or how the Hanse forced Norway, Novgorod and even Bruges to grant privileges

The Hanseatic League undergoes a fundamental transformation in the second half of the 14^th century. It turned from a guild of merchants trading across the Baltic and the North Sea into an alliance of trading cities. An alliance that has proven that it can fight and win wars against major territorial powers. That sits quite uncomfortably with the existing European rulers who wonder what to do with this alien inside their body politic.

The Hanse had acquired a wide range of trading privileges in their main Kontors in England, Flanders, Norway and the Republic of Novgorod. These privileges did not only disadvantage the locals who were unsurprisingly hostile but also challenged the authority of the princes. That was just about bearable as long as this was just a community of grubby merchants from the Empire. Now that these merchants had built formidable cities, commanded great navies and toppled kings, it became an entirely different ballgame.

Furthermore, the legitimacy of the Hansa was fragile. The Hanseatic Cities, apart from Lübeck and Dortmund weren’t free imperial cities, making them at least formally subject to their territorial lords. As such they could not form an actual league of cities as the Northern Italian republics had done a hundred years earlier. Nor were they allowed to conduct foreign policy against their territorial lord, though they sometimes did. These fault lines will become ever more apparent as we go forward with our history.

This week we will get a first glimpse at what will lead to the ultimate demise of the League as we get into the year 1388, a year when the cities face off against three of the most powerful political entities in Northern Europe, the kingdom of England, the county of Flanders and the Republic of Novgorod.

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 117 – Embargoes

The Hanseatic League undergoes a fundamental transformation in the second half of the 14^th century. It turned from a guild of merchants trading across the Baltic and the North Sea into an alliance of trading cities. An alliance that has proven that it can fight and win wars against major territorial powers. That sits quite uncomfortably with the existing European rulers who wonder what to do with this alien inside their body politic.

The Hanse had acquired a wide range of trading privileges in their main Kontors in England, Flanders, Norway and the Republic of Novgorod. These privileges did not only disadvantage the locals who were unsurprisingly hostile but also challenged the authority of the princes. That was just about bearable as long as this was just a community of grubby merchants from the Empire. Now that these merchants had built formidable cities, commanded great navies and toppled kings, it became an entirely different ballgame.

Furthermore, the legitimacy of the Hansa was fragile. The Hanseatic Cities, apart from Lübeck and Dortmund weren’t free imperial cities, making them at least formally subject to their territorial lords. As such they could not form an actual league of cities as the Northern Italian republics had done a hundred years earlier. Nor were they allowed to conduct foreign policy against their territorial lord, though they sometimes did. These fault lines will become ever more apparent as we go forward with our history.

This week we will get a first glimpse at what will lead to the ultimate demise of the League as we get into the year 1388, a year when the cities face off against three of the most powerful political entities in Northern Europe, the kingdom of England, the county of Flanders and the Republic of Novgorod.

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Last week we ended on the Peace of Stralsund the masterpiece of the diplomacy of Henning von Putbus, the leader of the Danish Royal council. After the crushing defeat at the hands of the Hanseatic League and its allies, king Waldemar Atterdag and even the kingdom of Denmark itself had been done for. The allies’, i.e., the counts of Holstein, the king of Sweden, the duke of Mecklenburg and some of the great aristocratic Danish families intent was to turn the clock back to 1340 when the kingdom did not have a ruler, its great provinces had been mortgaged to German princes and the Hanse controlled to Oresund as well as the herring market in Scania.

By driving a wedge between the Hanse whose interests were mainly mercantile and its allies, the princes, whose interests were purely territorial, Henning von Putbus managed to preserve the kingdom of his absent monarch. It came at a price though.

Denmark had to cede control of the main castles that controlled the passage between the Baltic and the North Sea to the Hanse for a term of 15 years. Throughout that period the Hanse could collect 2/3rds of the tolls for the use of the Oresund and -even more important – could control who was allowed to go through and who wasn’t. Being able to block access gave the Hanse a monopoly on all trade with the Northeast of Europe. The Hanse had control of the export of Baltic herring a staple of European diet, of the finest beeswax that lit up the great cathedrals and monasteries and the large shipments of grain from the Hinterland of Pomerania, Prussia and Livonia that fed the large cities of Flanders and England.

The final concession Putbus had to make to secure a deal was to give these plebeian merchants a say in who would become king of Denmark once Waldemar Atterdag were to die. By the way, I initially called him Waldemar Dawn, which is a translation of the Danish word Atterdag. But I found it more fun to say the word Atterdag than the word Dawn, and if you search for Waldemar Dawn on Google you will struggle to find anything useful, whilst Waldemar Atterdag will get you straight there.

So, Waldemar Atterdag had no son. With his current wife still very much alive and past child-bearing age, the succession was likely to go through one of his daughters. The older, Ingeborg was married to Henry of Mecklenburg who in turn was the brother of the current king of Sweden as well as the son of the duke of Mecklenburg. The younger one, Margaret was married to Haakon, the king of Norway. Both of them had male children, Ingeborg’s son was called Albrecht and Margarets was called Olaf. 

Both were infants in 1375 meaning that their guardians, i.e., either the duke of Mecklenburg or the king of Norway would effectively rule Denmark. 1375 was the year king Waldemar Atterdag passed.

When the royal council of Denmark asked the Hanse, who amongst the two pretenders they were to choose, the Hanse went for the Norway option, king Olaf II who was five at the time. That seemed like the right decision since the Mecklenburger already had Sweden and were the overlords of Rostock and Wismar. It seemed a lot better to let the Norwegians have Denmark. Norway was a lot smaller than Sweden, further away and, as we heard before in the episode about Bergen, utterly dependent upon grain shipments from Lübeck and Prussia.

This was one of those decisions that were entirely rational but turned out to have been a majorly wrong in hindsight. What the Burgermeisters and city councillors did not know and probably could not even have imagined, was that Margaret, youngest daughter of Waldemar Atterdag was the greatest Scandinavian politician of the Middle Ages – full stop.

I heard Simon Sebag Montefiore saying on a different podcast that there is a fashion to elevate the role of women in history – presumably beyond of what their actual impact warrants. That may be so, but in the case of Margaret of Denmark there is no bigging up possible. She is undeniably an exceptional political operator, a crucial figure in Scandinavian history and the Hanse’s most formidable opponent.

But for now, you should park Margaret in the back of your mind. She will make her presence felt very soon. For now, we need to contemplate how the rest of Northern Europe felt about n association of cities taking charge of the fate of entire kingdoms.

For the last 150 years or so the counts of Flanders, the kings of England and the rulers of Norway and Novgorod had regarded the men who had come on their cogs from the east with furs, beeswax, grain, copper and whatnot as merchants. Which is not surprising given that was exactly what they were.

But in these years from 1360 onwards it had become clear that they were not just merchants. They had proven they could muster a navy that could bring down a king any time they so wanted. If the Hanse is not just a trading association but a political power, the trading privileges they held in Flanders, England or Novgorod take on a very different meaning.

No longer are they concessions made to attract trade and grow their own markets. They are also concessions to a foreign power that can use the benefits to fit out ships that could attack their harbours and castles. Moreover, some of these privileges meant the Hansards operated outside the jurisdiction of the local rulers. Cases against them for breach of contract had to be brought before their judges, not the local magistrate. In criminal cases they were either immune from the royal officials or were smuggled out of the country before they could be brought to heel.

In a world where the monarchies move gradually towards a modern understanding of the state as the holder of a monopoly on violence, these ancient privileges become increasingly hard to swallow.

All these misgivings were boosted by the constant complaints of the locals. The rulers own subjects  have to cough up for all the tolls and taxes these foreigners do not have to pay. The Hansards have privileges in the markets and in many places can even compete directly with their commerce by selling to retail customers.

And finally, along with the growing role of the state comes the understanding that all this economic activity actually matters. In 1319 the company of the Merchants of the Staple is established in England by Royal Charter. The merchants of the Staple are given the monopoly in the trade with wool, leather, lead and tin. That was intended both to concentrate the trade, making it more efficient as well as facilitating the collection of taxes and dues. A little later a competing association of Merchant Adventurers forms who trade in all the goods not covered by the monopoly of the Merchants of the Staple. They too receive a royal charter in 1407. And their major competitors are the Hansards.

These tensions result in an almighty blow-up in 1388. And it did not happen in just one place, but in three, but all at the same time. Let’s start with the events in Flanders.

When we left the scene in Bruges in 1360 the Hanse had just achieved a major victory. The city of Bruges had attempted to curtail the Hanse’s privileges. In response the Hansards staged a walkout thereby cutting Bruges off from supply of goods from the Baltic. Amongst those the grain from Prussia was the one that hurt the most. Bread prices for the lower classes in the overcrowded city went up, there was fear of riots and the citizens of Bruges, still the largest and most important trading place in Northern Europe had to cave.

For the subsequent 15 years things went reasonably smoothly, but by 1375 tensions rose again. The members of the Kontor complained to the Hansetag that Bruges was claiming import tax on the stockfish from Bergen, that they had banned the import of Hamburg beer and that the city authorities were unwilling to prevent attacks on their warehouses and then failed to honour claims for damages.

The Hansetag sent a delegation to Bruges to negotiate but they ran into a brick wall. After the delegation had returned back home, the Hansards in Bruges decided to take things into their own hands and stage another walkout.

They had to plan this in secrecy, not only because they did not want to give the city or the count of Flanders a chance to stop them, but also because they were no longer allowed to steer the policy of the Kontor themselves. Initially the Kontors were managed by the merchants who were on location at any given time. They would select their aldermen and make the decisions about how to handle any conflict with the locals. In 1366 the cities and the Hansetag took over control of the Kontors. From now on all major decisions had to be taken by the Hansetag and or one of the cities’ representatives on site.

