circumstances that Gustavus Vasa declared of the Hansa that "Its teeth
were falling out, like those of an old woman." The Hollanders,
especially, had long been converted from allies into formidable
rivals. The most important and decisive factor of this decadence,
however, was the victorious opposition to the Hanseatic monopoly now
brought to bear by the hitherto commercially oppressed nations,
England and Russia, who simply closed the doors of the bureaus and
abrogated the privileges of the German merchants of the league. The
condition of the Hansa was akin to that of a healthy, vigorous tree,
set in poor soil and deriving its sustenance from the weakness of the
home rulers and the primitive or defective economic conditions of
foreign countries. As soon as these negative mediæval conditions were
swept away by the storms of the Reformation the tree gradually but
surely fell into decay. With this later stage there is associated the
historic tragedy of Jürgen Wullenwever, that genial and daring
democratic innovator, who, in an endeavor to conquer Denmark in order
to restore the prestige of the Hansa, was betrayed by his patrician
fellow-burghers and hanged.

The Hansa, though in a stage of increasing decrepitude, now lingered
on until the final crash came in 1630, when all the members dissolved
their allegiance to the league. Only the three Hanse towns of Hamburg,
Bremen, and Lubeck renewed the compact, which, however, to-day is
purely nominal. The Hansa had fulfilled its great historic mission. It
had impressed the stamp of German culture upon the North; given German
commerce the supremacy over that of all other nations; protected the
northern and eastern boundaries of the empire at a time when the
imperial power was impotent and the State disrupted; and maintained
and extended the prestige of the German flag in the northern seas.
Said a great German writer: "When all on land was steeped in