The Hansa Towns Part 12

In open a.s.sembly, 1526, the king did not hesitate to speak the following words of unmistakable clearness: "We must," he said, "withdraw from the strangers their unrestricted liberty; we must open the Swedish harbours to all s.h.i.+ps." Next year even more definite words were spoken in the a.s.sembly. It was decided "to curtail the Hanseatic privileges without further delay, as seriously prejudicial to the kingdom."

There was one way by which Lubeck could retain in leading strings the "va.s.sals," as she proudly called them, who had grown over her head. This was by means of their still unpaid debts. But Gustavus worked unremittingly towards attaining this end. His country, which was poor, had been yet further impoverished by wars, but still he succeeded, by means of heavy taxation, in raising supplies. He taxed everything that he could think of. It is said even hazel-nuts were subjected to this burden. Nay he even persuaded various towns and communes to melt down their church bells in order to expunge the national debt. By these trenchant means he succeeded in reducing it to a small amount by the year 1532, and then threatened the Hansa with yet more repressive measures, if they ventured to persist in claiming their ancient privileges.

No wonder that the ill-humour of the Lubeckers grew from day to day, and that they used to say to each other, "This is our thanks for having made an ox driver a king."

But Gustavus never swerved from his fixed resolve to make an end of Hanseatic privileges and monopolies as far as concerned his kingdom. By the time of his death in 1560 the power of the League was broken in Sweden beyond all hope or possibility of revival.

III.

WULLENWEBER.

Among the various disintegrating influences at work upon the League we have already named the Reformation. The new doctrines were destined at first to bring little blessing to the land in which they took their birth, and more especially to the Hansa was the purer creed to prove a source of dissension, resulting in eventual dissolution. Among other causes this was due to the fact that the cities did not all or at the same time embrace Protestantism. Thus a schism arose in their very midst: the Protestant cities eyeing the Catholic with distrust, and _vice versa_. Moreover, these changes of view and system led to great disunion in the various towns themselves, often temporarily weakening the authority of the munic.i.p.ality and causing the city to be too much pre-occupied to attend to the common affairs and the welfare of the entire League. The movement also took different forms in different centres. In some it came about quite easily, and found the ground all ready prepared; in others, it entered with strife and bloodshed, or with fanatical excesses and absurdities, as for example in Bremen, and Munster, where the over-excited sect of the Anabaptists held sway.

It was especially in the North, that the trade in indulgences, consequent on a Papal need for ready money, found the most rigid opponents. The clear-headed burghers resented this demand as an insolent defiance of their common sense, and many who had already been half unconsciously influenced by the stream of tendency towards a reformed faith, manifested in the persons of Wickliffe and Huss, felt that this outrageous and unblus.h.i.+ng traffic was too much for their credulity. The travelling merchants bought Luther's pamphlets, and carried them to their various homes. The wandering apprentices learnt the stirring psalms of the "Wittenberg nightingale." A new spiritual day was dawning, above all for the lower cla.s.ses, who, ignorant of Latin, the language of the Catholic creed, were unable to follow or comprehend the services of the church they attended.

It was in consequence of this awakening, and the wider and n.o.bler mode of thinking, and the educating force which it implied, that hand-in-hand with the religious movement there became manifest also a political stirring. The character of this was democratic, and it is not hard to understand why it was so. The people who had groaned under the oppression of the clergy and of the aristocracy, who almost invariably were their allies, began to a.s.sert their rights. They could now read the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, and thence could learn that the blind submission demanded by the priests was by no means an integral part of Christianity. They remembered how the cities had been founded on democratic principles; they drew to light old privileges and charters; and by their memory and their ardour they made things far from comfortable for the burgomasters and patricians who held the government of the towns. Especially was their power felt by the arrogant and dissolute clergy, whose property they confiscated and devoted to public purposes, and whose churches and monasteries they converted into almshouses and schools.

It is necessary to realize the absolute moral corruption of the priests, monks, and nuns, in order to comprehend the anger of the populace, and to excuse the excesses into which they were led by their righteous zeal.

Nor must it be forgotten that the people had groaned under the Vehmic Tribunal, which persecuted heretics, and that they had beheld Christians burn their fellow-Christians for the glory of G.o.d.

Already, early in the century, Dr. Johann Bugenhagen had been elected Bishop of the Lutheran Hanseatic cities, and their need for such an office gives us an indication of their numbers and importance.

