HANSEATIC LEAGUE. This was a very remarkable commercial association, which took its name from the ancient German word Hasse,' signifying an association for mutual support. The cities of Hamburg, Lubeck, and Bremen were, in the middle ages, the deposi tories of the manufactures of Italy and Ger many, 'with which they supplied the northern countries of Europe in exchange for their raw produce. The wealth which they acquired excited the envy and the rapacity of the princes and nobles ; the imposition of new and the augmentation of old tolls were great impedi ments to trade, which was likewise rendered unsafe by numerous banditti and pirates who infested the roads and the neighbouring seas and rivers. Hamburg and Lubeck concluded an alliance in 1241 by which they engaged to maintain ships and soldiers for the purpose of protecting their commerce. The city of Bruns wick joined the alliance in 1247. In course of time most of the trading towns in Europe joined this association, which included London, Rouen, Bordeaux, St. Maio, Bayonne, Mar seille, Barcelona, Seville, Cadiz, Lisbon, Ant werp, Danzig, Dort, Amsterdam, Bruges, Rot terdam, Ostend, Dunkirk, Leghorn, Messina, Naples, Bergen, Novgorod, all the towns on the Baltic, the Elbe, and the Weser, Embden, Cologne, and other towns, to the number of eighty-five. Their principal factories were Bruges, London, Novgorod, and Bergen. All
the towns sent deputies to a congress which usually met in Liibeck. The Hansa Towns became so powerful, that in 1348 they de feated the kings of Norway and Denmark, deposed Magnus, king of Sweden, and gave his crown to his nephew Albert ; they equipped in 1428, 40 ships of war and raised 12,000 troops, exclusive of seamen, in a war with Erick, king of Denmark ; and in the same century they compelled Edward IV. to restore all their privileges and property in England, which he had attempted to withhold. That part, of the city of London called the Steelyard was their exclusive property, and Bishops Gate, one of the principal entrances to London, was intrusted to them to guard. But when the roads and seas were no longer insecure, when America was discovered, and India was reached by doubling the Cape of Good Hope, the Hanseatic League gradually and at the last general assembly at Lubeck, in 1630, the deputies from the several cities ap peared merely to declare their secession from, the League. Hamburg, Liibeck, and Bremen, formed an association in 1641, and remained free republics till December 1810, when they were incorporated with the French empire, but in 1813 they were again separated from France, and with Frankfort-am-Main are now called the Free Hanseatic Cities of the Ger manic Confederation.