Something went wrong in the process and the secret of the planned walkout came out before the Hansards could get themselves and their wares out of the city. The count of Flanders was apoplectic and had the merchants thrown in jail and their goods sequestered. Since they had acted without permission from back home, they did not get any support from the Hansetag.

Caught in the middle, the German merchants in Bruges had to swallow the demands of the count of Flanders. They were made to stay and to trade from their now much less privileged position. Once released from prison they wrote a bitter letter back home to Lübeck: quote “Now that the lords of the cities are in charge of us, they may also deliberate on the disgrace that has been done to us, for we did not want to give up our privileges.”

This is now quite embarrassing for the cities. They had wanted to take control of the Kontors and upon the first challenge, the new system had utterly failed. They had to do something. Sending a letter of protest was something, so they did that.

But negotiations did not even begin. That had less to do with the lack of seriousness of the letter, but with problems in Flanders itself. In 1379 the Revolt of Ghent broke out. The city of Ghent was rising up against the count of Flanders. Relations between the count and the city had been fraught for a long time.

The count had sided with the king of France during the hundred years war, which had a detrimental effect on the ability to import wool from England. English wool was critical in the production of cloth which is what had made the Flemish cities rich. The city of Ghent had previously revolted in 1338 and established an independent city government that signed treaties with England. But in 1345 the counts had brought Ghent and the other cities back under their control.

Fast forward to 1379 and revolt broke out again. The trigger was that the citizens of Bruges had been allowed by the count to build a new canal to the sea to protect their rapidly silting harbour. As work progressed, Ghent citizens attacked the workers from Bruges, killed a bailiff and burnt one of the count’s castles down. Things escalated and within weeks weavers all across Flanders took up arms against the count.

What followed was a brutal war between several of the cities, including Ghent Bruges and Ypres on one side and the count and his French allies on the other. A war that devastated the richest county in all of Christendom. In 1382 the count defeated the cities at the battle of Roosebeke which led to a series of reprisals against the leading citizens who had supported the rebellion. Only Ghent still refused to surrender and the war dragged on for another 3 years.

Bottom line was that most of the foreign merchants left Flanders during this period to avoid getting killed in the crossfire. By the end of 1382 only about 20 Hansards still held out in the devastated city of Bruges.  One of the reasons the war ended with a peace agreement was that the old count of Flanders died in 1384.

His incredibly rich county went to his son-in-law, the duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold. Philip needed to urgently rebuild the economy of Flanders in order to fund his participation in the hundred-years war. He therefore entered into negotiations with the Hanse about a return of the German merchants to Bruges.  

The Hanse thought they had the upper hand and demanded the restoration of all their ancient privileges plus an exorbitant compensation for lost business. And on top of that they demanded that Philip would erect a chapel as atonement for the imprisonment of the Hanse merchants in 1378 as well as three masses to be sung every year to commemorate those who had died during the revolt.

These demands, in particular the chapel went too far for the duke of Burgundy. Even though it wasn’t him who had imprisoned the merchants, it was still his honour that would be diminished by such an atonement.

I am not quite sure what it was that made the Hanse to put forward such an obviously impossible and economically irrelevant demand. In part this may have been to gain a bargaining chip that could easily be sacrificed. It could also have been because the Hanse itself was divided. Lübeck and the Wendish cities were pursuing a hard line against Philip, whilst Danzig and the Teutonic Knights advocated for a more conciliatory approach.

This rift within the association shows that the Hanse was by no means a monolithic organisation. They could align behind one purpose and maintain tight discipline as they had done during the war against Denmark. But it wasn’t something the Hanse cities were usually comfortable with. The confederation of Cologne, that agreement they had all signed in the build-up to the war with Denmark and that demanded strict compliance by all members ran out in 1385 and was not renewed. The Hanse was not a league of cities or a permanent alliance, but something much looser, held together by cultural ties and common interests, not a command-and-control structure. And an outright commercial war with Flanders was not in everyone’s interest.

So, when negotiations with Philip of Burgundy collapsed in 1388, the cities came together on a Hansetag to debate whether or not to place Bruges under embargo again. The Wendish cities did win the support of the majority by a thin margin.

So, the embargo was declared and the merchants in the Kontor of Bruges left the city to settle in Dordrecht in Holland for the time being. And the terms of the embargo were even stricter than in 1358. All trade with Flemish merchants was prohibited. Even entering the prohibited zone without goods was to be punished. Goods arriving had to carry a certificate of origin. Any wares arriving from Flanders in any Hanseatic port had to be confiscated, even if they had come with a neutral ship. Previously the rule had been to just send the contraband back.

But, and there is a big but, the Wendish cities had to make material concessions to the Prussians to get their approval. Danzig, Elbing, Thor etc. were allowed to trade amber with Flanders, they were allowed to import cloth for the Teutonic Knight’s robes and even go to the markets in Brabant.

And as for the Dutch cities like Kampen, they were even more reluctant to comply. They saw a great opportunity to benefit from a major smuggling operation by allowing the grain ships from Danzig to unload in their harbours.

The laxity of the blockade meant that the embargo lasted a lot longer than last time. Only after 4 years did the parties agree. The Hansards had to drop the demand for a chapel and cut the damage claim to 11,000 pounds of silver. In return they got a few more privileges, in particular improved protection against piracy.

By the end of 1392 the merchants of the Kontor of Bruges returned. Again, the Hanse had triumphed over the greatest trading city in their world and one of the most powerful territorial lord on the continent. But the success already rang a bit hollow.

Even before the Hansards returned to Bruges did the local merchants vow not to let these foreigners gain any more headway. The new ruler of Flanders was the duke of Burgundy whose lands extended into Northern France, down into actual Burgundy and Holland. Next time the Hansards want to move their Kontor elsewhere in the Netherlands, they will find it more and more difficult to escape the clutches of the duke.

But most concerning was the constant breaking of the blockade. This unveiled internal disagreements between the cities whose economic interests had begun to diverge.

Flanders wasn’t the only flashpoint for the Hanseatic League. England was another.

King Edward III, the great friend and sponsor of the Hanse had died in 1377. Even by the end of his reign the relationship had cooled off a bit. Gone were the days when the German merchants went out of their way to save his majesty from the embarrassment of having his crown sold at auction to the highest bidder.

England had for centuries been just a producer of wool that was sold to the cities of Flanders where it was weaved into cloth. The merchants who had a monopoly on selling this wool were the Merchants of the Staple, a trading association established by royal charter in 1319 but probably even older.

This monopoly forced others who wanted to participate in England’s most important industry to look for ways to get around these restrictions. What the monopoly of the Merchants of the Staple did not cover was the finished product, i.e., cloth.

There was surely some form of cloth industry in England before the 14^th century serving mainly local demand. But by the 1350s this industry had scaled up. The reason was probably threefold.

One was the simple profit motive. As the splendid guild houses in Ghent, Ypres, Bruges and later Antwerp make abundantly clear, there was a lot of money to be made in cloth, a lot more than in just producing wool.

The second was the disruption in the trade with Flanders caused by the hundred-years war. As we just heard, the count of Flanders and then his successor, Philip of Burgundy, supported the French. Hence England would often stop the export of wool to Flanders. That meant the wool producers in England needed to figure out what to do with all that excess wool they could no longer sell. So they began making cloth themselves.

And finally, these ambitious men who did not get a seat in the Merchant of the Staples’ hall opened up export markets for English cloth. They called themselves the Merchant Adventurers. There is still today a society of merchant adventurers in York whose splendid guildhall is well worth a visit.

By the 1350s these merchant adventurers had beaten a path into the Baltic, travelling the long way around Jutland. Their English cloth was cheaper and often easier to obtain than the Flemish product.  The return journey was profitable too as there was a lot of demand in England for wood, grain and copper.

The harbours the Merchant Adventurers sailed to were Elbing, Danzig and Stralsund, rather than Lübeck. They were often well received by the Teutonic Knights who had close relationships with the English aristocracy. British knights would come down to Prussia for sport during the years when the Hundred-years war went into a lull and opportunities for their favourite pastime, fighting, murdering and pillaging had become scarce.

The English Merchant Adventurers rented houses and market stalls and just generally made themselves comfortable in their new home. Soon their business expanded into the great herring market in Scania. Being great sailors and fairly close, they travelled to the Baie of Bourgneuf to load up with salt, turned round and headed for Falsterbo where they bought and pickled the herring they later sold back home or in Flanders.

When that started to bite into the profits of the Teutonic Knights and the merchants of Gdansk they turned against the English. After the war with Denmark, the Hanse had gained control of the Oresund and could therefore simply bar the Merchant Adventurers from coming in.

In return the English now made life difficult for the Hanseatic merchants in the Steelyard in London and their other Kontors along the east coast. Once Richard II assumed the throne pressure increased further. Other than his father, Richard was much more amenable to listen to his own subjects’ complaints against the foreign traders.

Upon Richard’s ascension to the throne the royal council refused to confirm the Hanse’s privileges unless certain conditions were met, including the preparation of a definitive list of Hanse members. The latter was wholly unacceptable to the Hanse as that would have forced them to take on a much more corporate structure with fixed membership and permanent institutions. And finally, the English had the audacity to demand reciprocity, i.e., grant the Merchant Adventurers the same rights in the Hanseatic Cities that the Hansards enjoyed in England. How dare they!

The initial reaction was diplomacy as per the usual playbook. The new Burgermeister of Lübeck, Jakob Pleskow travelled to England and after long and arduous discussions received the confirmation of the old privileges.

But that was just a piece of paper. The king still introduced new taxes on the Steelyard merchants, which they refused to pay on the basis of their ancient rights.

