the essential history of the Sixth Crusade.

After his excommunication, Frederick appealed not to the Pope, but to the sovereigns of Christendom. His illness, he said, had been real, the accusations of the Pope wanton and cruel. "The Christian charity which should hold all things together is dried up at its source, in its stem, not in its branches. What had the Pope done in England but stir up the barons against John, and then abandon them to death or ruin? The whole world paid tribute to his avarice. His legates were everywhere, gathering where they had not sown, and reaping where they had not strawed."

But although he thus dealt in language as furious as that of the Pope, the thought of breaking definitely with him and of casting aside his crusading vow as worthless mockery never seems to have entered his mind. He undertook to bring his armies together again with all speed, and to set off on his expedition. His promise only brought him into fresh trouble with the Pope, who in the Holy Week next following laid under interdict every place in which Frederick might happen to be. If this censure should be treated with contempt, his subjects were at once absolved from their allegiance.

The Emperor went on steadily with his preparations, and then went to Brundisium. He was met by papal messengers who strictly forbade him to leave Italy until he had offered satisfaction for his offences against the Church. In his turn Frederick, having sailed to Otranto, sent his own envoys to the Pope to demand the removal of the interdict; and these, of course, were dismissed with contempt.

In September the Emperor landed at Ptolemais; but the emissaries of the Pope had preceded him, and he found himself under the ban of the clergy and shunned by their partisans. The patriarch and the masters of the military orders were to see that none served under his polluted banners. The charge was given to willing servants: but Frederick found friends in the Teutonic Knights under their grand master Herman de Salza, as well as with the body of pilgrims generally. He determined to possess himself of Joppa, and summoned all the crusaders to his aid.

The Templars refused to stir, if any orders were to be issued in his name; and Frederick agreed that they should run in the name of God and Christendom. But while the enemy was aided greatly by the divisions among the Christians, the death of the Damascene sultan Moadhin was of little use to Frederick. The Egyptian sultan, Kameel, was now in a position of greater independence, and his eagerness for an alliance with the Emperor had rapidly cooled down.

Frederick, on his side, still resolved to try the effect of negotiation. His demands extended at first, it is said, to the complete restoration of the Latin kingdom, and ended, if we are to believe Arabian chroniclers, in almost abject supplications. At length a treaty was signed. It surrendered to the Emperor the whole of Jerusalem except the Temple or mosque of Omar, the keys of which were to be retained by the Saracens; but Christians, under certain conditions, might be allowed to enter it for the purpose of prayer. It further restored to the Christians the towns of Jaffa, Bethlehem, and Nazareth.

To Frederick the conclusion of this treaty was a reason for legitimate satisfaction. It enabled him to hasten back to his own dominions, where a papal army was ravaging Apulia and threatening Sicily. One task only remained for him in the East. He must pay his vows at the Holy Sepulchre. But here also the hand of the Pope lay heavy upon him. Not merely Jerusalem, but the Sepulchre itself, passed under the interdict as he entered the gates of the city, and the infidel Moslem saw the churches closed and all worship suspended at the approach of the Christian Emperor.

On Sunday, in his imperial robes and attended by a magnificent retinue, Frederick went to his coronation, as king of Jerusalem, in the Church of the Sepulchre. Not a single ecclesiastic was there to take part in the ceremony. The archbishops of Capua and Palermo stood aloof, while Frederick, taking the crown from the high altar, placed it on his own head. By his orders his friend Herman de Salza read an address, in which the Emperor acquitted the Pope for his hard judgment of him and for his excommunication, and added that a real knowledge of the facts would have led him to speak not against him, but in his favor. He confessed his desire to put to shame the false friends of Christ, his accusers and slanderers, by the restoration of peace and unity, and to humble himself before God and before his vicar upon earth.

From the Saracens he won golden opinions. The cadi silenced a muezzin who had to proclaim the hour of prayer from a minaret near the house in which the Emperor lodged, because he added to his call the question, "How is it possible that God had for his son Jesus the son of Mary?" Frederick marked the silence of the crier when the hour of prayer came round. On learning the cause he rebuked the cadi for neglecting, on his account, his duty and his religion, and warned him that if he should visit him in his kingdom he would find no such ill-judged deference. He showed no dissatisfaction, it is said, with the inscription which declared that Saladin had purified the city from those who worshipped many gods, or any displeasure when the Mahometans in his train fell on their knees at the times for prayer. His thoughts about the Christians were shown, it was supposed, when, seeing the windows of the Holy Chapel barred to keep out the birds which might defile it, he asked: "You may keep out the birds; but how will you keep out the swine?"

In glowing terms Frederick wrote to the sovereigns of Europe, announcing the splendid success which he had achieved rather by the pen than by the sword. He scarcely knew what a rock of offence he had raised up among Christians and Moslems alike. By a few words on a sheet of parchment the Christian Emperor had deprived his people of the hope of getting their sins forgiven by murdering unbelievers; by the same words the Moslem Sultan had prevented his subjects from insuring an entrance to the delights of paradise by the slaughter of the Nazarenes.