Bugenhagen was a man specially suited to work out the reform of doctrines and to set in order church affairs, and this work he performed for the whole of Northern Germany and Denmark. The new movement gathered strength. It advanced like a mighty ocean with resistless power. Only Lubeck, of all the northern cities, remained untouched by the storms beating around it. True to its stubbornly conservative character it continued longer than the rest faithful to the Roman hierarchy. But even Lubeck had to yield. The pressure to which it gave way came from the people. For some time past these had craved teachers of "the purer word"

as the new creed was at first called. At first the demands were refused on imperial authority, but after a while concessions were made. It was needful to conciliate the inhabitants, for the funds of the city were low, thanks to the wars for Frederick and Gustavus, and it was foreseen that new taxes would be submitted to with a bad grace. Indeed, when in 1529 the rulers appealed to the guilds to support them in imposing new taxes they were answered by a delegation of forty-eight persons who replied to the munic.i.p.al demands in bold terms, of which the upshot was that they would treat of "no money questions until the munic.i.p.ality should permit the introduction of the evangelical teaching" and the sacrament be administered in both forms. This language was unmistakably clear, and the city rulers seeing the townspeople were in earnest, yielded to all their demands. Thus in 1531 Lubeck openly acknowledged the Lutheran creed. The democracy had spoken and triumphed. They had made their power felt; they were conscious of their success, and they did not mean easily to abandon their newly acquired position of importance. The leader and spokesman of this demonstration was Jurgen Wullenweber, the man whose ambition and energy were to give to the Hansa yet one more proud moment of triumph; one more, and the last.

The origin and the life of Jurgen Wullenweber are to this day wrapped in some mystery. It suited the various party factions to represent him respectively as an idol and a scoundrel. Even the records that survive concerning him in Lubeck are few. But modern research has unearthed much, and proved incontestably that Wullenweber, even if personally ambitious, was a true and disinterested patriot. Time has thrown round his figure a sort of mystical halo. He has been made the hero of many German romances, and the protagonist of various German plays.

Of his family little is known except that they came from Hamburg, and were no doubt at first wool weavers, as the name implies. Jurgen's name does not appear in any Lubeck register until the year 1530, when he was chosen a member of the Burgher Committee. He is there described as a merchant.

This man had been the chosen spokesman of the democratic party on the occasion when they defied the city rulers. Soon after he was elected into the munic.i.p.al council, and it was not long before it was generally felt that new blood stirred within that body. In 1533 King Frederick of Denmark died. During the interregnum that followed the Danes entered into a defensive alliance with the Swedes against their common oppressors, the Hansa. The Scandinavian nations wished to emanc.i.p.ate themselves from the League's tutelage. Wullenweber at a glance recognized the full gravity of the situation. He thought now or never the time had come to rea.s.sert, if need be by force of arms, the Hansa's might; now or never was the moment to punish for their ingrat.i.tude and faithlessness the two kings Lubeck had created. He called together a council, meeting in the guildhall, March 16, 1533, and with eloquent, ardent words, he laid before the a.s.sembly the whole political situation, its gravity, and its possibilities. He showed how the entire Hanseatic trade was endangered by the commerce of the Netherlands in the Baltic.

He urged the bold scheme that Lubeck should take forcible possession of the Sound, and thus hold in its own hands the key to that sea.

It was a scheme which had often crossed the minds of the Lubeck councillors, but which since the days of Waldemar Atterdag they had never tried to carry into effect, recognizing probably that the might of the League was not great enough to retain such a point of vantage, even if their physical force sufficed to gain it.

Wullenweber's eloquence and self-confidence, however, carried the day.

The next thing was to consider the matter of funds. Jurgen reminded his hearers of the silver and gold ornaments and church decoration confiscated by the State in consequence of the Reformation. These he said could be melted down. As before, he was listened to and obeyed. He spared nothing in his zeal, even the colossal chandelier of St. Mary's Church had to go into the melting pot to make cannons. So much for the funds. It was now needful to find the men. This was no arduous task.

Lubeck was a favourite resort for the mercenaries who in those times roamed the world in search of adventure and pay. Among these men were Max Meyer, a native of Hamburg, destined to become the _condottiere_ of the League in its last war.