And generally the treatment of Hanseatic Merchants in England remained harsh. A Prussian envoy to the court of Saint James lists the following complaints:

• In 1375 a Danzig citizen had his ship and contents confiscated by Edward le Dispenser and when he claimed redress his claim was rejected
• In 1379 a ship was held for 8 months in the harbour of London, losing its owners 100 pound sterling
• In 1381 a ship ran aground, and the locals took away its entire load worth 6oo pound sterling
• In Scarborough in 1383 the locals accused a German merchant of being a Breton traitor and refused to pay him for the goods he had sold and handed over.
• The most outrageous incident had happened in 1378 when another Danzig merchant was murdered together with his three shipmates by soldiers on an English Navy ship.

We can be sure that similar complaints were made by the English Merchant Adventurers about their treatment in the Baltic harbours.

Things escalated further until in 1385 an English fleet attacked German merchantmen in the harbour of Bruges. 6 of these ships belonged to the Teutonic Knights. The grand Master of the Teutonic Knights immediately declared an embargo on England.

To avoid having their goods confiscated, the Merchant Adventurers rapidly left Danzig and Elbing and hankered down in Stralsund where they initially found a friendly welcome.

But as there was no redress to be obtained for the various complaints, the city of Stralsund in agreement with the other Wendish cities confiscated the English merchants’ goods. At which point Richard II confiscated the goods in the Steelyard.

That was in that same year of 1388 when the Hanse declared an embargo against Flanders. The Teutonic knights and the Prussian cities who had been less keen on the embargo in Flanders as we have heard, nevertheless demanded all-out war against England.

Jakob Pleskow Bürgermeister of Lübeck and his colleague from Stralsund, Wulf Wulflam were dispatched to England to negotiate. These two can be credited with avoiding a most likely disastrous military engagement.

Even though the Hanse was still full of the glory of the recent success against Denmark, these two men and their colleagues on the city councils were hard-headed merchants who were used to measuring risk and return. They could think beyond the already massive military challenges posed by an attack on England to the impact such an action could have on an organisation as fluent as the Hanseatic League. And at the same time, they were astute negotiators who could bluff their way through a royal council of noblemen.

They could make their threats of imminent military intervention sound credible, whilst at the same time keeping their demands within a range that would not humiliate the king and his council. This time there were no calls for the construction of a chapel of atonement.

An agreement was finally reached. The confiscated goods were returned and the existing privileges for the Steelyard were again confirmed. In return the Merchant Adventurers were given the right to trade in the Hanseatic ports, even to trade ship to ship with other foreigners.

Who won in this contest is a bit of a debate. Yes, the Hanse managed to retain their privileges in the Steelyard without having to grant full equivalent treatment to the English. But in the long run the deal was probably more beneficial to the English than the Germans.

The Merchant Adventurers established a permanent base in Gdansk, their own guildhall and elected a governor. They went well beyond the agreement of 1388, formed corporations with Hanseatic merchants and offered their goods to retail customers.

In 1398 the Grand Master of the Teutonic knights had enough and unilaterally cancelled the agreement with the English Crown. But nothing came of it. In 1398 the League was no longer prepared to get into a fully-fledged fistfight with England.

That left the legal situation in limbo. Trade between England and the Baltic continued but without an overarching legal framework. Things depended a lot on circumstances and goodwill. Complaints kept going back and forth about how the English prevented the Germans from exercising their rights and how the Hanseatic cities imposed petty restrictions on the Merchant Adventurers, such as banning them from bringing their wives along.

This will go on and on until the closure of the Stalhof in 1598.

To complete our story of the embargoes of 1388 we need to mention the conflict with Novgorod.

The Kontor in Novgorod was the first the Hanse had established and still accounted for much of the export in furs and beeswax. But conflict had existed for quite a while caused mainly by the Teutonic Knights.

The Teutonic Knights weren’t members of the Hanseatic League but exercised a significant influence over it in their role as overlords of the Prussian cities as well as thanks to their own trading activities.

For the rulers of Novgorod, the Teutonic Knights and the Hanseatic league were largely synonymous. So, every time the knights expanded from their holdings in Latvia and Estonia at the expense of the Republic of Novgorod, the Novgorodians retaliated by confiscating the goods in the St. Peterhof.

Tension kept escalating and by 1388 the Hansetag decided to put Novgorod under embargo too. Given the League had shut down trade with England and Flanders, the two major export markets for furs and Beeswax, the incremental damage to their trade was limited.

Again, the blockade was not super tight, but still Novgorod caved. A new trade agreement was signed that confirmed and detailed the respective rights and privileges. This agreement held for almost a century.

But what we see with all these embargoes is that 18 years after the great victory over Denmark and the Peace of Stralsund, the coherence of the Hanseatic League has starting to come away at the seams.

The confederation of Cologne is not renewed. The cities, namely Lübeck, Rostock, Wismar and Stralsund on the one hand and the Prussian cities plus the Teutonic Knights on the other have different economic interests that drives them to demand diverging political positions. And we have not even talked about the wavering cities like Kampen and Bremen who are notorious for their blockade breaking.

Next week we will talk about another chapter in 14^th century Hanseatic history, one that is probably the most famous. I talk obviously about the Victual Brothers, the notorious Baltic Pirates and their last leader Klaus Störtebecker whose last walk is part of Hamburg Folklore. I hope you are going to join us again, and quite frankly, why wouldn’t you – its about Pirates!

Before I go, let me thank all of you who are supporting the show, in particular the Patrons who have kindly signed up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. It is thanks to you this show does not have to do advertising for products you do not want to hear about. If Patreon isn’t for you, another way to help the show is sharing the podcast directly or boosting its recognition on social media. If you share, comment or retweet a post from the History of the Germans it is more likely to be seen by others, hence bringing in more listeners. My most active places are Twitter @germanshistory and my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast. As always, all the links are in the show notes.    

And just to remind you, the sub-podcast The Hanseatic League is still running. So, if you want to point a friend or relative towards the History of the Germans but want to avoid confusion, just send them there. The Hanseatic League is available everywhere you can get the History of the Germans.

The Peace of Stralsund

The Hanseatic League is first and foremost an organisation driven by commerce and commerce rarely sees the necessity of war. But in 1360 the organisation that had only just transitioned from a community of merchants to an alliance of cities found itself in gridlock with Waldemar Atterdag, Waldemar Dawn, king of Denmark..

Waldemar’s objective throughout his 35-year reign was to rebuild the kingdom of Denmark that had virtually disintegrated under his predecessors. And for that he needed money. That money he got from the two sources of wealth of the state of Denmark, taxing the trade in herring and the tolls for passing through the Oresund. The Hansards who dominated the herring trade and the traffic through the Oresund were the ones who were supposed to pay for that.

If that had not breached the tolerance levels of even the most sober Hanseatic merchant, the attack on Gotland and occupation of the Hanseatic city of Visby did. A fleet leaves Lübeck in 1362 to put the Danish tyrant back into his box…

Hello and Welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 116 – The War with Denmark Part 2

The Hanseatic League is first and foremost an organisation driven by commerce and commerce rarely sees the necessity of war. But in 1360 the organisation that had only just transitioned from a community of merchants to an alliance of cities found itself in gridlock with Waldemar Atterdag, Waldemar Dawn, king of Denmark. Waldemar’s objective throughout his 35-year reign was to rebuild the kingdom of Denmark that had virtually disintegrated under his predecessors.

And for that he needed money. That money he got from the two sources of wealth of the state of Denmark, taxing the trade in herring and the tolls for passing through the Oresund. The Hansards who dominated the herring trade and the traffic through the Oresund were the ones who were supposed to pay for that.

If that had not breached the tolerance levels of even the most sober Hanseatic merchant, the attack on Gotland and occupation of the Hanseatic city of Visby did. A fleet leaves Lübeck in 1362 to put the Danish tyrant back into his box…

Before we get into this, I want to thank my Patrons again for their generosity. It is thanks to your support this show stays on the road and remains advertising free. You guys may have noticed that so many podcasts are getting overrun with adverts, and podcasters are made to wax lyrically about rather basic banking services or underperforming telco providers. You do not want to waste your time with that, and I do not want the cringe of talking about my mental health. So, if you feel that this show is worth supporting, become a patron for as little as a chocolate croissant per month. It will be good for both your waistline and your mental health. And special thanks to Jason H., Georg B., Carsten E. and Andrew K. who have already signed up. 

Last episode we looked at the impact of the Black death on the Hanseatic League which, despite a third or more of the cities’ population dead had no material adverse long-term effects. As it happened, the four great scourges of the 14^th century, war, plague, spiritual disorientation and climate change did not stop the League from hurtling towards its economic and political zenith. Arguably it was the challenges of the 14^th century that allowed for this alliance of trading posts on the edge of Europe to rise to the prominence it still retains.

Two things helped the Hanse to manage the plague.

Firstly, cities remained an attractive place for ambitious young men and women keen to escape the confines of village life. Throughout the 14^th century peasants migrating into the cities made up for population lost to the regular outbreaks of Pestilence and Typhoid.

Secondly, the plague brought about a material rise in average incomes across Europe as workers exploited the persistent labour shortages. I found a statistic by the Bank of England that tracked real -not just nominal- GDP per capita on a consistent basis from 1270 to 2016. There you can see that there was only one sustained increase in real GDP per head for 500 years and that happened between 1350 and 1400. Economic activity per head moved from around £800 in today’s money to £1,100.

And just for anyone who dreams of living in the Middle Ages, today the average GDP per head in the UK is ~£29,000, a cool 25 times the levels after the boost to wages during the plague. Or to put it another way, the annual average wage in 1400 bought you just one iPhone Pro Max.

But luckily for us, the guys in the Middle Ages did not waste their money on electronic gadgets that fried their brains, but on magnificent churches, sturdy city walls, wooden ships and the occasionally tight leggings that left little to the imagination.

And it is of wooden ships not leggings we want to talk today.

