Episode 2 - The Livonian Cities

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Hello and welcome to the Hanseatic League, a podcast from the History of the germans network.

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Episode 2 Livonian Cities.

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In the monastery of Siegeberg there was a man of worthy life and with venerable grey hair, Meinhard by name, a priest of the Order of St.

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Augustine.

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He came to Livonia with a band of merchants simply for the sake of Christ and only to preach for German merchants bound together through familiarity with the Livonians, were accustomed to go to Livonia, frequently sailing up the Dogava River.

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So begins the chronicle of Henry of Livonia, a German missionary who tells about the foundation of the bishopric and city of Riga, the conversion of the pagan population of what is today Latvia and Estonia, and the cruel antics of the Livonian brotherhood of the sword.

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In this episode we'll touch upon the Livonian Sword brothers and we take a first glimpse at the Teutonic Knights.

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But this is the history of the Hanseatic League.

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And so what we really focus on are the merchants, specifically the merchants from the Society of German Merchants who frequently travel to Gotland.

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The Gotlandfauer who we met last week.

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Because the tale we hear today adds the other important streak to the structure of the Hanseatic League, its willingness to use military force in the pursuit of profits.

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But before we start, let me tell you that all podcasts from the History of the Germans Podcast Network are advertising free, thanks to the generous support from patrons.

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When we left the emerging Hanse last week, they had just established themselves on the island of Gotland.

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They founded the city of Visby and convinced the Gotlanders to take them to Novgorod, the great entrepot of all goods the wide steppes of Eastern Europe could offer.

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There they had established a trading compound to buy the beeswax Europe needed to bathe its churches in divine light.

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And the first the fine lords and ladies of the splendid medieval courts craved.

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And last but not least, Novgorod stood at the end of that vast system of interconnected rivers that allowed the Varangians to travel from Scandinavia to the Black Sea and on to Constantinople.

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On those same rivers, thick dark fir tree honey went south and silks and spices came up north.

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Thanks to the friendship or the naivety of the Gotlanders, the LCH had wrangled themselves into this trade.

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They brought up cloth from Flanders and Westphalia to the shivering northerners, as well as the valuable salt needed to preserve the food for the winter.

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Getting to Novgorod was, however, a challenge.

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It involved sailing roughly 800 kilometers or 500 miles from Gotland to Kronstadt, that island of St.

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Petersburg, where the wares had to be moved to another set of ships.

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Then they had to go 130km up the Neva river into the Ladoga Sea.

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Most of that was being under constant threat from raiders.

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In Ladoga there is another change of vessel for the last 200 kilometer trip, again upriver to Novgorod.

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There had to be a quicker and simpler way.

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Well, geographically there is one absolutely.

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There is the Dogova Dvina or Duna river that flows into the Baltic a mere 400 kilometers or 200 miles east of Gotland.

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The Dogava is quite a use for river.

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If you track it upstream, you get.

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To Vitebsk, where you have portage links to Smolensk, where one can pick up the Dnieper, down to Kyiv and then Kharkiv, the Black Sea and Constantinople.

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Or you can go further on to Tver, where there is another portage link to Novgorod.

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And if that wasn't enough, from the mouth of the Dogovaduna you can pick up the land route directly to Novgorod, which may be a long drag, but along an established route.

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So why are the Gotlanders and their Lubisch friends not going there?

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Well, there were, as our new friend Henry the Livonian said at the very beginning of this.

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th this route as early as the: 1180

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But there was a minor problem with it.

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The people who lived at the mouth of the Dogavar were pagans, and not any pagans, but a Baltic Finnish peoples the Germans called Lets or Livonians in Latin.

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The Livonians were, however, not the only ones living in the area.

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There were other groups, the Semi Galleons, the Selonians, the Latgallians, the Curonians and the Lithuanians who controlled the large area to the south.

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All of these groups saw no reason to change their religion or their way of life or letting the merchants live there permanently.

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German missionary, arrived in: 1184

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He settled on the lower Dogava at a place called Xkle and surprisingly converted a few locals.

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But progress was slow.

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In: 1185

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Meinhard and the other inhabitants fled into the woods, where the missionary came up with an idea how to accelerate the conversion process.

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If he were to build a modern stone fort to protect the local population, the Livonians would see the superiority of the Christian faith and gratefully join his flock.

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So he made a deal.

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If the Livonians were to convert, he would get some specialists from Gotland who would build them some brand new fortifications.

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Deal done.

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A modern fort was rising up in Ixgle after it had proven its worth in an attack from the semi galleons.