The figure of Max Meyer is a most romantic one. His parents can never have credited what the fairies sang around the boy's cradle, that he would become a friend of the great king of England, Henry VIII., and have his portrait painted by the most eminent artist of his day, Holbein. He was born in the humblest circ.u.mstances, and brought up as a blacksmith. Two great iron conduits, the work of his hand, are shown in Hamburg to this day. He was a tall, strong, fine looking man, with lively eyes and large hands, and whoever beheld him at his smithy, swinging his large hammer upon the anvil, could not help fancying that he beheld some old Norse Viking, who was moulding his own sword, so bold and enterprising did he look. And, indeed, a desire for adventures stirred in his blood. He knew no rest beside his smithy fire. He felt he must go into the world. Already, as an apprentice, he had fought in some of the northern disturbances, had served as ensign under Christian II.

Throwing aside his hammer, he once more ranged the world in search of danger and distinction. Coming to Lubeck, in the course of his travels, he was engaged by that city to lead the 800 men whom she was sending to the emperor as aid against the Turks. A year after he returned to his native city, glorious and victorious, rich in booty and honours. Hamburg received him as though he were a great and powerful lord, and he impressed all his friends and relations by his magnificence. When he rode away to return to Lubeck, dressed in a full cuira.s.s, with nodding plumes upon his helmet, a local chronicler wrote that "he was so good to look upon, that, although he was a blacksmith, yet he was such a fine, clever fellow, he could pa.s.s anywhere for a n.o.bleman." He left Hamburg in triumph, trumpeters heading the procession, in which there were forty men in full armour, and two great waggon-loads of booty. The foremost men of the city conducted him to the gates.

Arrived at Lubeck, Max Meyer entered it in the same proud manner in which he had left Hamburg, greatly impressing the townspeople by his wealth and splendour. Among those who saw his entry and beheld him with a favourable eye was the rich widow of the Burgomaster Lunte. She lost her heart entirely to the handsome blacksmith, and at last she married him, sorely against the wish and will of her family. Thus Max Meyer became a person of importance in Lubeck, thanks to his marriage and his wife's connections, and, consequently, he was thrown into close relations with Wullenweber. The latter was not slow to recognize that he was dealing with no common person, and that here might be the instrumental hand to aid his schemes. And, indeed, Max Meyer soon became Wullenweber's close ally.

It was while Lubeck was thus at war with the Netherlands that Max Meyer, as commander of the city's war-s.h.i.+ps, approached the English coasts, hearing that some twenty-four Dutch merchant vessels were sailing in these waters. He hoped to capture them and to obtain rich booty. In this attempt, however, he failed; but he took, instead, some Spanish s.h.i.+ps laden with English goods. This was a breach of the peace, since the Hansa was not at war with England; but, regardless of this act, Meyer, perhaps because in want of provisions, actually sailed into an English harbour and anch.o.r.ed his vessel. King Henry, who had heard of his presence, and knew him to be a Lubeck captain carrying on hostilities against the Netherlands, received him with great honour. The English king had his own private reasons for wis.h.i.+ng to stand well with the Hansa. He knew they were Protestants, and that they were not too well disposed to the Emperor Charles, from whom he also had become estranged, now that he had grown weary of his Imperial Highness's aunt, the elderly Catherine of Aragon. As the Pope would not listen to the scruples of his tender conscience about having taken to wife his brother's widow, from whom he sought a divorce on that account--according to his own showing--he hoped, not wrongly, that the Protestants would take less stubborn and unscriptural views of the indissolubility of the marriage contract, and he therefore sought to conciliate all Protestant powers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HENRY VIII.]

But the England of those days, like the England of ours, was a law-abiding country, and three days after King Henry had received Meyer with great feasts and honours at Court, the royal guest was arrested as a pirate. It was pleaded that he ought to suffer the common penalty of piracy, that is to say, death. In these straits the merchants of the Steelyard came forward to aid their representative, offering to stand surety for him. They succeeded in averting the sentence of death by restoring the value of the goods seized; they could not succeed in relieving him from the imprisonment which his breach of international faith had incurred. Max Meyer had to go to prison, whence he was released at last only by the intervention of the munic.i.p.ality of Lubeck, though not until he had almost served his time.

Justice satisfied, Max Meyer returned to King Henry's Court, and was once more made a welcome guest. Whether he was empowered by the city to act as plenipotentiary, or whether, in the first instance, he acted on his own account, does not appear. But what is certain is that he made a number of proposals to King Henry, to which the latter lent a willing ear, that Meyer was knighted by his royal host, and received from him a golden chain in token of the honour in which he held him, and that Henry further promised him a yearly income of three hundred and a half golden crowns. The terms were that the English king should advance a considerable sum to Lubeck towards her war expenses--a sum which the city promised to refund and to double, out of the first profits derived from the conquered Danish kingdom.

