Part 13 (1/2)

Nor was the spectacle on land less animated than that on the sea.

Troops, mercenaries of every land and language crowded the sh.o.r.e of the mainland. It was evident that the encounter would be severe, the resistance great. The first check came to the Hansa in the shape of the capture of Max Meyer, owing to the false information given to him by the Danish commandant of Scania. Christian III. was proclaimed king of Denmark, and Gustavus Vasa lent the new king his most active aid. Things did not look well for the League, but Wullenweber, though he grew serious and thoughtful as he learnt the news, was not discouraged. He continued to confide ”in divine help.”

A vast number of intrigues were now set on foot, whose purpose was to alienate or conciliate, as the case might be, the various Catholic and Protestant kings and princes; thus giving to the entire quarrel a party character. Lubeck counted on the a.s.sistance of Henry of England, and offered the king in return for substantial subsidies the entire kingdom of Denmark as his booty.

Meanwhile Max Meyer was fretting at his enforced imprisonment and absence from the scene of action. In March, by means of a subtle, but not specially honest, subterfuge, he managed to escape from the castle that held him, and thanks to his fertility of resource, and to his popularity, he soon found himself surrounded by quite a little army, and resolved to carry on the war in his own manner, and according to his own ideas. It is said that he offered the throne of Denmark to Francis I. of France, an offer which that monarch refused. Nor did he forget his old friend, bluff King Hal of England, who, in his turn, seems not to have forgotten him. Though Henry nominally rejected the proposals made to him by Max Meyer, it is certain he continued to give him substantial and moral support, so that, owing to English help, Max Meyer was able to hold out in the seaboard castle of Vardberg, in which he had ensconced himself, until his tragic end. The gateway over its lintel, bore, till the time of its destruction, the arms of the Tudor, a delicate compliment from Max Meyer to Henry, implying that the castle was in very truth the king's.

The first great encounter of the armies took place by sea in the month of June. In number and excellence of s.h.i.+ps the Hansa had the advantage.

The Lubeckers were still the best s.h.i.+pbuilders of the northern world, and many of the Danish and Swedish vessels sent against them were nothing more than herring-boats and fis.h.i.+ng smacks roughly put on a war footing. If victory depended on strength and numbers alone, it seemed a.s.sured to the Hansa. Unhappily, among the many secret methods employed by the aristocratic party to break the power of the democratic faction, there existed bribery and corruption of the s.h.i.+p captains. The usual Hanseatic concord was absent.

Indeed, herein is to be found in a great measure the explanation of the ill success of the Hansa. When Jurgen Wullenweber dreamed that he would revive the days and glories of Waldemar Atterdag he forgot that the burgomasters of those days when they set out for battle were followed by an army consisting of the burghers themselves, that, for example, in the struggle for Scania in 1368, no less than sixteen hundred citizens gave up their lives to gain a victory for the League. With the increase of wealth had grown up, as is usual, an increase of luxury and idleness.

Citizens of rich Hanseatic towns contented themselves with keeping watch in turns at the city gates, with defending their own city walls, with interfering in street brawls and keeping order in the town. But when it came to active fighting, to going abroad to battle, they preferred to hire the mercenaries with which Germany was overrun, thanks to the disturbed state of the land arising out of the continual wars of Charles V. Hence arose the cla.s.s known as _Landsknechte_; hence it came about that in those days German often fought against German, and that all true patriotic sentiments were extinguished. The rich Queen of the Hansa, Lubeck, had of course met with no difficulty in finding numbers willing to serve under her flag and to accept her pay, but these men, as is but too natural, did not fight with that enthusiasm and ardour which men display when the cause is their own. Jurgen Wullenweber was of the old Hanseatic type, but the mould that had formed him was broken. His contemporaries were not up to the level of his n.o.ble and patriotic ambition. Had he been ably seconded the whole history of Northern Germany might have been transformed.

As we have said, the fleets met in hostile encounter in the month of June. After some heavy fighting the heavens themselves interposed in the strife. A great storm arose, driving the vessels of the foes asunder.

Two days later the decisive combat was fought on land. The place of encounter was a.s.sens, on the island of Funen, a spot where human sacrifices used to be offered to the great Norse G.o.d Odin. This battle of a.s.sens ended in the complete discomfiture of the burgher army, and there followed immediately afterwards another meeting by sea, when the Hansa had to suffer the shame of seeing some of its vessels flee before the enemy, while others capitulated in cowardly fas.h.i.+on.

The consequences of these battles made themselves felt instantly. What Wullenweber had said the previous year when he was yet the victor was now realized, ”that it was easier to conquer Denmark than to keep it.”

For not only Funen, but Zealand and Scania fell off from the burgomaster's party after the defeat at a.s.sens, and did homage to Christian III. as their king and ruler. Only Copenhagen, Malmoe, and a few small towns refused this allegiance, and still offered an armed resistance. But it was not to be of long duration.

Meanwhile the close of Wullenweber's proud career approached. It is characteristic of the whole course of German history, that the fall of Wullenweber, and the ultimate fall of the Hansa, were due not so much to external as to internal enemies. Petty jealousies, ”particularism,” to use their own phrase, that is to say, practising a church-steeple policy rather than a wide and liberal one, has ever been a danger to Germany.

It defeated the efforts of Wullenweber, as it did those of the patriots of 1848, and of many more before and since.