We left the narrative last week with the Burgermeister Johann Wittenborg setting sail for the Oresund. The aim was to bring the king of Denmark, Waldemar Dawn back into line. He had taken over the strategic island of Gotland and had captured the Hanseatic city of Visby. There was no more room for compromise left.

The Wendish and Pomeranian cities, that means Lübeck, Hamburg, Rostock, Wismar, Lüneburg, Stralsund, Greifswald as well as Anklam and Demmin met and decided that war was inevitable. Each city committed to a full embargo on trade with Denmark and offered support in the form of ships funded by a war tax on all exports from their harbours.

The cities were not willing to take on Waldemar Dawn all by themselves though. They brought in the sworn enemies of the Danish king of which there were many. Waldemar’s policy of rebuilding royal power had taken away lands and privileges from many of the leading powers in the Baltic, the counts of Holstein, the kings of Sweden and Norway as well as many of the Danish nobles. Even the Grand Master of the Teutonic knights signed up to the alliance.

On paper this looked like a walk in the park. But as the Germans say “Papier ist geduldig” which translates as paper is patient. Makes no sense but then it still does.

The first crack appeared because the agreement bound only the Wendish and Pomeranian cities. There had not been a general Hansetag, a gathering of all the members of the league that had decided to go after Waldemar.

Because it was only one part the cities that had signed on the dotted line, other members of the Hanse were free to continue supplying the Danes. The Dutch cities, in particular Kampen on the Ijssel, then one of the largest trading centres in the low countries saw no reason to toe the line laid down by Lübeck. Kampen traders kept bringing the salt of Bourgneuf to Skane so that herring could still be pickled and could still be shipped to Europe.

Even more irritating than the breaking of the blockade was the gradual backing out of the princely allies. Initial commitments to provide armies and undertake separate attacks were watered down into mere financial support. Only the count of Holstein still promised to attack Jutland and the King of Sweden promised an army for the siege of the great new castles built on the Oresund.

In April 1362 a fleet of 52 ships, of which 27 were the larger cogs set off for Copenhagen. Up to this point any military activity of the Hanseatic League had been undertaken in the context of a larger war. The cities provided auxiliaries, transport and occasionally warships. But they would usually operate under the command of an aristocratic general. This time there is no territorial lord who takes command. The expedition is led by a merchant, the Bürgermeister of Lübeck, Johann Wittenborg.

Wittenborg was typical for his class. His father had already been a citizen of Lübeck and a member of the city council. The family’s wealth came from trade and Johann had cut his teeth on the classic route from the Northern Baltic to Flanders and England.

That means he is likely to have received a thorough education in how to defend himself with a sword and lance, a skill eminently necessary for survival in the wilds of Finland or Russia. He would also have become a proficient sailor and leader of his ship’s company. The merchants of the Hanse fall broadly into two categories, the shippers and the traders.

A shipper would usually own a share in the ship, normally about 15 to 25% and would be in charge of the vessel and the crew. There would also be a Steuermann, a sailing master who would be in charge of the more technical aspects of sailing. Alongside the shipper were the normal merchants who would also own a share in the ship but would be simple passengers during the voyage. Being the shipper was generally the more lucrative position.

The shipper could bring both his own goods and goods from other traders who did not come along for the journey. Freight rates were generally very high given the risks and uncertainties of sea travel and depended on the value of the cargo. For instance, freight rates for grain from Danzig to Bruges were 48% of the value of the merchandise, Rye 68%, Salt 66% and wood 79%. For the even more perilous and long journey bringing salt from Portugal to Bruges it was 85%. Freight rates for luxury goods like wine, cloth and spices were more like 10%, still a good deal for the shipper given the much higher value of the merchandise.

So, if you wanted to be rich, you wanted to be a shipper. We do not know whether Johann Wittenborg was a shipper, we only know that he was rich. But these things go together so it is likely he had a lot of experience in running and managing large vessels full of valuable cargo.

But what he is unlikely to have received is the kind of thorough education in military strategy and tactics the sons of lords and princes received. That was the reason why the mayors of the Hanseatic cities had until now let others take command in war.

In the 1362 campaign there were no others, or it may have been that both Wittenborg himself and his fellow councillors and city mayors believed that it was time for the Hansards to step out of the shadows and take control of military operations themselves.

So Wittenborg, 41 years old and brimming with confidence sets off to tear down the fortresses Waldemar had built on the Oresund. His 27 cogs and 25 smaller ships were merchant vessels just marginally altered to carry soldiers.

We are still in a period where there are no guns on ships. Therefore, there was no need to have warships with much stronger hulls and openings for cannons. Sea-battles where they were fought involved ramming and then boarding the enemy vessel.

Bows and crossbows were the only distance weapons available, meaning engagements were taking place at very close quarters. It is likely that this form of naval warfare resulted in ships with ever higher constructions on the bow and stern  from where bowmen could rain arrows down on the enemy’s deck.  

The 1362 campaign did not envisage any major naval battles, mainly because Waldemar had no navy. For the last century the Hanseatic and other merchants had monopolised the Danish sea trade, meaning there were few Danish merchants and even fewer Danish sea-going ships.

The plan was to take the castles on the seashore. In the absence of guns, taking a castle, even one right on the seashore, meant that the ship’s company would disembark and then pursue a siege pretty much like any land army would do.

The ships’ job was to block attempts to resupply the besieged from the sea. When Wittenborg arrived at the Oresund he had counted on his ally, the king of Sweden to bring along his army so that the combined forces could take either Copenhagen or one of the other big castles, Malmo, Falsterbo, Skanor or Helsingborg.

For the Swedes Helsingborg was the best option as it was on the eastern, that means on their side of the Oresund and furthest away from the other three castles.

For Wittenborg it was the least attractive, being the furthest away from his position and required him to pass the Danish defences in Copenhagen, Malmo and Falsterbo before getting there.

But the need for Swedish troops trumped the concerns of the league commander. Helsingborg it was to be.

Imagine Wittenberg’s disappointment when he finds that the king Magnus of Sweden too had softened in his determination to take revenge on King Waldemar Dawn. What kept the Swedish ruler from keeping his promise was probably that Visby had thrown out the Danes in the winter of 1361/62 which removed the immediate threat to Sweden. And at the same time duke Albrecht of Mecklenburg was stirring up trouble at home which two years later would result in an uprising, an invasion and the removal of said king of Sweden.

So, the Swedes did not show, leaving Johann Wittenborg carrying the can. The sensible thing would have been to sail back and curse the treacherous swedes all along the way. But in this case the oh so sober Hanseatic merchants did not do the sensible thing. Instead, they did a silly thing.

They disembarked the majority of the soldiers and commenced a traditional siege of Helsingborg. The siege lasted 12 weeks until Waldemar staged a daring raid on the poorly guarded Hanseatic warships in the Oresund. He gathered his men, rowed across the barely six miles from Zealand to Helsingborg and captured 12 of the precious vessels laden with supplies and weapons.

That put an inglorious end to this first military expedition of the Hanseatic League. Johann Wittenborg signed an onerous armistice with Waldemar and returned his much-diminished fleet to Lübeck.

The blame for the debacle was squarely put on Wittenborg. He was thrown out of the city council as soon as he arrived. Then he was brought before the court. What specifically he was accused of is not reported. His conviction was for letting the ships be captured and for “other reasons specific to him”.  He was beheaded “pour encourager les autres”

The defeat took literally the wind out of the sails of the Hanseatic League. The negotiations for a permanent settlement with Waldemar dragged on until 1365 and left both sides deeply dissatisfied.

The cities squabbled over the cost of the failed campaign and the lost ships. There was serious concern the unity of the “common merchants of the empire” could fall apart. But it did not.

Despite the defeat there was still a lot left the alliance provided to its members, first and foremost the Kontors. In 1366 the cities got together in another assembly, a full Hansetag in Lübeck and fundamentally reorganised the Kontors.

Instead of individual merchants, the Kontors were now to be run by representatives of certain cities on behalf of the whole. That gave these cities an important stake in the well-being of the organisation whilst at the same time bringing them under a degree of supervision from their peers.

And another thing helped. King Waldemar Dawn, otherwise an incredibly astute politician fell victim to the sin of pride.

He was now 43 years old and had been on the throne of Denmark for 23 years. In that time he had almost single handedly rebuilt his kingdom from literally nothing into the dominant power in the Baltic. He had expanded Danish rule into Oland and Gotland effectively controlling all the trade that came west. He had forced the citizens of Visby to fill up three barrels one with gold, one with silver and one with jewels and taken this treasure home in triumph.

And last but not least he had defeated a menacing alliance of his enemies, including the immensely wealthy Wendish and Pomeranian cities.

Between 1362 and 1367, Wldemar Dawn acted as the lord of the Baltic, charging taxes and tolls as he liked. When captains refused to pay or even just protested, he had their ships confiscated. He did that not just to the his former enemies, but also to his former allies the Dutch merchants as well as  the ships of the Teutonic Knights who were an entirely different kettle of fish.

These harassments pushed the Hanseatic cities and the Teutonic knights closer together. Meanwhile Albrecht of Mecklenburg had replaced the unreliable Magnus on the throne of Sweden, with a bit of help from some Hanseatic cities.

Albrecht was unsurprisingly interested in the reconquest of Skane and its herring market that Waldemar had taken back in 1360. The counts of Holstein did not need an invitation, nor did the Danish barons who were all still smarting from the loss of their land, power and influence by Waldemar’s hand.

But this time Lübeck and its allies had learned from their mistakes in 1362. This time the city alliance needed to be acting as one. No more blockade runners would be allowed. And this time the fleet needs to be of a size and power that can get the job done without having to rely on unreliable Swedes.

In 1367 the representatives of the Hanseatic cities gathered for a general Hansetag in Cologne. The first and only time a Hansetag took place in Cologne.