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The people of the neighbouring village of Hom asked for the same and again the Holy Bishop called upon the masons of Gotland to help.

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Bribery, as it turns out, is not a successful method to instill spiritual devotion.

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As soon as the last stone was laid, the ungrateful Livonians took a bath in the Dogeva, something they believed would wash off the stain of their baptism.

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Meinhard, now minus a great deal of money and reputation, had to return to the piecemeal missionary approach of one soul at a time.

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Despite the setback, back home in Germany, the Archbishop of Hamburg Bremen got very excited about Meinhard's attempt to convert the Livonians.

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He elevated Meinhard to Bishop of Livonia and the modest churchlet of Exgle to the rank of Cathedral.

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That elevation did, however, do nothing much to foster Meinhard's efforts.

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In fact, he kept being taken to the cleaners by the Livonians.

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This began to irritate the holy man to the point that he made plans with the German merchants who kept coming up the Daugava to trade fur and beeswax.

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The merchants promised to take Meinhard back to Gotland, where he was to muster an army to forcibly convert the obstinate Livonians.

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Meinhard, who, spoiler alert, will become Saint Meinhard, followed the other great saint of the time, Bernard of Clairvaux, in the doctrine that cold hard steel is a surefire means to implant the Apostles Creed at the last minute.

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The Livonians, afraid of the military confrontation, convinced Meinhard not to go, promising to get baptized again and become good Christians after all.

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Meinhard went back to Ixtgle only to find his recent convert splashing about in the Dorgovar again.

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That is when he sends one of his monks to go to Rome and ask Pope Celestine III to sanction a crusade against these duplicitous Livonians before the answer made it Back to Meinhard.

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He died surrounded by his monks, but only very few parishioners.

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The ball was now in the court of the Archbishop of Hamburg Bremen.

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As you may remember from last series, the Archbishops of Hamburg Bremen have been hankering for a role as the highest church authority in Scandinavia and the Baltic since.

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Well, since there ever was Christianity in Scandinavia and the Baltic.

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And you will also remember that at every single junction, their hopes were dashed.

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The Pope established an archbishopric in Lund that took charge of all Danish and Swedish and Norwegian churches.

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Then the Emperor Barbarossa gave his rights over the bishoprics of Oldenburg, Mecklenburg and Ratzeburg to Henry the Line, who made them effectively his fiefs.

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This Livonian opportunity really excited the Archbishop, who was at the time our old friend Hartwig, the last of the Counts of Stade.

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He and his family were the perennial losers of the late 12th century.

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His elder brothers lost the Mark of Brandenburg to Albrecht the Bear.

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Well, and their lives too.

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His sister was murdered in her bed by the men of the Bishop of Hildesheim after having previously been ousted as Queen of Denmark.

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And then Hartwig himself, well, he had tried to give the county of Stade, his family inheritance to the See of Bremen, but failed when Henry the Lion effectively stole it from under his nose.

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Hartwig was a frustrated old man who desperately needed a success.

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He chose one of his associates, a man called Bertholdt, to go to Livonia and make it his or theirs.

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Bertholdt is a proactive man, and since the papal patent for a crusade in Livonia had arrived, he could recruit knights, thugs and anyone able to hold a sword.

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And in dire need of forgiveness, these men promised to go on crusade with him.

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And that is what they did.

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Well, that is also all that they were prepared to do.

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They came along with Bertholdt, burned, broke and baptized.

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But once the time of their penance was up, they got onto the next available ship and sailed home.

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Berthold would probably have done exactly the same thing had his horse not run away with him straight into the midst of a Livonian army who tore him limb from limb.

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And to stage left, the third Bishop of Livonia, sent by Hartwig.

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This time, Hartwig digs deep into his most precious possessions, the members of his ever dwindling clan.

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Albrecht of Buxtehude is the Archbishop's nephew and he is not the kind of man who falls for a Livonian ruse.

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When he arrived with 500 men and 23 ships, the Livonians promised to get baptized as per standard procedure.

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By this Time, Albrecht does not leave it at that.

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He invites the leaders of the Livonians to a drinking party.

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Once they're all seated, he has the doors bolted and tells them that they will not get out until they provide suitable hostages that ensure their future good behavior.

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Albrecht is then shown a site a bit further downriver from Iksgill that he judges to be a more suitable location for his cathedral city, as it lay along a tributary called the Riga.

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The city he founded in: 1201

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Riga was not intended as a city for the Livonians.

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It was a place for Christian religious institutions and the bishop's allies, the Crusaders and the merchants.

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He moved the seat of the bishopric from Exkilde to Riga.

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He founded several monasteries that took their place inside the new settlement.

