That civilization, knowledge, and wealth, to which, as we
have remarked, they contributed so essentially, though indirectly, and
without having these objects in view, disposed and enabled other powers to
participate in the commerce which they had hitherto exclusively carried on.
It was not indeed to be supposed, that either the monarchs or the subjects
would willingly and cheerfully submit to have all their own trade in the
very heart of their own country conducted, and the fruit of it reaped by
foreign merchants. They, therefore, first used their efforts to gain
possession of their own commerce, and then aspired to participate in the
trade of other countries; succeeding by degrees, and after a length of
time, in both these objects, the Hanseatic League was necessarily depressed
in the same proportion.
The Dutch and the English first began to seek a participation in the
commerce of the North. The chief cities which formed the republic of
Holland had been among the earliest members or confederates of the League,
and when they threw off the yoke of Germany, and attached themselves to the
house of Bourbon, they ceased to form part of the League; and after much
dispute, and even hostility with the remaining members of it, they
succeeded in obtaining a part of the commerce of the Baltic, and commercial
treaties with the king of Denmark, and the knights of the Teutonic order.
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