This Tagfahrt as the Hansards called their negotiations has over time gained a near mythical status in Hanseatic history. Apart from the unusual location, the participants were also much broader than on previous and future occasions.

The Dutch cities, including Kampen that spearheaded the smuggling of contraband during the first war against Waldemar made an appearance. But not only them but also other North Sea cities including  a famous pilgrimage site where one could see a holy host that had been vomited up and burned but had still remained intact. That city, founded in 1300 or 1306 and whose fortunes were dependent upon the 90,000 pilgrims who came to see this piece of unleavened and undying bread was none other than the city of Amsterdam.

Still today on the night of the 15th of March the Catholics of Amsterdam gather for the Stille Omgang, the silent procession around the place of the former pilgrimage church to venerate the now lost proof of divine presence.

But what the Hansards wanted from Amsterdam was not just the help such a holy relic could certainly provide, but also their and their fellow North Sea dwellers commitment to respect the blockade. Getting this commitment prove difficult to get, even from Bremen and Hamburg, mainly because they had no beef with king Waldemar. The negotiators had to resort to the threat of Verhansung, the expulsion from the association to get them in line.  

What the cities agreed in 1367 was a true change in the nature of their organisation. Until now they were a loose cooperation focused mainly on maintaining the privileges in the Kontors and mutual support against pirates, raiders and other unpleasantness.

What they ended up with now would be come known as the Cologne Confederation, a true league of cities. Something that was actually prohibited by imperial law, but in 1367 nobody north of the Main River cared much about the emperor.

The resolution issued at the end of the assembly was exceptionally detailed to avoid these internal squabbles that happened after 1362. Every city committed to a specific number of ships and soldiers. An elaborate system of taxation was set up that closed the loopholes in the previous export tax regime. They set the dates and places where and when the armada should assemble.

What sets the Cologne confederation further apart is the last clause. This agreement was not made just for this campaign but was to remain in place for 3 years after the conclusion of the war. As it happened the Cologne Confederation was prolonged several times and held until 1385.

To ensure full cooperation between all the cities, the months following the deliberations were taken up by negotiations with those cities that had not participated in the general assembly in Cologne. Every single city of German merchants from the Gulf of Finland to the mouth of the Rhine agreed to enforce the blockade and support the campaign.

The Teutonic knights signed up as well and the enemies of Waldemar made firm commitments that this time, they would actually fight.

The only significant player in the northern theatre that sided with Waldemar was Haakon VI, king of Norway and son in law of Waldemar. Haakon had married Margaret, Waldemar’s younger daughter. The elder one was married to Henry of Mecklenburg, brother of the king of Sweden and son of the Duke of Mecklenburg.

The allies were getting ready for war and the Hanseatic cities were even sending embassies to the pope, the emperor and other powers far and wide to gain approval for their plan.

The only one who appeared completely unconcerned by all that activity was Waldemar himself. He left Denmark literally at the time the Hanseatic fleet set off for Seeland. Waldemar’s plan was to gather allies amongst the princes of Northern Germany. For that purpose he had taken along vast amounts of cash and whilst abroad demanded more to be sent to him.

I do not want to spread conspiracy theories about long dead Danish heroic figures, but this looks to me more like Waldemar knew exactly what was going on, did a quick calculation of the odds and smart cooky he was, scarpered with as much cash as he could carry to retire on the French Riviera.

In the absence of their military and political leader, Denmark did not stand a chance. The counts of Holstein and the Danish insurrectionists took Jutland, King Albrecht of Sweden reconquered Skane. The Dutch cities attacked Waldemar’s ally, the king of Norway who caved almost immediately.

The Hanseatic fleet, led by Lubeck’s new Burgermeister, Brun Warendorp gathered as planned between the 9^th and 16^th of April 1368 at the Gellen off the island of Hiddensee. From here they sailed to Copenhagen. The city fell on June 16^th, its defences flattened, and the castle taken over as the headquarter for the next phase of operations.

In cooperation with the Swedish allies all castles along the eastern shore of the Oresund fell. Only the mighty fortress of Helsingborg, the site of the terrible defeat of the Hanse in 1362 held out for almost another year.

In November 1369 a delegation of the Danish royal council led by Henning von Putbus, the lord of the island of Rügen came to Stralsund to sue for peace.

This, the second naval campaign of the Hanseatic League had been a complete success. 

Putbus and his colleagues knew that the war was lost for good but hoped that by negotiating with the Hansa directly, they could avoid the complete annihilation of Denmark. Remember that barely 25 years earlier the kingdom had been divided up between the Swedes, the Holsteiners and the rebellious nobles and the king lived in a hovel on Lolland. And these guys are still around, are the allies of the League and intent to go right back to the situation before the recovery that had started in 1340.

The stakes for the Danes could not have been higher. And their fearless leader, Waldemar, dawn of the Danish kingdom, was nowhere to be seen. Probably a good thing, because what happens next is a masterclass in diplomacy only matched by Talleyrand recovering France’s role as a major European power at the Congress of Vienna.

Putbus needed to split the enemy alliance. And to do that he had to play on the fundamental differences in his opponents’ objectives.

90% of what the Hanseatic League cared about was commerce. The cities had no interest in acquiring and then administering large territories. Politically they had had only one big concern, they did not want to see the emergence of a dominant territorial power in the Baltic.

On the flipside, the kings, princes and lords who had allied with the Hanse were 90% focused on politics, namely on the acquisition of territory. Commerce was something they cared little about.

The Hanse’s fear of an all-powerful king in the Baltic was entirely rational. Such a ruler could roll back the various trading privileges the merchants had patiently acquired not just in the Kontors but also in the hinterlands of the cities, in Sweden, in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Denmark and Holstein. Worse, the cities themselves were in a precarious situation as most weren’t free imperial cities but still nominally subjects of a territorial lord.

That is why in 1340 the Hanse supported Waldemar against the mighty Count Gerhard of Holstein and the Danish nobles and once Waldemar had become dominant in 1360, turned against him. Following the defeat of the Danes, the power that caused the most headaches for the Hanse was the duke of Mecklenburg and his dynasty.

Albrecht II had been duke of Mecklenburg since 1329 which made him the theoretical overlord of Rostock and Wismar. He had married Euphemia of Sweden and in 1364 he had managed to put his son, Albrecht III on the throne of Sweden. Albrecht II then married another one of his sons, Henry, to the eldest daughter of Waldemar Dawn, and they had a son, confusingly also called Albrecht, this one taking the number IV.

In other words, if Waldemar was completely taken off the board, the family of the old duke of Mecklenburg were to become kings of Denmark, Sweden, Norway on top of being Dukes of Mecklenburg. That was a distinctly uncomfortable prospect for the Hanseatic League.

What made it even more uncomfortable was that the Mecklenburgers immediate objective was to take full control of Skane and its herring market. Meanwhile the Holsteiners insisted on the acquisition of territory in Jutland, making them even more of a threat to the important trade route from Lübeck to Hamburg.

Putbus saw this rift between the allies and began to systematically exploit it. Since the allies had agreed not to sign a peace treaty with Denmark unless all parties had agreed, the Danes proposed to negotiate secretly with the Hanse. The moment the cities decided to listen the alliance was broken.

Putbus then offered the Hanse all the commercial privileges they could possibly want, but none of the political concessions the Mecklenburgs and Holsteins were after. That was a major sacrifice that would deprive the crown of a significant chunk of income, but it meant that the crown of Denmark would continue to exist.

Specifically, the Danes were prepared to grant the following:

• Free trade in Denmark and Skane for all Hanseatic cities that had joined the Cologne Confederation in exchange for a modest fixed tax.
• That Merchants gain the right of salvage. It was so far common practice that if a vessel suffered damage and sank, any goods that could be rescued were property of the territorial lord. This was changed, allowing a merchant to salvage his own goods.
• Third, the great herring market in Falsterbo came under more or less direct control of the Hanse. The cities were given individual plots of land, the Vitte, where they could maintain their business. They were allowed to trade from ship to ship, in all merchandise, wholesale and retail and could use their own barges and wagons for transportation, even could sent their own fishing fleet.
• And fourth, the German merchants in Denmark were allowed to form their own communities, elect their representatives and exercise justice.

To back up these privileges and to allow the cities to regain the moneys lost, Putbus handed over the four great fortresses on the Oresund, Helsingborg, Malmo, Skanoer and Falsterbo for a period of 15 years. The Hanseatic League was to keep 2/3^rd of the toll on all shipping going through the Oresund. And finally, the Danish council promised to make the election of a new king of Denmark dependent upon the consent of the cities.

In return Waldemar could return to his throne and Denmark would not be dismembered. Even Skane, at this point occupied by Albrecht of Mecklenburg, the king of Sweden, was to come back to Denmark.

These concessions granted the Hanseatic League a monopoly in the Baltic trade. Holding the Oresund castles meant they could block any foreign traders from getting into the Baltic Sea.

The wide range of privileges in the herring markets made it virtually impossible for anyone, including the locals to compete. And they were given the keys to the kingdom of Denmark.

In 1370 these clandestine discussions were brought into the open when Putbus arrived with 25 of Denmark’s most important nobles in Stralsund to sit down for final negotiations.

This meeting was all for show, since the terms had been agreed weeks if not months earlier.

The last obstacles were obviously the consents of the allies, the Holsteiners and in particular the Mecklenburgers. The Holsteiners could seemingly been bullied into accepting the terms. Long gone are the days of the mighty count Gerhard.

The Mecklenburgers were a bit more difficult. The agreement was quite obviously aimed against them. The duke would later claim that no attempt was made to gain his consent. But there was no real pushback. Sweden even handed over Skane to the Danes and Hansards.