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And he offered it as a place for German and other merchants to live and trade.

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Riga became the basis from where the new arrivals conquered what is today the countries of Latvia and Estonia.

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The timing was pretty much ideal.

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Emperor Henry VI had died in: 1197

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Now this crusade is not happening, but vows had been made and many of these armed pilgrims were then diverted to Livonia.

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And then there was a subsequent civil war between Philip of Swabia and Otto IV that created many opportunities for murder, maiming and the breaking of oaths that required the cleansing powers of a crusade that provided a steady flow of thugs ready to come fighting.

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And beyond that, the merchants from Dortmund, Munster, Zorst and Lubeck, to name just a few, knew that there were enormous riches to be made in the trade with the east, and the key to those lay in the mouth of the Dogava.

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All Albert and Hartwig had to do was to go around Germany once a year and drum up support for the colony in the far north.

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Riga filled up and many of those who came saw their hopes for wealth and power fulfilled.

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From this time onwards until: 1918

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The most successful amongst those new arrivals were the members of Albert and Hartwig's extended family.

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Their brothers, cousins and brothers in law swamped the newly conquered country and the dynasties they founded, the Uxkuls, the Thysenhusen and the Von der Rob, played an outsized role in the history of Latvia and Estonia.

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So good old Hartwig, after all his ordeals, finally saw some of his ambitions fulfilled at the expense of the inhabitants of a faraway land.

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One institution that Albert created had become particularly the Livonian Brothers of the Sword.

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That was a knightly order like the Templars, the Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights.

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Though they were specifically designated for the Nordic Crusade in Livonia, its members were not just noblemen, but they also admitted merchants.

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Which finally gets us back to the story of the Hanseatic League.

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What role did they play in all this?

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Well, a very large one indeed.

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The 23 Ships Albert's first warband arrived on, well, they had been provided by the Society of German Merchants who frequently traveled to Gotland.

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The Gotlandfarer we heard about last week.

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And then there is the question of why the Crusaders headed to the mouth of the Dogova.

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There was no shortage of pagans along the Baltic coast.

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So if the purpose of all this had been just to convert pagans, Riga would not have been the obvious destination.

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The Prussians and Lithuanians were a lot closer and even more fiercely opposed to Christianity and books.

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The chronicler Henry of Livonia says quite explicitly that it was the merchants who had brought Meinhard of Siegeberg to Livonia.

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All in though other players were important.

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The crusade into Livonia was at least partly organized and initiated by the Gotlandfarer, who were looking for a shorter route to Novgorod and to the markets of the East.

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And this may also be a good moment to talk about the social background of these merchants.

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Merchants and what we mean here are long distance merchants, not local traders.

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And they came from three different groups.

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The first were men who had started out as ministeriales, these unfree serfs who received a full nightly or ecclesiastical training to serve their lord as soldiers or administrators.

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These were quite common amongst the merchant class in the cities and there had been seats of bishops or major princes.

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And it's not a surprise, they were often in charge of markets, tolls, taxes, etc.

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And Hans had both an understanding of and an axis to finance.

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In 12th century Cologne there was a man called Gerhard Unmars who became immensely rich as a merchant and banker, financing his lord, the Archbishop of Cologne's wars against Henry the Lion.

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The second group were free landowners who had a base in the city from where they sold their produce and then gradually shifted to trading not just their own, but third party wares.

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And finally there are the people who came from all walks of life, entrepreneurial artisans, the administrators of ecclesiastical or princely manners, and sometimes just men or women who had a small amount of capital and turned it into a large pile by placing their bets right.

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One thing they all had in common was access to capital to trade beesmax and fur with Novgorod, wine with England or grain and fish with Norway required the funds to charter a vessel and fill it with the goods to sell.

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It would then take months to get to the destination, sell the goods, buy others before returning, and then selling those wares.

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Only then would there be a profit.

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Hence, in the initial phase of the Hansa, becoming a merchant required some startup capital, something only the ministeriales, the free landowners and some artisans and some commoners had.

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Later, there would be financing options that opened the profession up to others who toiled in the counting house of a merchant or trained on the ship of a successful captain.

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What's also interesting is that until the end of the Middle Ages, these long distance merchants, once admitted to their city's guilt, would not experience much social differentiation with the nobility.

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Their lifestyles were almost identical, whether you fight in a king's army or undertake arduous journeys.

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In both cases, military prowess is a crucial part of your life.

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The luxuries you use and display are also the same.

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Knights who became merchants did not take a step down in their social ranking, at least not in the 12th and 13th century.