In July the Hanseatic Diet was called together to consider the state of the League's affairs; and on this occasion a number of the cities, and chief among them the inland ones, found a much desired occasion to vent the wrath and envy which they had long nourished against Lubeck and its democratic dictator. A number of attacks, some of them of the most despicably petty character, were made against Wullenweber. The Lubeckers were told that they had permitted ”irregular disorders,” and that it was they who disturbed the general concord of the common Hansa. Most bitter of all were the charges launched by Cologne, the town that had long been jealous of the power of her northern sister. Forgetful of the whole course of Hanseatic history, she ventured to say that it would seem strange to the emperor and other princely potentates, that a town like Lubeck should meddle with such great matters as the deposition and installation of kings.

To this taunt Lubeck replied with dignity, pointing out that she had no wish either to change the faith of the kings or to murder them (as Cologne had previously suggested), but that according to treaty she had the right to act as she had done, and that she had acted, not for the sake of exhibiting her own power, but because of the natural, intimate, and needful relations.h.i.+p that existed between Denmark and the Baltic towns. Since olden days no king might be elected in Denmark without the knowledge of Lubeck, and on this they had ever acted.

The men of Cologne were not abashed by this reference to history. They replied that it might be so, and that the Lubeckers had the right they would not deny; but they repeated, it made a strange impression upon kings and princes that the men of Lubeck should make and unmake kings.

Alas! how were the mighty fallen! What a degradation of sentiment in the Hansa when the cause of one was no longer the cause of all!

Some days later, in reply to a similar attack, the Lubeckers replied, in the old bold spirit that characterized the Hansa in its best times, ”In one thing they had made a mistake, and that was when they helped two such worthless men as the kings of Denmark and Sweden to power, and had further made them great, in return for which they were now ill repaid.”

Cologne then tried to s.h.i.+ft its recriminations on to the religious ground. Glancing at the excesses committed in Munster by the Anabaptists, she ventured to question the benefits that had accrued to Lubeck and other Hanse cities from the Reformation, concluding with the shameless words, ”In our city we hang, behead, or drown all heretics, and find ourselves very comfortable in consequence.”

To most of these attacks Wullenweber as representative of Lubeck had to reply in person. He knew too well that many of them were aimed directly at himself. He strove hard to keep his hot temper in check and to reply with moderation and dignity.

The att.i.tude of these Diet meetings, however, was but to prove the prologue to the intrigues which were to eject Wullenweber and his party from power, and to break not only the hegemony of Lubeck, but that of the whole Hansa--a consummation the opponents certainly did not intend.

”Those whom the G.o.ds wish to destroy they first strike with blindness,”

says the Latin proverb, and its truth was once more made manifest by the att.i.tude of the Hanseatic towns among themselves. They who had ever been so strong and so united, now no longer held together in brotherly concord, and weakness and disruption were the result.

The instrument that was to spring the chief mine on Wullenweber and his party was found in the person of Nicholas Bromse. This man was one of the leading personages of the Munic.i.p.al Council of Lubeck in the early days of the sixteenth century, and was burgomaster of the town in the days when Gustavus Vasa arrived there as a fugitive. Indeed, he is said to have been one of the most zealous friends and protectors of the young Vasa. When the Reformation dissensions began to stir in the city, Bromse was among the most p.r.o.nounced opponents of the purer creed, and repeatedly, by his personal interference, r.e.t.a.r.ded its introduction.

Indeed once, after it was officially introduced, he succeeded, in virtue of his personal influence with Charles V., in getting the Lutheran creed forbidden in the town. In so doing, however, he somewhat exceeded his limits; his action aroused suspicion in the council and hatred among the citizens; and finally, in 1532, he had to resign his post and fly secretly from Lubeck to escape the wrath of his enemies. He made his way to the imperial Court, at that time located in Brussels, and there he gained the ear and favour of Charles. Thence he watched with anxious curiosity the course which events were taking in his native town. He was biding his time to revenge himself upon the city that had ejected him, and upon the burgomaster who had supplanted him in popular favour.

When Nicholas Bromse learnt how the Hanseatic Diet had censured the action of Jurgen Wullenweber, he thought that the time for which he had long waited had come. He employed all his personal influence with the emperor to induce him to take a decisive step against the city of Lubeck, and with good result. For there issued from the imperial council chamber, June 7, 1535, a decree, stating that unless within six weeks and three days from the receipt of this doc.u.ment the town of Lubeck had abolished all democratic innovations and reinstated in the government Nicholas Bromse and other councillors banished together with him, the town would be declared under the imperial ban.

With Jesuitical astuteness not a word was breathed regarding Church reforms, but it was fully understood that a blow was aimed at the Lutheran creed quite as much as at Jurgen Wullenweber and the democratic party.

A Hanseatic Diet was sitting at Lubeck when this decree arrived. A committee was at once chosen to discuss the acceptance of the imperial mandate. It decided that obedience must be tendered to the dictates of the imperial council. In consequence the democratic party resigned power, and Wullenweber, who understood well that the whole was chiefly aimed at him, saw that there remained nothing for him to do but follow his party.

After delivering before the Diet a speech of great dignity marked by unusual moderation, in which he said if it were the will of G.o.d and were adjudged for the common weal that he should retire, he should certainly not refuse, he laid down in August, 1535, the office he had filled with such zeal and patriotic ambition.