What forced their hand was unrest in Sweden as the supporters of the exiled king Magnus conspired against Albrecht of Mecklenburg, a topic we will return to soon.

The fact that the Mecklenburger had to accept the peace of Stralsund shows how much the power of the Hanse had increased since the time of the Black Death. The league was now a serious European power. The confederation of Cologne had forged them together into an entity that could quickly raise a powerful navy able to project power anywhere in the Baltic and the North Sea. And as grain providers of last resort, they held a sword over the heads of even the mightiest kings, princes and lords.

Next week we will talk a bit more about this period when the League is riding high.

Great success does not always mean that life become more comfortable. The rise in Hanseatic power and their excessive privileges makes many kings and princes uncomfortable. In 1388 three of the most important powers in Northern Europe, England, Flanders and Russia challenge the Hanse simultaneously. If you want to know how that plays out, join us again next week.

Before I go, let me thank all of you who are supporting the show, in particular the Patrons who have kindly signed up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. It is thanks to you this show does not have to do advertising for products you do not want to hear about. If Patreon isn’t for you, another way to help the show is sharing the podcast directly or boosting its recognition on social media. If you share, comment or retweet a post from the History of the Germans it is more likely to be seen by others, hence bringing in more listeners. My most active places are Twitter @germanshistory and my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast. As always, all the links are in the show notes.    

And just to remind you, the sub-podcast The Hanseatic League is still running. So if you want to point a friend or relative towards the History of the Germans but want to avoid confusion, just send them there. The Hanseatic League is available everywhere you can get the History of the Germans.

And last but not least the bibliography.

For this episode I again relied heavily on:

The Peace of Stralsund by David K. Bjoerk, in Speculum, Vol. 7 No.4 (Oct. 1932) The Peace of Stralsund, 1370 on JSTOR

Erich Hoffmann: Konflikte und Ausgleich mit den Scandinavischen Reichen in Die Hanse, Lebenswirklichkeit und Mythos, herausgegeben von Jürgen Bracker, Volker Henn and Rainer Postel

Philippe Dollinger: Die Hanse

Rolf Hammel-Kieslow: Die Hanse

Waldemar Atterdag’s attack on Gotland

By the end of the 13^th century the key foundations of the Hanseatic League are laid. The trade routes that connect the Baltic to Western Europe are largely under the control of merchants who had come from Northern Germany and settled along the Baltic shore. Four great Kontors in Novgorord, Bergen, Bruges and London have been set up. The cities that make up the League, from Tallin to Cologne have gained city laws, built their walls and selected their city councils.

We are now entering the Calamitous 14^th Century, a time of war, spiritual disorientation, plague and deteriorating climate. These four riders of the apocalypse devastate formerly flourishing lands and cities across Western Europe, delivering a sucker punch that brings 300 years of economic expansion to a screeching halt. But, as they say in Asterix, “all of europe is occupied with the challenges of the 14^th century. Well not entirely. There is a corner of the world where a league of merchant cities is heading for the zenith of its economic, financial and military power…”

Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans: Episode 115 – The War with Denmark Part I

By the end of the 13^th century the key foundations of the Hanseatic League are laid. The trade routes that connect the Baltic to Western Europe are largely under the control of merchants who had come from Northern Germany and settled along the Baltic shore. Four great Kontors in Novgorord, Bergen, Bruges and London have been set up. The cities that make up the League, from Tallin to Cologne have gained city laws, built their walls and selected their city councils.

We are now entering the Calamitous 14^th Century, a time of war, spiritual disorientation, plague and deteriorating climate. These four riders of the apocalypse devastate formerly flourishing lands and cities across Western Europe, delivering a sucker punch that brings 300 years of economic expansion to a screeching halt. But, as they say in Asterix, “all of europe is occupied with the challenges of the 14^th century. Well not entirely. There is a corner of the world where a league of merchant cities is heading for the zenith of its economic, financial and military power…”

Before we get into this fascinating subject it is time to do my little plea for support again. As the History of the Germans has grown and grown these last two years, it has also taken up more and more of my life. That is great for me, because I massively enjoy doing this, but it is bad news for my cash balance, since all that fun keeps me from other money generating activities. I have been offered a not insignificant boost to my income if I were to allow advertising in the show, an offer I have rejected.

Which means the podcast remains advertising free and even more dependent on the support from my lovely patrons. I really appreciate the support you guys provide and am extremely grateful. And if anyone of you who is not yet a patron and wants to bask in all that appreciation and gratitude, you can do so by signing up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans or on my website, historyofthegermans.com/support. All that from the price of a chocolate Croissant per month which isn’t even good for you. And thanks a lot to Brian W., Ian R., Richard K. and Pietya who have already signed up.

I guess it is time we re-anchor this story on the timeline. These last episodes we did look at how the various major trading routes of the Hanse got established and how they each developed during the 12^th, 13^th and 14^th century. By and large I tried to get each of these stories to the middle of the 14^th century which I think has worked out more or less, which means the podcast has now -after a mere 115 episodes officially progressed into the late Middle Ages – Yipee!!

That is sadly the last outburst of joy you are going to hear about the Calamitous 14^th Century as Barbara Tuchman called it in her most famous book, the Distant Mirror. I know that her take on the period has suffered a lot of criticism over the years, and that some of her assessments are no longer standing up to historical scrutiny. But still it is an exceptionally well written book and some of her elementary notions about the 14^th century are still valid.

To summarise it, the 14^th century was not great.

It was particularly not great of you were French. The Hundred-Years war kicks off in 1337 and brings death, famine and misery to Northern and South-Western France. What kept the devastation going for so long was the combination of England’s superiority in open battles and her complete inability to hold on to the territorial gains in a country many times larger and many times richer than itself. The unending conflict created mercenary troops that roamed the land even during periods when the parties were at least officially at peace.

Meanwhile the transfer of the papacy from Rome to Avignon and hence under the control of the French monarch was seen as a travesty by contemporaries. Things got worse when Saint Caterine of Siena – famous for an obsession with blood and Jesus’ foreskin – galvanised public opinion to the point that pope Gregory XI returned to Rome. Once arrived the pope promptly died, resulting in a schism where the cardinals in Avignon and those in Rome each elected a pope. Attempts to resolve the situation by making both popes stand down and elect a new one resulted in three competing popes.

We may not regard this as overly concerning but for the medieval mind that was a catastrophe. Choosing the wrong pope could result in being cast down into the sixth circle of hell trapped in flaming tombs. You may find yourself in august company, for instance Frederick II is supposed to reside here, but it still sounds quite uncomfortable.

Overshadowing all this was the great scourge of the 14^th century, The Black Death. It first appeared in Europe in 1346, brought in most likely by Genoese traders who had picked it up during the siege of their colony of Caffa in Crimea (pronounce Kri-moia). Allegedly the besieging Mongols had brought the plague from central Asia. When their soldiers had succumbed to the disease their corpses were trebucheted into the town to force its surrender. Caffa unfortunately resisted the siege and the returning Genoese distributed the disease across the Mediterranean.

The Black Death is caused by the bacterium Yersinia Pestis, a fact that was only discovered in 1894 by two scientist operating independently, the Frenchman Alexandre Yersin and the Japanese bacteriologist Kitasato Shibasaburo. In 1898 it was discovered that the main vector of transmission were fleas who moved between rodents and humans.

The effects of an infection with Yarsinia Pestis is devastating. There are three types of Plague the bacteria causes. The most famous is the Bubonic Plague that manifests in bubuoes, a swelling of the Lymph nodes mainly in the groin and the armpits.

But there are also the Pneumonic Plague and the Septicaemic Plague which have less obvious symptoms, which is why we hear of people dying literally mid-sentence. 30-60% of those affected by Bubonic Plague die if left untreated whilst 100% of those who catch Pneumonic or Septicaemic Plague do not make it. Fun fact about Pneumonic Plague, you do not need a flea for that. Simple inhalation of a respiratory droplet of a patient with Pneumonic Plague can result in infection and guaranteed death.

Today plague is less of a problem if identified early and treated with antibiotics, but in the 14^th century nobody knew about the miraculous attributes of Penicillium Rubens and so the only effective way to manage the disease was quarantine. And even that often failed, as the vectors were fleas, not humans.

How many died is a subject of debate, which is unsurprising since there was no census of the population before and after. I get the impression that most calculation revert back to the contemporary estimate of 1/3^rd of the population.

But the impact varied considerably between different places. Milan was less affected than Tuscany, though why that was is not obvious. More obvious is the fact that Communities that live in close proximity, in particular monasteries were very heavily affected. Often 80-90% of the brothers and sisters perished. On the other hand, the elites who had the ability to flee into the countryside, like the 7 young women and three young men in Bocaccio’s Decameron, appear to have had a mortality of only about a quarter.

For our friends, the Hanseatic League, good news was it took 3 years from the first reported cases in Messina in Sicily until the disease took hold in Scandinavia and another year to make it to Poland.

But when it came, it came with force. In 1350 the city Council of Bremen ordered to list the names of everyone who had died from the Plague and collected 6,966 names. Add to that an estimated 1,000 unknown corpses and assuming the city had about 12,000-15,000 inhabitants at the time, more than half fell victim to the disease. Hamburg reported the death of 12 out of its 34 bakers, 18 of its 40 butchers, 27 out of its 50 civil servants and a staggering 16 out of 21 members of its council. Similarly, Lübeck, Wismar, Reval and Lüneburg reported death rates of 30% and more amongst the members of their city councils.

To top of the horrors of the 14^th century, the constant warfare, the spiritual disorientation and plague there was climate change. The great medieval warming period is coming to an end. Instead of a constant tailwind to its economic progress, Western Europe now has to deal with a consistent headwind that will peak in the little Ice Age between 1600 and 1800.