From Gerold, Patriarch of Jerusalem, a letter went to the Pope, full of virulent abuse of the Emperor as a traitor, an apostate, and a robber; but even before he received this letter Gregory had condemned what he chose to consider as a monstrous attempt to reconcile Christ and Belial, and to set up Mahomet as an object of worship in the temple of God. "The antagonist of the Cross," he wrote, "the enemy of the faith and of all chastity, the wretch doomed to hell, is lifted up for adoration, by a perverse judgment, and by an intolerable insult to the Saviour, to the lasting disgrace of the Christian name and the contempt of all the martyrs who have laid down their lives to purify the Holy Land from the defilements of the Saracens."

But Frederick, in his turn, could be firm and unyielding. He returned from Jerusalem to Joppa, from Joppa to Ptolemais; and there learning that a proposal had been made to establish a new order of knights, he declared that no one should, without his consent, levy soldiers within his dominion. Summoning all the Christians within the city to the broad plain without the gates, he spoke his mind freely about the conduct of the Patriarch and the Templars, with all who aided and abetted them, and insisted that all the pilgrims, having now paid their vows, should return at once to Europe. On this point he was inexorable. His archers took possession of the churches; two friars who denounced him from the pulpit were scourged through the streets; the Patriarch was shut up in his palace; and the commands of the Emperor were carried out.

Frederick returned to Europe, to find that the Pope had been stirring up Albert of Austria to rebel against him, and that the papal forces were in command of John of Brienne, who may have been the author of the false news of Frederick's death, and who certainly proclaimed himself as the only emperor. To the Pope, Frederick sent his envoys, Herman de Salza at their head. They were dismissed with contempt; and their master was again placed under the greater excommunication with the Albigensians, the Poor Men of Lyons, the Arnoldists, and other heretics who, in the eyes of the faithful, were the worst enemies of the Christian church. Such was the reward of the man who had done more toward the reestablishment of the Latin kingdom in Palestine than had been done by the lion-hearted Richard, and who, it may fairly be said, had done it without shedding a drop of blood.



RISE OF THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE

A.D. 1241

H. DENICKE[59]



Trade trusts, which have attained so large a growth in our day, are not an original product of the present age. The Hanseatic League, or Hansa—the word meaning a society, union—was the first trust of which we have authentic record. It began about A.D. 1140, but the league was not signed until 1241. It was first called into being to protect the property of the German merchants against the piratical Swedes and other Norsemen, but presently became submerged in a combination of certain cities to enlarge and control the trade of each country with which they had commerce. So powerful did the league become that it dominated kings, nobles, and cities by its edicts.

Those free cities which constituted the league had the emperor for their lord, were released from feudal obligations, and passed their own laws, subject only to his approval. The emperors, finding in the strength of the cities a bulwark against the bishops and the princes, constantly extended the municipal rights and privileges. The Hanseatic League at one time nearly monopolized the whole trade of Europe north of Italy.

It was an epoch of associations in which the league arose. The Church was but a society, fighting as an army for its liberty. Each trade had its guild, and none might practise his trade unless he was a member of the particular guild controlling it. The handicrafts were in the same case; and the real or operative freemasonry was instituted, about the same time, for the erection of ecclesiastical and palatial buildings.

Wealth, power, pomp, and pride began to wane in the cities of the league early in the fifteenth century, and the movement was accelerated by the change of ocean routes of trade due to the discovery of America, and the Cape of Good Hope way to India. The final extinction came as late as October, 1888, when the free cities of Hamburg and Bremen, whose right to remain free ports had been ratified in the imperial constitution of 1871, renounced their ancient privileges and became completely merged in the autocratic Fatherland.

With good reason the world's commerce is to-day accepted as one of the most imposing and unique phenomena of our time. It is but necessary to consult a statistical handbook in order to obtain a conception of the gigantic figures involved in the exports and imports of the multifarious articles of commerce to and from all countries—figures whose magnitude precludes the possibility of forming an adequate conception of their true significance. No less astonishing are the means employed by traffic to-day to develop our system of credit and our complex and useful web of communication. One fact, however, should be borne in mind: namely, that our commerce is of comparatively modern growth. The two factors chiefly responsible for its development were: (1) The great voyages of discovery which began at the close of the fifteenth century and opened a theretofore unsuspected field of production and consumption; and (2) the utilization of steam, that great triumph of the nineteenth century. Perhaps a brief sketch of that earlier commercial development which immediately preceded our extensive modern commercial network may not be unwelcome to the reader desirous of contrasting the narrower but nevertheless fascinating mediaeval conditions of the German Hansa with those prevailing in our present mercantile world. Let us inquire how the confederation of the Hansa arose, and, after briefly sketching its external history, review in greater detail its commercial and industrial methods, its art work, domestic life, and constitution.