Henry's object in this alliance was chiefly to hara.s.s and annoy his Catholic compeers, and to have a rich Protestant ally in the complications that were thickening round him. There was not much result from the friends.h.i.+p on either side; but for the moment, the news that the King of England was their friend and supporter, gave renewed courage to the democratic party in Lubeck. It also gave them ready cash wherewith to carry on the war with the Netherlands and their friends the Danes. For war it must be. This Wullenweber openly advocated, after various vain attempts to induce the Danish king to grant the Hansa's requests. Wullenweber himself had on two occasions been sent by Lubeck as their amba.s.sador to Copenhagen, and had returned home furious at the want of success that met his negotiations. Why should not the Hansa, he pleaded, once more play the _role_ of king-maker? Gustavus Vasa had proved a failure and a disappointment to the League, had broken every promise he had made to them. Let a new king be put in his place. Those who had helped the Swedish king into power with a hundred marks, should help him out of power with five hundred marks, he boasted; adding that before the next carnival he should make a masquerade before King Gustavus that he would not despise. For Denmark too he had his plan; and this was no other than to reinstate Christian II., once the enemy of the League. Christian had always opposed the aristocracy and the clergy, and had proclaimed himself the friend of the people. Reinstated by the Hansa, he would owe them grat.i.tude, so reckoned Wullenweber, and being popular with the lower cla.s.ses in Denmark the League might reckon upon their support. To aid him in this enterprise the dictator turned to the Count of Oldenburg, a relation of the dethroned king, an intrepid and intelligent Lutheran known as the Alcibiades of the North.

Christopher of Oldenburg, at that time thirty years of age, handsome in face and stature, was one of those princelings of Germany, of which the race is not quite extinct, whose t.i.tle was their sole fortune and who, in former days, were willing to sell their services to any king who needed their aid, and in more modern times are utilized to marry the redundant princesses of royal parentage, for whom no match can be found among the reduced number of reigning houses. These bold _condottieri_, whether in search of adventure, of booty, or of a marriage portion and ease, had little but their wits to rely upon. Christopher of Oldenburg, for example, possessed as his whole patrimony an old convent. He had attracted around him, however, a band of devoted troops, free lances, willing to follow wherever he led: men without fatherland, faith, or ideal, the sc.u.m of all lands, whose desire was bloodshed and booty, and whose sole religion was obedience to their chosen captain. Christopher of Oldenburg was not an ordinary chief. With the military courage of a _condottiere_ he combined a bright intellect and a mind of real elevation. He was well educated and well read. A copy of Homer accompanied him in all his adventures; his pa.s.sionate desire was to be a hero of romance. This was the kind of instrument Wullenweber required; the man who could realize, appreciate, and help to carry out his bold designs. And these were, in a word, to put the Hansa in possession of the Sound. Possessing this advantage, with two obedient monarchs upon the respective thrones of Denmark and Sweden, and enjoining the moral and material support of the English king, the League would once more be as in the days of its greatest glory.

So reasoned Wullenweber, and not without reason. But he was too ambitious, or, at any rate, too bold. He had not reckoned with the apathy and the economic egotism that dictated the policy of the sister towns. He was to play a dangerous game. He staked his all and he lost.

Wullenweber's original plan was to attack Denmark, while carrying on at the same time the war with the Netherlands. This proposal, which besides being audacious, meant a great outlay of money, alarmed the other cities, and, above all, the town of Hamburg. Owing to her endeavours, a brilliant congress was a.s.sembled within her walls during the month of March, 1534, when it was proposed to examine carefully the various points of grievance at issue between the Hansa and her opponents. There were present delegates from the various Baltic cities, imperial councillors, Netherland grandees, and Danish n.o.bles. But none of them exceeded in outward splendour the representatives of Lubeck, Jurgen Wullenweber and Max Meyer, as they rode into the city of Hamburg, dressed in full armour preceded by the chief of Lubeck's militia, by trumpeters and drummers, and followed by sixty armed riders. The timid Hamburgers glanced at all this military display with some terror, feeling a.s.sured that such a proud bearing meant that the town that sent forth these men would not easily yield its claims. Already, before the first a.s.sembly of the delegates, Wullenweber had been regarded with an evil eye by many of the other Hanseatic envoys. They could not grasp the ultimate ends he had in view for the benefit of the League. They thought he was inciting to needless expense and disturbance. They did not understand, still less did they sympathize with, the democratic wave which had swept over Lubeck, and which had brought two such men as Wullenweber and Max Meyer to the front. Local chroniclers, speaking of this meeting of plenipotentiaries, call the Hamburgers "the peace loving," and accuse the Lubeckers of being "the instigators of the woful wars."