Food security was already on the edge before the cooling period started as we have seen when we looked at the great eastern migration from the population centres in Flanders, Holland and the Rhineland, but what we have now is a society that is constantly just one bad harvest away from wide-spread famine.

I guess we can conclude that the 14^th century is a pretty bad time to be alive.

I was in France on Holiday this summer and on the way down we stopped in Beauvais, a city of 50,000 just north of Paris. The reason to stop in Beauvais is its absolutely heart stopping cathedral. It is Frances tallest cathedral with a Nave that rises 47m above the ground. To put that in context, Milan cathedral has a 45m high nave, Notre Dame in Paris rises 35 metres, Winchester a mere 24 metres. And even more astounding, the Nave of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome built centuries later also falls 1m short of this medieval skyscraper. But here is the rub, the church was never finished. The combined effects of plague and the 100 years war devastated the rich cloth industry of the town and there was never enough money to complete the edifice. Where the main part of the church should have been built stands the 10^th century old cathedral looking positively tiny next to its ambitious intended replacement. Little illustrates so clearly both the immense economic growth during the so-called static Middle Ages and the abruptness with which it came to an end.

But hey, for once, we find ourselves on the lucky side of history. Sure, the citizens of the great Hanseatic cities did not escape the plague, bad weather, wars and the papal schism, but they did work through it a lot better than the beaten-up citizens of Beauvais.

The reason the Hanseatic cities got through the challenges of the 14^th century are manyfold. The first one is that apart from losing some money on the crowns of Edward III, their involvement in the 100 year’s war was almost zero.

The same seems to have applied for the schism. The Empire and Scandinavia stuck largely with the Roman pope and hence there was less of the uncertainty that prevailed in the Western half of the continent where territories moved back and forth in their obedience and guidance about what to believe changed around all the time. I did try to find a reference to the schism in the secondary sources on the Hanse I am using and found a absolutely nothing.

Which gets us to the plague. Obviously, the fact that millions of customers had died, that their own cities had been depopulated and that many farms were running out of farmhands weren’t good bits of news.

But there were mitigating factors. Cities remained attractive, if only because they offered relief from servitude if you could hold out inside for a year. So many serfs and free peasants moved into the empty houses of the plague victims in the cities. We find that by the end of the 14^th century the Hanseatic cities have regained their population size from the pre-plague times.

There was another, probably the only beneficial impact from the plague and that was a sustained shortage of labour, in particular farm labour and menial labour in cloth manufacturing and other manufacturing jobs. That meant the cost of labour increased significantly. There are various studies looking at data in England and France that suggest an increase in wages by somewhere between 30 and 50%, most of which was in real terms.

That wage increase caused huge headaches for landowners who petitioned the local rulers to freeze wages. But even where that happened, such rules prove unenforceable since labourers simply scampered off. So real pay levels were going up, allegedly for the first and only time in premodern history.

That is good news for workers, but it is also great news for long distance traders, specifically for the Hanseatic Merchants.  Their main export products were food, in particular grain and fish. Before the plague only the cheaper grain was sold to labourers whilst the other goods went to burgers and the rich. After the plague, once these poor labourers had a few more pennies in their pockets, could they buy some fine Baltic Herring and wash it down with an even finer pint of Einbecker beer – best in the world.

And even for the luxury products, beeswax, pelts, Flemish cloth and wine, the market wasn’t seemingly so bad. The dramatic surge in religious devotion after the plague should have led to a surge in demand for the finest Beeswax from Novgorod to appease an apparently enraged deity.

And the rapid demise of many rich men and women caused a rapid redistribution of wealth. These newly minted millionaires were oh so well aware of the fragility of life. And since the plague came back in regular intervals many thought best thing to do was to spend it all as long as one is still alive.

It is in the middle of the 14th century that fashion in the true sense emerges. This is when we see proper tailoring for the first time. Until now most expensive dresses were essentially robes with straight seams and a lot of adornment. Now we see curved seams that allow the creation of tight-fitting trousers and shirts.

A French chronicler writes that around the year 1350, i.e., immediately after the first wave of the Plague, that quote “men, in particular, noblemen and their squires, took to wearing tunics so short and tight that they revealed what modesty bids us hide.” 

Hanseatic merchants did not only bring the cloth and the knowledge of how to create this new look to Scandinavia and Northern Germany, they also brought the fur needed to line the elegant coats worn over their Cotehardie, the body-hugging upper garment.

Finally, what really made the Hanseatic Merchants indispensable was in the times when things got tough. A bad harvest could easily tip the cities of Flanders, Northern France or England into outright famine. The hinterland of the Hanseatic cities, even though their production is likely to have declined due to labour shortage and the deteriorating climate, still produced a surplus above local demand. And that surplus became a lifeline during the regularly occurring outbreaks of famine.

Bottom line is that the 14^th century was by no means a time of decline and desperation for the Hanseatic League. It was in fact the time when it reached the zenith of its power, wealth and influence. They turned a challenge into an opportunity to use my most cringeworthy management consulting speak.

All these smart ways to keep your head above water and avoid the pitfalls of the treacherous 14^th century did however rarely feature in the histories of the Hanseatic League I read as a child.

What I found there were the heroic deeds of the men of Lübeck, Rostock and Wismar fighting a war at sea against the mighty king of Denmark, Waldemar Dawn. A lot of swords clinging and daring raids by gallant apprentices seemed a lot more exciting than the economics of grain.

And these things happened. But the way they came about say a lot about the way the merchant princes of the Hanse thought about war and how that so fundamentally differed from the way their royal and ducal neighbours perceived it.

The neighbours that matter most to the Hanseatic League were the power centres around the Baltic, foremost the Kingdom of Denmark, but also the strengthening kingdom of Sweden as well as that of Norway. And on the southern shore we have the Teutonic Knights, the dukes of Pomerania and of Mecklenburg, the margrave of Brandenburg and the counts of Holstein.

Though Denmark was nominally the largest, richest and most powerful of them, the century between 1241 to 1340 was one of decline and almost complete disintegration of the kingdom. The successors of the two great Waldemars, one called Abel and then various Eriks and Christophers, displayed a truly astounding level of infighting, murder, recklessness and incompetence.

Waldemar II’s eldest son king Erik IV Ploughpenny was murdered when he was a guest at his younger brother Abel’s house.

So, Abel became king but lasted only a year and a half before he was killed by a rebellious peasant who was reluctant to pay the increased taxation.

The next brother King Christopher I lasted 7 years but spent most of it in conflict with his nephew, the son of Abel. King Christopher I died unexpectedly after taking Holy Communion. Rumours were that he had been poisoned by an abbot in retaliation for his oppression of the church.

Christopher I’s son was king Eric V, called Eric Klipping, so called because of his habit to devalue the currency by clipping off a piece of the silver. Eric Clipping who had spent most of his early life as a prisoner of the counts of Holstein and the Margraves of Brandenburg started his reign by being captured and imprisoned by own his nobles. He continued his father’s conflict with the church and many of his nobles which resulted in him being murdered in 1286.

Next up is King Eric VI called Menved whose first act was to avenge his father’s death. He convicted a number of senior Danish nobles to exile and expropriation for the crime. The problem was that at least some of them might have been innocent, but more importantly that he let them live. They moved across to Sweden where they initiated a 30 year long guerilla war against king Eric VI that came with a side dish of piracy.

Unperturbed by this conflict, gallant King Eric VI tried to revive the dream of the two Waldemars to build a Scandinavian empire under Danish rule. He combined this ambition with a propensity for lavish expenditure, in particular for tournaments. One of those he held in Rostock under the eyes of the worried citizens who feared – with good reason – that the chivalric pursuit could at any moment turn into a bloody siege of the town.

All of king Eric’s great adventures consumed a truly epic amount of cash. Taxation had risen all throughout this troubled period and was merciless. When a famine struck in 1315. King Eric refused to lower the nominal amount of tax to be paid resulting in a peasant revolt that cost even more to suppress than the outstanding taxes.  And a lot of the equally costly conflict with the church stemmed from the desire of the kings to collect taxes from the clergy.

When king Eric VI finally died in 1319 the crown went to his brother Christopher II who inherited a kingdom that was financially and morally bankrupt. Not only had the nobles and the church used the weakness of the various kings to establish themselves as the true masters of the kingdom, the constant infighting had also sucked in a lot of foreigners looking to take advantage of the chaos. This chaos by the way did not just engulf Denmark. Sweden and Norway too were riven with infighting and continuous succession crises.

There seem to have been two approaches for foreigners seeking a juicy chunk of Scandinavian territory.

One was the classic model of marriage alliances. That came usually with a dowry that could include important castles and lands in exchange for military support. Given that both Sweden and Denmark were at least formally an elective monarchy where legitimacy could be transferred through the female line, these marriage alliances had the added benefit of occasionally producing a viable contender for one of the Scandinavian crowns.

The three families that pursued this strategy most persistently and successfully were the dukes of Mecklenburg and Pomerania and the Margraves of Brandenburg. Pretty much all of the kings of Denmark I mentioned were married to daughters of these three or to another Scandinavian monarch’s offspring. This intermarriage within a relatively small pool actually added to the mess as it produced a near infinite supply of contenders on all sides.

The other approach was taken by the counts of Holstein. Though they too married their daughters into the royal families and took wives from there, their main approach was to offer military and financial assistance on credit, credit that was secured by mortgages. And these aren’t mortgages just over some bits of land, these were mortgages over whole counties or even duchies. 

Two Holstein Counts were most astute in this game. One was Gerhard III of Holstein Rendsburg and the other James of Holstein-Ploen. Having inherited comparatively small territories that had come about when the old county of Holstein was divided up, these two men seem to have been some sort of war entrepreneurs.

An early form of the Italian Condottiere of the 15^th century who could raise and then rent out entire armies. King Eric VI was the Holsteiner’s best customer. Always fighting one war or another and hosting lavish tournaments, he ended up mortgaging more and more of his kingdom to the two counts.