The development of the German Hansa may be traced to two principal sources: (1) The associations formed by German merchants abroad, and (2) the union established by the Low-German cities at home.

In the days of Charlemagne, Germany's eastern boundary was extended to the Elbe, and beyond it to Holstein, but it was not until four centuries later, that is, in the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, that the Baltic was reached, the southern borders of which sea, now constituting Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and Prussia, having theretofore been inhabited chiefly by Slavonic and Lithuanian peoples. The credit for this increase of power is due primarily to the Saxon duke Henry the Lion, who, while the Emperor was engaged in maturing and executing mighty plans of world conquest, developed upon this virgin soil an extraordinary colonial activity, transplanting hither German peasants, burghers, and priests, and with them German customs and Christian civilization. In this way there arose about the year A.D. 1200, upon soil wrested from the Slavs, a number of promising towns, foremost among which was Lubeck, a place endowed by Duke Henry with municipal rights especially designed to promote commercial intercourse and affording liberal and far-reaching privileges to the counsellors and burghers. Soon thereafter the rapidly developing neighboring cities of Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, Greifswald, Anklam, and Stettin, usually called "the Wendish cities," became participants in the constitution thus granted. The territory now grew rapidly. In the course of the thirteenth century, the then pagan country of Prussia and the present Baltic provinces of Russia were conquered by the Teutonic knights and kindred orders and were occupied and settled. The same historical process which took place in Greece, and in more recent times in America, also repeated itself here: the youthful colonial offshoots overcame the narrowing and confining influence of the mother country, yet reacted favorably upon it by virtue of that vivifying influence, due to more rapid and exuberant growth.

In the mean time the other countries contiguous to the North and Baltic seas, that is, Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and England, had become converted to Christianity. Some of them, indeed, had embraced the Christian creed several centuries prior to this time. The natural consequence was that a lively intercourse was cultivated upon the two seas, especially after the crusades, which enterprises, by opening new avenues of commerce and increasing the knowledge concerning numerous articles of utility, had greatly augmented the demands of the people of the Occident. The extraordinary development of trade on the Baltic, indeed, vividly recalls the ancient commercial activity on the Mediterranean; and the phrase, "a basin fruitful of culture," often applied to the latter region, may with equal justice be applied also to the former. In the beginning, Russians, Danes, and Englishmen participated in the active trade conducted on the northern littoral. Eventually, however, they were displaced by their German rivals. As the northern nations upon their acceptance of Christianity had once before formed their political and social institutions upon German models, so they now, in such cities as Stockholm, Bergen, Copenhagen, and others, became subject to the cultural and, above all, the commercial influence of the German burgher.

It is interesting to note the manner in which this extraordinary influence was secured. In later mediaeval times all classes of the population were compelled to rely upon self-help. In other words, they were compelled to replace the defective or insufficient protection afforded by the State by corporate bodies. Thus the merchants of a Low-German German town, when in search of a common centre of trade, pledged themselves by a solemn oath to a defensive and offensive alliance and mutual furtherance; and wider alliances between the various towns themselves soon followed. Of all these private commercial associations none attained to greater importance than did the Gothland Company, a society of Low-German merchants who visited Gothland, the centre of commercial activity in the Baltic, for trading purposes. Here was the seat of the mighty city of Wisby, which contained such wealth that a Danish king once declared that the swine there ate from silver troughs. Even at the present day the massive ruins of the old city wall and of the eighteen churches which once existed there bear testimony to the former magnitude and grandeur of the city. The Gothland Company flourished chiefly during the thirteenth century and enjoyed all the privileges of a political power; bearing its own seal, policing the seas, and insisting upon strict compliance on the part of all navigators of the Baltic with the marine laws which it had created.

Parallel with this development was the formation of unions between inland towns, caused by the depredations of robber-knights; the menacing increase of power among the nobility; and by commercial motives of all kinds, as, for example, the necessity of preventing banished criminals and debtors from seeking an asylum in neighboring communities. Along the entire region from Esthland to Holland, both of which at that time belonged to the German crown, the municipalities united. In the far-western part of the German empire there was the municipal group of the Netherlands, among which such cities as Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Deventer belonged. Farther inland was the Rhenish-Westphalian group, consisting of Cologne, Dortmund, Munster, and others, which cities, though somewhat distant from the sea, nevertheless occupy a place of honor as pioneers of German marine commerce. Between these two western groups and those in the East there was a wide gap extending as far as the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser. At the entrance to these rivers, however, and along the borders of the Baltic were the great maritime communities, the chief members of the Hanseatic League, including the before-mentioned Wendish group and the cities of Bremen and Hamburg. Yet not these alone, although they were in some respects the most important. Inland, the municipal groups extended so as to embrace Berlin, then very unimportant, Perleberg, etc., in the Mark of Brandenburg, the Saxon cities of Magdeburg, Hanover, Luneburg, Goslar, Hildesheim, Brunswick, and others; in the far-eastern part of the empire the six rapidly growing cities of the Teutonic order, Kulm, Thorn, Dantzic, Elbing, Braunsberg, and Koenigsberg; and finally, in Livonia and Esthonia, Riga, Dorpat, Reval, and Pernau. Noteworthy was the treaty concluded in A.D. 1241, between Hamburg and Lubeck, whereby the former assumed control of the interests in the North Sea and the Elbe, while the latter safeguarded those of the Baltic. This treaty between Hamburg and Lubeck is sometimes regarded as the beginning of the Hanseatic League. It has here been sufficiently demonstrated, however, that the association was the result of a slow and gradual process, enforced by conditions, and that it did not originate in the mind of any particular statesman as a definite plan.