On March 2, 1534, the Congress was opened by the Burgomaster of Hamburg in the grand council chamber of the local guildhall, an historical room, unfortunately destroyed in the great fire that devastated Hamburg in 1842. In an eloquent speech the local magnate described the miseries entailed by the war in which the Lubeckers had engaged against the Dutch, and urged that peace should be concluded in the interest of the common Hanseatic merchants. The burgomaster was followed by an imperial councillor, who said the same things in yet stronger terms. Wullenweber was visibly angered. His anger was increased when the Dutch envoy rose to his feet and claimed that it should be laid down as a principle "that the sea and all other waters should be free to the s.h.i.+pping of whosoever listed," adding that "if the Lubeckers suffered damage in consequence, they should find comfort in G.o.d's will and in the mutability of all earthly things."

This was too much for Wullenweber's temper to bear. He declared with violence that if the speeches continued in this tone and spirit he and his colleagues should leave the a.s.sembly, and this, in fact, they shortly afterwards did. Not only did he leave the a.s.sembly, but the city also, after he found that all the demands of Lubeck fell on deaf ears.

But before he left he made a powerful speech in the guildhall, wherein he a.s.serted and maintained that all he had done had been done solely for the general benefit of the League. He even accused the other Hanseatic delegates of being Dutch in sympathy, "a thing," he added, "which they and the Dutch would repent of as long as he lived."

He was asked to explain his projects. He sketched a plan almost identical in spirit with the Navigation Act of Cromwell; it might indeed almost be regarded as its prototype. When taunted regarding the egotism of this proposal, when told that the sole purpose that inspired it was to prevent the vessels of other powers from deriving a profit out of carriage of goods, Wullenweber retorted as angrily as Cromwell might have done, and with the same contempt for the petty spirits that could see no higher object, nor any larger or wider aims than purely personal and financial ones. To Wullenweber's mind there was at stake not only vulgar profit, but the control and supervision of the Baltic trade, the maintenance of the Hanseatic colonies, indeed of all commercial navigation; in a word, of everything that had made the Hansa what it was.

The colonial policy pursued by the Hansa, which had been one of its sources of strength, became a cause of weakness, and ultimately led to its fall. It was based in all essentials upon the same principles as those pursued later by other nations with regard to their foreign non-European colonies, and which led in time to the loss of these same colonies. The chief points were these: that the direct intercourse and traffic with the Eastern settlements and their commercial domain were reserved exclusively to Hanseatic vessels, and that transport by land was forbidden, because in that case it was not so easy to keep watch upon business, and to be a.s.sured that no Hanseatic laws were transgressed. Foreign flags were excluded from all Eastern ports and non-Hanseatic merchants not admitted to their markets. All traffic from the Eastern cities to non-Hanseatic places, and all traffic with these places were to go by way of Lubeck. This is the sum of the Lubeck Staple Act, which had a little sunk into abeyance during the late disorders and which Wullenweber desired to see fully reinforced. Again, to refer to England's dictator, with whom Wullenweber had some points of resemblance, this Lubeck staple was neither more nor less than the British staple, prescribed by Cromwell's Navigation Act, when it excluded foreign flags from American harbours, and interdicted the Americans from sending s.h.i.+ps to any other European harbour than those of the mother-land. Two hundred years separated these two Tribunes of the People from each other, and yet, in some respects, their ideals and ideas were identical. But to return to the course of our narrative, which has been interrupted in order to make clearer the aims the Lubeck burgomaster had in view.

Wullenweber grew daily more angered at the tone adopted in the Congress, not only from his opponents, but by those from whom he had a right to look for support.

On March 12th, accompanied by Max Meyer, and the same military train with which he had entered, he left Hamburg, shaking the dust of the city off his feet in anger. He was soon followed by the delegates of the other Baltic cities. The congress had come to an untimely end, and nothing had been settled.

