Other Cities Soon Joined The League, And Its Objects Became More
Multiplied And Extensive; But Still Having The Protection And Encouragement
Of Their Commerce Principally In View.
The total number of confederated
cities was between seventy and eighty.
Lubeck was fixed upon as the head of
the League: in it the assemblies met, and the archives were preserved.
Inland commerce, the protection of which had given rise to the League, was
still attended to; but the maritime commerce of the Baltic, as affording
greater facilities and wealth, was that with which the League chiefly
occupied itself. The confederated cities were the medium of exchange
between the productions of Germany, Flanders, France, and Spain; and the
timber, metals, fish, furs, &c. of the countries on this sea.
The conquest and conversion of the pagan countries between the Vistula and
the Gulf of Finland, by the Teutonic knights, was favourable to the
commercial views of the confederated cities; for the conquerors obliged the
natives to confine their attention and labour exclusively to agriculture,
permitting Germans alone to carry on commerce, and engage in trade. Hence
Germans emigrated to these countries; and the League, always quicksighted
to their own interests, soon connected themselves with the new settlers,
and formed commercial alliances, which were recognized and protected by the
Teutonic knights. Elbing, Dantzic, Revel, and Riga, were thus added to the
League - cities, which, from their situation, were admirably calculated to
obtain and forward the produce of the interior parts of Poland and Russia.
The northern countries of the Baltic shore, in a great measure inattentive
to commerce, and distracted by wars, were supplied by the League with
money, on condition that they should assign to them the sources of wealth
which their mines supplied, and moreover grant them commercial privileges,
immunities, and establishments. Lubeck was chiefly benefited and enriched
by the treaties thus formed; for she obtained the working of the mines of
Sweden and Norway, which do not seem to have been known, and were certainly
not productively and effectively worked before this time. The League also
obtained, by various means, the exclusive herring fishery of the Sound,
which became a source of so much wealth, that the "fishermen were
superintended, during the season, with as much jealousy as if they had been
employed in a diamond mine."
Towards the close of the thirteenth century, the king of Norway permitted
the League to establish a factory and the staple of their northern trade at
Bergen. A singular establishment seems soon to have been formed here: at
first the merchants of the League were permitted to trade to Bergen only in
the summer months; but they afterwards were allowed to reside here
permanently, and they formed twenty-one large factories, all the members of
which were unmarried, and lived together in messes within their factories.
Each factory was capable of accommodating about one hundred merchants, with
their servants. Their importations consisted of flax, corn, biscuit, flour,
malt, ale, cloth, wine, spirituous liquors, copper, silver, &c.; and they
exported ship-timber, masts, furs, butter, salmon, dried cod, fish-oil, &c.
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