The two groups, the maritime and the inland municipal, had developed independently: it now remained to unite them; and from the union thus effected sprang the great institution of the German Hansa. The private associations, not excepting the Gothland Company, in view of the rapid extension of commerce and the consequent jealousy of foreign competitors, were no longer able to afford sufficient protection to the foreign trade—a condition which did not escape the statesmen of Lubeck, with their marked power of initiative and political sagacity.

Thus it came, during the last decades of the thirteenth century, that the private societies became more and more dependent upon the municipal unions, which, under the leadership of the free and centrally located city of Lubeck, now assumed the energetic guardianship of maritime commerce, by reason of which they were drawn from their hitherto isolated position and gradually became fused into an increasingly compact union.

Already at the close of the thirteenth century the young institution of the Hansa received its initiation in warfare in a conflict with the kingdom of Norway, which country was compelled to purchase peace at the price of new and greater concessions to the league. Soon thereafter, however, the steady progress of the Hansa met with a rebuff. Denmark, at that time the foremost power of the North, had for more than a century endeavored to obtain the supremacy of the Baltic, at the entrance to which it was so advantageously situated. At one time Lubeck was for an entire decade forced into a sort of vassalage to the energetic king Eric Menved of Denmark, although the relations to the sister-cities of the league, which had never been entirely severed, were subsequently restored and confirmed by new treaties. When finally, in A.D. 1361, the Danish king Waldemar Atterdag, inspired by rapacity and revenge, went so far as to fall upon the metropolis of the Baltic, the Swedish city of Wisby, in the midst of peace, and to annex it, thereby inflicting serious losses upon the resident Low-German merchants, Lubeck once more placed herself at the head of the Wendish cities and at the diet of Greifswald decreed war against the ruthless invader. But the expedition proved disastrous, owing chiefly to the tardiness of the kings of Sweden and Norway, who had been drawn into the alliance. Nevertheless, the unfortunate admiral of the Lubeck fleet, Johann Wittenborg, who also enjoyed the rank of burgomaster of the Hanseatic city, was put to the axe in the public market-place of Lubeck in expiation of his failure.

A doubtful peace was now concluded with the Danes, but was soon broken by their renewed plunderings of Hanseatic vessels and the obstacles placed by them upon traffic. Another passage at arms was required. The ensuing conflict was the greatest and most glorious ever fought, not only by the Hansa, but by Germany, upon the sea. In 1367 deputies from the Prussian, Wendish, and Netherlandish cities assembled in the city hall of Cologne and there prepared those memorable articles of confederation which decreed another war with King Waldemar of Denmark; stipulated the levying of a definite contingent of troops on the part of the contracting cities; provided for a duty on exports to defray the expenses of the campaign; and draughted letters of protest to the Pope, to Emperor Charles IV, and to many of the German princes. That auspicious day marks a turning-point in the history of the Hanseatic League, and was fraught with high importance to the whole German empire. The preliminary history of the Hansa here ends and its brilliant epoch begins. The warships of the cities and their army so thoroughly vanquished Denmark that, after two years of warfare, the Danish royal council and the representatives respectively of the municipalities, the nobility, and the clergy despatched a commission of thirty-two to Stralsund to sign a treaty, ostensibly in the name of their fugitive ruler—a treaty which may justly be said to mark the climax in the development of the power of the burghers of Germany.

The treaty not only provided for considerable concessions in matters of navigation and intercourse, but also conceded to the members of the Cologne confederation, comprising about sixty Hansa cities, the right to occupy and to fortify for a period of fifteen years the four chief castles on Skane—Helsingborg, Malmo, Scanov, and Falsterbo—commanding the sound, the most important maritime highway traversed by the Hanseatic vessels.

But the most extraordinary privilege granted by this treaty was that making the subsequent election of a king for Denmark subject to the approval of the confederation—thus assigning to the burghers a right such as no king or emperor of that time exercised over a foreign state. The confederates, however, wisely declined to avail themselves of this dangerous prerogative, not only for political reasons, but also because of the clever negotiations of the youthful queen Margaret, the daughter and heir of Waldemar, who, by the union of Kalmar in 1397, became invested with the triple crown of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. The fact remains, however, that the Hansa for the ensuing century and a half maintained its title as the foremost of maritime and as one of the principal political powers—and that entirely unaided and without the sanction of kaiser or empire.