Wullenweber's object in returning so precipitately was twofold. He desired to know the wishes of the city under the changed circ.u.mstances, and he wished to complain of the colleagues who had failed to support him. This precipitous return greatly alarmed the citizens, all the more because during Wullenweber's absence the aristocratic party had tried to lodge various complaints against the absent burgomaster, and to stir up the people to revolt and discontent. They had even ventured to insinuate that he was guilty of "stealing and treason." Indeed, the tumult in the city was so great and seemed so threatening, that many timid spirits began to think that discretion was the better part of valour, and that it would be well to absent themselves awhile.

Into this state of affairs Wullenweber, by his unexpected return, dropped like a bombsh.e.l.l. He saw that energetic steps were needful here.

He did not hesitate for a moment to take them. A meeting of the Forty-six was held, who were charged to invite the burghers to a general a.s.sembly in St. Mary's Church. More than a thousand persons replied to the summons. Wullenweber mounted the pulpit. In ardent words he expressed his patriotic intentions, and related in detail the reasons for his abrupt departure from Hamburg. He also complained most bitterly of the conduct of those who should have supported him. Next day he addressed a similar meeting in the guildhall, and spoke, if possible, in stronger terms, openly accusing his opponents of envy, and saying he was well aware that some among them even intended to attack him at night in his house, and to make him prisoner.

The upshot of his two speeches was that the democratic party once more gained the upper hand; that it was agreed that Wullenweber should act entirely according to his own discretion in the matter with the Netherlanders; that three of the munic.i.p.al councillors inimical to him should be removed from their place; and that various burghers, whom he designated as "of Swedish or Netherlandish sympathy," should either be banished or imprisoned.

With his power thus increased, Wullenweber returned to Hamburg, and the congress was reopened. Since, however, he could gain no support from the other Hanseatic cities for his policy of continuing the war with the Netherlands, he at last consented to accept a truce of four years; a truce which he recognized would leave his hands free for the execution of his other plans.

Nor did he hesitate for a moment to put them into action. Riders and foot messengers were engaged in all directions; the "peace s.h.i.+ps" were put into war condition; emissaries were sent to the sister towns to explain fully the purpose of the new attack upon the Scandinavian North, and to ask what a.s.sistance they proposed to render in money, s.h.i.+ps, and men.

Wullenweber's plan was really a stroke of genius, and by no means so foolhardy or foolish as his enemies have since tried to prove it. It was: to form around the whole Baltic basin a sort of German confederation, and had it succeeded, or rather had it not been impeded by the petty vacillating policy of the other cities, it would have marked a re-birth of the Hansa, and there would have been no power in the North that could have opposed it.

In May, 1534, hostilities began with Denmark, and Sweden was also threatened with armed intervention, in case the broken promises to the Hansa were still left unfulfilled. To the people, the counter promise was made that they should have nothing to fear from the Hansa's armies, "if they did not second the arrogance of their king."

To this Gustavus replied by demanding help from his brother rulers, saying "that it was intolerable that the Lubeckers should put up for auction the three good old northern realms, just as if they were their market wares."

In a short time the whole North was in flames. At first extraordinary success crowned the attacks of the Hansa's fleet and armies, and by Midsummer, 1534, almost the entire Danish kingdom was in the hands of the Lubeckers. Then fortune somewhat turned, and Lubeck had to see an army surround its very walls, much to the consternation of the inmates.

This danger was however happily averted, thanks to clever negotiations and force of arms; but meanwhile things had grown yet more complicated and intricate in the Scandinavian question. Party faction and religious jealousies prevented corporate action. There was a moment when things looked so black that even Wullenweber was daunted, and the confession escaped him that "if he were not in the middle of all this muddle, he should take good care to keep outside it."

In the midst of these difficulties dawned the year 1535, one of the most fatal in the life of the German States; a year destined to unravel and settle for ever the northern confusions.

Such a spectacle as the Baltic presented at this period it had not shown for many a long day. In the Sound, in all the Danish seas, in all the narrow waterways that separated the islands from one another, were seen waving from the tall masts of the Hanseatic "peace s.h.i.+ps," the flag of the League, and in the harbours of Lubeck, Rostock, and Stralsund, more s.h.i.+ps were put upon a war footing. There was likewise seen the white-and-black banner of the Prussian flotilla, sent to aid the imprisoned Danish king, while the flags of Denmark and Sweden fluttered from their respective vessels.