Gerhard ended up with all of Jutland and Funen, whilst James gained Zeeland and the southern isles. If you know Denmark, that is pretty much all of it.

Well, apart from Scania which at the time was still Danish, but not for long. The Holstein counts and the Danish magnates were quite happy with this situation and when Christopher II ascended to the ramshackle throne his brother left him, they made him sign a coronation charter that basically forbade him to do anything without their consent.

Christopher tried his darnedest to disregard these provisions and rebuild some royal power. So, the magnates and the Germans ousted him in 1326, formally raising one of the. King’s nephews to the throne, but de facto reigning without a king. This magnate’s republic did not work out too well as they all began squabbling amongst themselves.

Even the two Holstein counts got into a disagreement. That weakened the Danish state even more so that the peasants of Scania asked the Swedish king to assume control over them. Scania as you know is the territory on the eastern shore of the Oresund where the annual herring market takes place, the largest market for fish in a Europe that ate fish 140 days a year and the most important contributor to the coffers of the Hanseatic merchants.

Which is why they now get involved. The Oresund and the herring market in Scania is of crucial importance for the long-distance trade out of the Baltic.

One reason is the sheer scale of the Herring business. The other is geography. By the 14^th century there were two established routes by which the goods from the Baltic could be transported westward to the important markets in Bruges and London. One was the land route via Lübeck and Hamburg. The other was to sail around Jutland which meant going through the Oresund. Keeping those lines open, safe and importantly avoiding high tariffs for the transit were of vital importance to the Hanse.

The way they achieved this so far had been through diplomacy. The Burgermeisters or mayors of the great Hanseatic cities as well as the other senior members of the city councils were experienced long distance traders. One of the skills they needed to get where they got to was negotiation. Knowing exactly what combination of price and conditions the other side could agree to was their second nature. They appreciated the importance of having more reliable and timely information than their adversaries and were able to think calmly through complex problems. Hence the time of the disintegration of the Scandinavian kingdoms was a walk in the park for the Hansards. They could play any side against any other in this game of three-dimensional chess and always walk away with improved trading privileges, lower taxes and promises of safe passage, be it from kings or from pirates or from kings that had become pirates or pirates that became kings.

The diplomatic effort was always underpinned with the threat of boycotts and embargoes. Whoever failed to respond to the softly, softly approach could suddenly find himself cut off from grain supply or unable to sell their goods into the European market.

And as a means of last resort, the Hanse was prepared to go to war. But only ever as a means of last resort. That is not out of cowardice. These men are used to dangerous journeys and the need to defend your goods and rights with the sword. They simply believed that war was rarely a profitable undertaking.

As the legendary Lübeck Bürgermeister Hinrich Castrop put it: “it is always easier to hoist the banner of war but a lot more costly taking it down in honour”

Lübeck did go to war when they supported the German princes against Waldemar II in the battle of Bornhoeved, and they helped king Abel to get on the throne by providing soldiers. But this was always based on a cold and level-headed calculation of the odds of success. None of the “For the Honour of the Kingdom once more into the breach” nonsense their aristocratic neighbours engaged in.

The other cases when the cities went to war was to defend themselves against the territorial princes. During the time of King Eric VI expensive war efforts in Northern Germany his allies tried to subdue the cities of Rostock and Wismar by siege. These sieges ended regularly with truces under which the burgers would pay off the city lord and swear allegiance. But nothing really changed and when King Eric’s money ran out the cities reverted back to the status quo ante.

So, everything is alright as far as the Hansards are concerned until the 1330s. After the debacle in Scania King Christopher II makes a comeback. The magnates and the Germans decide they need a unifying figure for the state and call him back to the throne. Christopher tries again to be a real king and exploits the divisions between the two Holstein counts.

He gets defeated in 1331. In the post-war settlement he is allowed to retain the title of king but without any power. He ends his days in a small house on Lolland to live in, lonely and forgotten. In 1332 he died a broken man.

After that Denmark has no king. Christopher II’s older sons, Eric and Otto die around the same time from wounds received in battle against the Holsteins. So, Count Gerhard of Holstein-Rendsburg becomes the de-facto ruler of Denmark.

That is a situation the Hanse is becoming uncomfortable with. Gerhard III still controlled one shore of the Oresund as well as the territory through which the wares moved between Luebeck and Hamburg. He was at least theoretically able to cut off both of the major trade routes out of the Baltic.

The two cities of Hamburg and Lubeck are trying to keep things on an even keel and agree to maintain the peace with the mighty count. But secretly they are trying to undermine his position. They host Gerhard’s enemies inside Luebeck where they are looking for ways to topple the Holsteiners and rebuild the Danish kingdom.

It seems that count Gerhard had realised that his situation was ultimately untenable. The cost of suppressing the regular uprisings against his rule exceeded the income from Jutland and Funen. Then there is a third son of king Christopher called Waldemar. This Waldemar had secured the support of his relatives, the margraves of Brandenburg for his bid to return the dynasty which gave the rebellion a focal point.

Count Gerhard was a war entrepreneur and not an aristocratic Hurrah Henry. He realised that the game was up and entered into negotiations trading the restoration of the Danish Monarchy against a permanent cessation of Schleswig to the Holsteins. Before these negotiations were concluded, count Gerhard of Holstein, ruler of Denmark was killed by insurgents.

That paved the way for one of medieval Denmark’s political geniuses, the aforementioned Waldemar, younger son of king Christopher II to be elected by the Danehof, the Danish parliament as king Waldemar V.

Nobody expected much from the 20-year old who had lived in exile at the imperial court for most of his childhood and adolescence. He was considered so insignificant that the magnates did not even bother asking him to sign a coronation charter.

But he managed to slowly but steadily rebuild the Danish monarchy. He looked after the pennies and when he had enough, he paid off the mortgages his father had taken over Jutland and then Seeland. As his power grew, he could use not just carrot but also stick, forcing the bishop of Roskilde to hand over the castle of Copenhagen where he established his new headquarters. Copenhagen was an excellent base to impose tariffs on the shipping that passed the Oresund.

He sold Estonia to the Teutonic knights, raising more money to pay off more mortgages. Gradually the last Holstein positions on Zealand and Funen fell, until only southern Schleswig remained in their hands.

In 1354 Waldemar IV, by now called Waldemar Dawn, the man who brought a new day to the kingdom of Denmark gathered all the nobles and made them sign a charter whereby they gave up all the rights they had amassed since the time of King Christopher II. Denmark was back in the game.

In 1360 he used a succession crisis in Sweden to take back Scania. To secure his flank against a Swedish counterattack Waldemar dawn took his army to Gotland and took Visby.

Visby, a member of the Hanseatic League, still an important city that had played a crucial role in its early history. That is the point where the Hanseatic League cannot take it any longer.

They had initially welcomed the rise of Waldemar Dawn as a counterweight to the Holsteiners. And when his position became stronger and stronger, they tried to negotiate with him. In particular they needed him to lower the tariffs through the Oresund, where he by now had built several castles including the mighty Helsingborg.

But this was one of those situations that had no diplomatic solution. King Waldemar needed the tax income from the Oresund to fund his rebuilding of the Danish state. There was no similar source of wealth in the kingdom than this apart from the Herring market in Falsterbo he now controlled and taxed as well.  

On the other side, the Hanseatic League could not accept free Danish control of the Oresund that would allow Dutch and English merchants to enter and trade on the same conditions in Falsterbo and even across the Baltic.

By now the Hanseatic League had turned from an association of merchants to an association of cities. There was not much difference between the two models since most Hanseatic cities were pure trading cities where the other guilds were of secondary importance.

But it still marked a change when the Hanseatic cities came together for their first Hansetag, their first official gathering in 1356, then to debate the sanctions against the city of Bruges we talked about in the episode about Bergen and Bruges.

The next one was in 1360 where the Wendisch cities, Luebeck, Wismar and Rostock decided to take on Waldemar. They formed an alliance with Waldemar’s enemies, the Holsteiners, King Magnus of Sweden, his son King Haakon of Norway as well as the Teutonic Knights.

A fleet was to sail out of Luebeck in the spring 1362 towards the Oresund. There they were to meet up with Swedish troops and take one of the mighty new fortresses Waldemar had built to control most valuable source of income.

The man who led the expedition was Johann Wittenberg, the Bürgermeister of Lübeck. Six months later half the ships will have sunk to the bottom of the sea and Johann Wittenberg will lose his head.

How this first major war of the Hanseatic League could go so badly wrong is subject of next week’s episode. That is when we get properly into the clanging of swords and the ramming of ships. I hope you will join us again.

Before I go, let me thank all of you who are supporting the show, in particular the Patrons who have kindly signed up on patreon.com/historyofthegermans. It is thanks to you this show does not have to do advertising for products you do not want to hear about. If Patreon isn’t for you, another way to help the show is sharing the podcast directly or boosting its recognition on social media. If you share, comment or retweet a post from the History of the Germans it is more likely to be seen by others, hence bringing in more listeners. My most active places are Twitter @germanshistory and my Facebook page History of the Germans Podcast. As always, all the links are in the show notes.    

And just to remind you, the sub-podcast The Hanseatic League is still running. So if you want to point a friend or relative towards the History of the Germans but want to avoid confusion, just send them there. The Hanseatic League is available everywhere you can get the History of the Germans.

And last but not least the bibliography. For this episode I again relied heavily on:

Erich Hoffmann: Konflikte und Ausgleich mit den Scandinavischen Reichen in Die Hanse, Lebenswirklichkeit und Mythos, herausgegeben von Jürgen Bracker, Volker Henn and Rainer Postel

Philippe Dollinger: Die Hanse

Rolf Hammel-Kieslow: Die Hanse