Let us take a very general survey of this glorious period, concerning which many interesting disclosures have recently been made, and endeavor to obtain, if possible, a glimpse of the activity of these busy cities and of the confederation which they formed.

As to commerce, the first task which the confederation set itself to fulfil was the abolition of that early mediaeval condition which inclined to regard the stranger in foreign parts as devoid of rights. The efforts of the confederation in this particular resulted in the acquisition of hundreds of privileges, secured either singly or conjointly by the cities. The contents of the treaties are usually the same: (1) Protection of person and goods; (2) abolition of the law which declared forfeit to the feudal lord such goods as, for instance, might happen to fall from a wagon and thereby touch the ground; (3) the abolition of the strand right, which had secured to the owner of the shore land the jetsam and flotsam of wrecked or stranded vessels; (4) the concession of legal procedure to the debtor; (5) liberation from the duel and other forms of the "divine judgment" in legal procedure; (6) the reduction of duties; (7) permission to sell at retail, as for example, cloth and linen by the ell—a privilege previously accorded only to natives. These are but a few of the privileges secured, the most important of which, however, remains to be mentioned. This was the establishment of branches and bureaus in the most frequented commercial centres abroad. On the other hand, the confederation never had the remotest intention of granting similar privileges to the nations from which these concessions had been secured, such as the English, Flemish, Norwegians, Danes, and Russians. On the contrary. In Cologne, for example, foreign merchants were permitted only three times a year and then for a period of three weeks only. Never, perhaps, in history has a monopoly been so rigidly and relentlessly enforced—a monopoly which not only rested upon the nation at home, but which made bold incursions into the sovereignty of foreign states in order to smother their independent trade, or, as in Norway, utterly to stamp it out.

Of the two great avenues of trade, that indicated by the termini Bruges and Novgorod is first deserving of mention. For centuries it was practically used exclusively by merchants of the Hansa, who, moreover, were forbidden to form copartnerships with foreigners, such as Russians and Englishmen. Novgorod, well guarded against pirates and situated in the navigable Volkhov, was at that time in a sense the capital of the much-divided Russian empire. This city, since the day of its founder, Rurik, had been the centre of Russian trade and enjoyed an almost republican independence. From this point diverged the most frequented highways of trade to the Dnieper and the Volga. From Russia the German merchant exported chiefly fine furs, such as beaver, ermine, and sable, and enormous quantities of wax, which to-day, as formerly, is still obtained in the central wooded parts of the country where apiculture is extensively prosecuted. His imports, on the other hand, consisted of fine products of the loom, articles of wool, linen, and silk; of boots and shoes, usually manufactured at home of Russian leather; and finally, of beer, metal goods, and general merchandise. It is evident, therefore, that the German merchant provided Russia—which country was at that time industrially in a very primitive condition—with all the necessaries required.

Bruges, in Flanders, the western terminus of the before-mentioned highway of commerce, was during the last centuries of the Middle Ages approximately what London is to the world of to-day. It was, beside Venice, the actual world-mart of the Continent, a centre where Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Frenchmen, and High- and Low-Germans—a motley throng—congregated to exchange their goods. Thither the Hanseatic merchant transported wood and other forest products; building stones and iron, the latter being still forged in primitive forest smithies; and copper from the rich mines of Falun, the ore from which was usually sold or mortgaged to the Lubeck merchants. From the Baltic countries he imported grain, and from Scandinavia herring and cod—all natural products, in exchange for which he sent to the respective countries his own manufactured goods. In Bruges he represented the entire northern region, both in the giving and the receiving of merchandise, for only through his instrumentality could the gifts of the East, such as oil, wine, spices, silk, and other articles of luxury, which were usually transported through the Alpine passes and thence down the Rhine to Bruges, be distributed among the northern nations. This applies also to the highly prized textiles of Flanders, which in those days were sometimes sold at fabulous prices.

The other stream of Hanseatic trade terminated at London. The German merchant sent thither chiefly French wines and Venetian silks. It was he who attended to this traffic—not the consumer or the producer. In exchange for these commodities he took English wool—the output being already at that time very extensive—transporting it to the mills of Flanders. Such was at that time the commercial relation of Germany to England. If the latter country to-day, by virtue of its incomparably favorable geographical position, has become the first naval and commercial power, it was in an economic sense at that time absolutely dependent upon Germany, which country, after the loss of its political supremacy, outstripped all other nations in the contest for economic supremacy—excepting perhaps the Arabians and the republics of Northern Italy, who controlled the trade in the Orient and the Mediterranean. Naturally the English merchants were jealous and frequently brought complaints before their kings and parliaments; but the latter, despite occasional contentions, ever and again upheld the foreign invader. The reason is not far to seek: like the kings of the north, they could not dispense with the silver chests of the Hanseatic towns and merchants, who on more than one occasion secured their loans by appropriating the products of the tin mines or the duties on wool, or by taking in pawn crown and jewels.

