The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

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

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

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

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