It is evident, therefore, that the greatest source of wealth to the Hansa was this intermediary traffic. Several other important commercial connections will be touched upon later. Casual mention should here be made, however, to the trade with Scotland, Ireland, Brabant, and France, whose annual markets were regularly attended by the Hansa merchants. While the trade of the cities of the league found such wide extension abroad, however, the traffic with their nearest neighbors, the High-Germans, was very weak. Their domestic trade, indeed, was confined chiefly to the plains of Northern Germany, extending southward to Thuringia and eastward to the Oder and the Vistula, where Cracow constituted the last outpost. The great High-German communities along the Main and the Danube pursued different political and economic interests. Being chiefly manufacturing cities, they formed only temporary unions. Dependent rather upon the south of Europe, they were also differentiated from their northern brethren by their coinage, inasmuch as they accepted gold as their standard, whereas the Low-Germans preferred silver money, especially that of Lubeck. Of course each Hanse town formed the nucleus of the local intercourse; and thither came noblemen and peasant to barter the produce of the fields for the merchandise of the city, and to invest, or probably more frequently to borrow, money. Lubeck and Bruges were in those days the money centres of Northern Europe, and their councillors and commercial magnates were the bankers of kings and princes.

The methods of transportation and intercourse at that time were very different from those of to-day. There was no postal service, no insurance, very sparse circulation of bills, and very little of that agency—or commission—business, which relegates to a third party the transportation and management of goods. Trade was very largely a matter of individual enterprise, demanding in a far greater measure than to-day the personal superintendence of the merchant. Usually the latter himself travelled well-armed across sand and sea to distant lands, trusting in God and upon his strong right arm. As master of a vessel he did not fail to interest his crew in the safety of the ship and cargo by allotting to them part of the profits. Indeed, his journey was far more perilous than it is to-day. Upon the public highway he was subject to the attack of the robber barons, who held him prisoner against heavy ransom; and in the innumerable hiding-places of the rock-bound northern coast his course was followed by the watch-boats of pirates. The occupations of highway robbery and piracy were at that time still regarded among wide circles as excusable. Dozens of feudal castles, the retreats of robber barons, were destroyed by the soldiers of the municipalities, and dozens of freebooting vessels were annihilated, the robbers themselves being executed with axe or sword or thrown overboard. The piracy of that age reached its acme in the notorious "Society of Equal Sharers" or "Brotherhood of Victuallers." This consisted of an incongruous aggregation of noble and plebeian blades, who, despite their excessive brutality, nevertheless possessed some genuine knightly characteristics, the hardihood and bravery of the true mariner, and a boundless love of adventure. Formed during the eighth decade of the fourteenth century for the purpose of assisting the King of Sweden against the martial queen Margaret of Denmark, its immediate object at that time was the supplying of victuals to the beleaguered city of Stockholm—whence its name. When, upon the surrender of the city and the establishment of peace, the immediate object of the society had been fulfilled, the attraction of freebooting proved too strong for these wild companions, whose excesses now assumed an increasingly alarming form. For more than a half century they remained the terror of the northern seas. Almost annually the cities were compelled to send out vessels against them, which, however, were not always so successful as the celebrated Bunte Kuh ("Brindled Cow") of Hamburg, which captured the most dangerous of the piratic captains, Claus Stoertebeker and Godeke Michel, with their followers and their fabulous treasures, and brought them to Hamburg. Tradition has it that for three days the public executioner stood ankle-deep in the blood of the condemned. Nevertheless, the seafaring public did not suspect the presence of a robber behind every bush or cliff. After all, an undisturbed voyage was the rule rather than the exception; sensational occurrences, of course, then, as now, playing an important part in the reports of the time.

To these social disorders must be added elemental dangers of all kinds, such as the tides and shallows of the North Sea—the shallow waters contiguous to the coast being chiefly navigated—dangers against which neither compass nor chronometer was then available. Even buoys and lighthouses were comparatively rare or inadequate at a time when nautical knowledge itself was still extremely defective. It was therefore not astonishing that shipwrecks were of daily occurrence and were of course followed by all the evils of that cruel and barbarous "Strand law" which, despite all papal edicts and voluntary treaties, could not be abrogated, but was actually carried out by the Archbishop of Bremen himself.

Notwithstanding all these hinderances, the sea voyage, which, by reason of the dangers attending it, was strictly prohibited during the winter months, was incomparably safer and pleasanter than the journey by land. The traveller by land was strictly confined to the prescribed highway of travel, every deviation from which was regarded as a defraudation of the customs and was punished by confiscation of goods. The inconveniences to which the merchant was subjected in the way of taxes are almost incredible. As the mediaeval spirit was reflected in the confusion of coinage—nearly every petty count and every city eventually enjoying the privilege of a private mint—so also was the deplorable disunion existing among the German people mirrored in the innumerable road and water taxes. Above Hamburg, along a road about twelve German miles in extent, there were not fewer than nine customs stations. Fortunately the tariff was not complicated, but was levied on the freight of the ship or wagon, or estimated by the bale or box irrespective of value or the quality of the goods under inspection. Upon the presented crucifix the merchant, aided occasionally by his cojurors, solemnly swore to the correctness of his representations concerning the goods carried by him, the oath, as is well known, being very frequently brought into requisition in all judicial and commercial transactions during mediaeval times.

The Hansa ships were usually round-bellied, high-boarded craft with one mast, and flew the pennant of their home port. They were comparatively broad and built of heavy planks, and could easily be transformed into war vessels by furnishing them with a superstructure known as the castell ("castle") in which catapults and archers could be placed. In size they were probably as large as the trading vessels which cross the Baltic to-day. That they were skilfully handled is evident from the fact that a contemporaneous report mentions a trip from Ripen in Jutland to Amsterdam as having been successfully made in two days. As regards the laws of navigation, a point especially noteworthy was the talent displayed in organizing fellowship unions. Reference is not here made to the habit of the merchants in sailing in squadrons so much as to the peculiar institutions which regulated the life on board—institutions which have recently been justly designated as the most perfect expression of that executive ability which characterized the close of German mediaevalism. An account of these institutions dating from the middle of the sixteenth century has fortunately been preserved.

As soon as the vessel was upon the high sea the crew, which consisted of the captain and the "ship's children," pledged itself strictly to obey orders and equitably to divide any booty eventually secured. A court of sheriffs was then organized, consisting of a judge, four sheriffs, a sergeant-at-arms, a secretary, an executioner, and several other officials. Thereupon came the proclamation of the maritime law upon which the eventual judgment of the court was based. The tenor of this law was as follows: It is forbidden to swear in God's name; to mention the devil; to sleep after the hour for prayer; to handle lights; to destroy or waste food; to meddle with the duties of the drawer of liquor; to play at dice or cards after sunset; and to vex the cook or annoy the crew under penalty of a monetary fine. The following are some of the penalties inflicted for various offences: Whoever sleeps while on guard or creates a disturbance between decks shall be drawn under the keel of the vessel; whoever attempts to draw weapons on board, be they long or short, shall have the respective weapon run through his hand into the mast, so that he will have to draw the weapon through his own hand again if he would free himself; whoever accuses another unjustly shall pay the double fine prescribed for the offence charged; and no one shall endeavor to take revenge upon the executioners. Upon the completion of the voyage the court resigned, after dispensing a general amnesty and partaking of bread and salt in company with the rest of the crew. Upon landing, the monetary fines which had been collected from delinquents on board were presented to the lord of the strand for benevolent distribution.

On arriving at the end of his journey the merchant was confronted by new difficulties. It not infrequently happened that the master of the port visited by him had, within the time elapsed since the departure of the vessel from home, fallen into strife with the respective Hanse town whose ensign the vessel bore. As newspapers and despatches were at that time unknown, it is not difficult to conjecture the difficulties with which a merchant had to contend. Moreover, he required an exact knowledge of local conditions and of the legal rights accorded him, which were different in each city and always inferior to those of the native inhabitants. To-day, as a rule, a foreigner, wherever he may be, enjoys the full benefits of the place he happens to visit, equally with the resident citizen. It was not so in the days of the Hansa, and hence the constant endeavor of the league to obtain firmly established offices or bureaus abroad. At an early date such a bureau existed in London under the name of the Stahlhof, another at Novgorod under the name of the St. Petershof, and still others at smaller towns in England and the Netherlands—each having its peculiar privileges, customs, and mercantile usages, but all possessing in common the invaluable right of settling any difficulty affecting the members of the league according to their own native code. In London the representative of the league was compelled to become an English citizen, and the entire bureau thus became naturalized, as it were. The same was true of the Hanse bureau at Bruges, a city in which after all, in view of the powerful competition prevailing there, a pronounced monopoly was certain to be curbed to some extent. Here the league merely possessed warerooms, while their agents lived privately among the burghers. The right of holding court in the Carmelite monastery was conceded to them; and there, too, they administered their affairs. In Novgorod, however, the conditions were entirely different. In view of the uncivilized condition and the national prejudices of the Russians, the greatest care had to be exercised in all intercourse with the natives in order that the existence of the entire Hanseatic colony might not be endangered. Consequently, this intercourse was regulated with great circumspection and in all detail both by the diet of the Hanseatic League and by the chiefs of the bureau.

It was, however, in Bergen, Norway, that northernmost station of the Hansa, that the most interesting conditions prevailed. Here, that is, in Norway, the German merchant, by means of money or arms, gradually drove all competitors, including Englishmen, from the field, and in 1350 succeeded in establishing in the most favorably situated and liveliest city of the land, Bergen, the last of his numerous bureaus—a bureau which maintained itself, though in somewhat deteriorated form, until the eighteenth century. This station, created at a late period of Hanseatic expansion, bears testimony to the colonial genius of the German merchants of the league and affords a glimpse into their business methods. It may therefore be deserving of a more detailed consideration.

Twenty-one farms or granges, belonging to as many Hanse towns, dotted the shore. Each of these, surrounded by trees and lawns, covered considerable space and included spacious granaries and dwellings, most of which served also as warehouses. Each grange had its dock, where ships could conveniently land and discharge their goods. The entire space thus occupied by the Hanses was enclosed by a wall, beyond which and running parallel with it was the so-called "Schustergasse"—a street occupied by German artisans, who, though permanently settled here, nevertheless remained closely in touch with their German brethren of the bureau. Every bureau had its Schutting—a spacious, windowless room which depended for light and air upon a hole in the roof, which likewise served as a vent for the smoke issuing from the hearth. It was in this room that the agents of the Hansa merchants assembled to debate on judicial or mercantile affairs. During the long winter evenings the families of the agents, as the assistants and apprentices of the resident factors were pleasantly termed, congregated here, each group at its own particular rough-hewn, wooden table, to indulge in strong drink and pleasant gossip. When the interests of the entire colony were to be discussed, the AElterleute ("seniors") from every grange would meet in the Schutting belonging to Bremen and called Zum Mantel. This assemblage was called the "Council of Eighteen," the representative of Lubeck enjoying the greatest distinction and wielding the greatest influence among them by reason of the hegemony exercised by his native town. When matters of particular importance arose, or in case of a serious dispute, the affair at issue was usually referred to the Bergenfahrercollegium ("the town council"), or more frequently to the general convention of the Hansa at Lubeck.

The expenses of maintaining the colony, in view of the almost monastic simplicity of life prevailing there and the large membership, were naturally small. In its zenith it probably numbered about three thousand persons, who were subjected to strict laws—as strict, indeed, as those of any camp or monastery. No woman was permitted within the colony, and no person was permitted out of doors after sundown, unless, indeed, he wished to run the gauntlet of the fierce watchdogs which guarded the reservations of the settlers. The members and employes of the Hansa who resided here were not permitted to marry Norwegian women, in order that their special rights and privileges might not be endangered through intermixture with the natives. How considerable were these special rights the reader may determine from the fact that, during the weekly markets, the members of the Hansa bureaus had the streets barricaded by powerful fellows who permitted no one to interfere with the valuable privilege of priority conceded to the Hanses in the matter of barter. Naturally enough the purchasing price of goods was arbitrarily set by the latter under these conditions, while the fixing of the selling price, in the absence of all competition, was a matter of course.

That the exercise of such pressure sometimes disturbed the serenity of the Norwegian can readily be conjectured, especially when it is considered that the average Northman is by no means indisposed to have a little brush with his neighbor now and then. But in such an event the Germans usually gave tit for tat, and that with a vengeance. On one occasion they killed a bishop in the presence of the king; at various other times they burned monasteries over the heads of the inmates; and frequently they sheltered criminals, or demolished entire dwellings in order to obtain kindling wood speedily and conveniently.

Only by means of concord among themselves and strict exclusiveness could the Hanses for centuries maintain their position upon that inhospitable and thinly peopled shore. The novice, who usually entered the service of the Hansa at the age of twelve, was compelled to serve an apprenticeship of seven years, during which his duties consisted also in cooking, cleaning, and washing for and in waiting upon the older clerks. Thereafter he advanced to the position of journeyman, his inauguration being attended by festive, highly suggestive, and, to the beholder, amusing ceremonies. These ceremonies began with a great drinking bout arranged at the youth's expense. The next feature of the programme was entitled Das Staupenspiel im Paradies ("the Walloping in Paradise"), a procedure to which every apprentice was exposed annually and to which on this occasion he bade a final farewell. This part of the ceremony consisted in setting apart a space enclosed within birch boughs, on entering which the blindfolded and scantily attired youth who was to be initiated into the order of journeymen was thoroughly trounced by "angels of paradise" in the form of lusty companions who were usually unsparing of the rod. A festive procession through the streets followed. It was led by two fantastically attired youngsters who impersonated a Norwegian peasant and his wife, and whose duty it was to play tricks upon the sightseers and to amuse them. After a baptism in the sea the unfortunate youth who figured as the hero of this festival was subjected to a procedure akin to that of roasting a herring in the flue; and it is singular enough that the records show only one case of death by suffocation consequent upon this ordeal. Good days, however, now followed upon evil ones, and the youthful novitiate was feted and entertained by his companions and made to forget the sufferings and hardships of his initiation. Many other pastimes were indulged in by the members of the bureaus, which, however, cannot be touched upon here. Suffice it to say that they were characterized by the humor and roughness of the age. Despite repeated attempts of the Hansa and of the several cities to put an end to these sports, they nevertheless continued to be practised for centuries, upon the rather plausible plea that they served as a wholesome training for the mercantile youth. Never before or since, however, has the pedagogy of the rod found so thoroughgoing an application as here.