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Hence, it's no surprise the Livonian Brothers of the Sword admitted merchants to their ranks and that merchants from Bremen and Luburg were instrumental in setting up the Teutonic Knights in Akhon.

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The Sword Brothers, as they are often called, were never particularly numerous.

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they would weigh in at about: 1000

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With all their attendants, squires in infantry support.

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They were also a bit of a disgrace.

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They had been given the same statue as the Templars, but their background and general demeanor was a lot rougher.

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The first master was killed by one of the brothers with an axe, and there was almost no crime these guys had not been accused of.

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Their military usefulness was also limited, since the terrain was not really suited for heavily armored knights.

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Where they excelled was in organizing crusades, sieges and the building and defending of forts.

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If the Sword brothers weren't the secret weapon, what really accounted for the bishop's success was that the local peoples were divided.

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All these different tribes were regularly at each other's throats.

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Plus the Lithuanian and Russians were a constant threat.

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Smart diplomacy and inducement provided by the German merchants were ways to gradually wear down the opposition in taking hold of their lands.

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So in the 25 years following the foundation of Riga, the bishop and his allies, the merchants, the Sword Brothers and the Crusaders, subdued the Various peoples living along the Dorgova and north up into what is now Estonia.

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The Danish king Valdemar also showed up in the region, and Albert and Valdemar agreed on a separation of zones of influence.

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The Russian Prince of Polotsk, the nominal overlord of Livonia, was forced to accept the changed circumstances.

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Nevertheless, the situation for the bishop and the Sword Brothers and the merchants remained fragile.

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The land was found to be poor and war was expensive.

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So the brothers tried to fill this gap by first increasing the levies on their serfs, then demanding a bigger share of the spoils from the bishop, and finally by attacking the Danish positions in Estonia.

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In: 1230

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The Teutonic Knights turned them down, saying that the Sword Brothers were people who followed their own inclinations and did not keep their rule properly.

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So basically a rough and unruly lord whose reputation was so damaged they tried to use the good name of the Teutonic Knights to get back in the saddle.

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In: 1236

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The different local peoples immediately revolted and the colony was reduced to Riga and some of the better defended forts and towns.

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The Sword Brothers were taken over by the Teutonic Knights.

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The land they had taken from the Danes in Estonia were returned and the bishop, now Archbishop of Riga, had to grant half of his lands to the Teutonic Knights.

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von Salza sent an army and by: 1250

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The lands south of Riga and along the Dorgava were recovered.

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But again peace did not hold for long.

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In: 1259

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This time it took 40 years of fighting before the land was finally subjugated.

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We'll talk a lot more about the Sword Brothers and the wars in Livonia when we do the series on the Teutonic Knights.

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What we are interested here are the Hanseatic merchants and their role in all this.

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Now the merchants main interest lay in access to the markets along the Dorgeva and the land route to Novgorod.

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ey had their first success in: 1212

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In: 1229

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For the Russian merchants there is relief from tolls and taxes, the right to adjudicate their own affairs and the right to appeal to the court or the prince over the local courts and various rules about weights and measures, priority treatments at portage and markets and the obligation to help merchants whose boats have stranded.

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What is interesting about this document, apart from the fact that 13th century German merchants are opening a trading post in a city halfway between Moscow and Minsk and closer to Odessa than to Berlin, is the list of signatories.

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There are the Prince of Smolensk, the Bishop of Riga, the master of the Sword Brothers, but also Regen, Bude, Detart and Adam, citizens of Gotland, Friedrich Dummomm from Lubeck, Henry the Goth and Ilya, both from Zost, Konrad Bloedauge and Johann Kinod from Munster, Bernank and Volkmar from Groningen, Ahrenbrecht and Albrecht from Dortmund, Heinrich Zeissig from Bremen and four citizens of Riga.

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That list illustrates how the Hanseatic League and the Gotlandfaure had remained an organisation open to traders from across the empire.

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They worked together and it seems also fought together to open and defend their markets.

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The Kontur in Smolensk was, however, short lived, which is unsurprising given the political instability in the territory.

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But once the situation in Livonia stabilized under the Teutonic Knights, trade thrived.

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Riga became one of the key members of the Hanse.

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Though the Teutonic Knights did not allow them to adopt Lubeck Law and thereby be even more closely associated with the emerging Hanseatic League.

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They were given Hamburg Law, which by agreement between Hamburg and Lubeck was basically identical.

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And Riga was not the only Hanseatic city in the area.

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The other important port was called Rival at the time and is today known as Tallinn.

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Its story is slightly different.

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The crusades into Estonia were led by the Danes and it was the Danes who expanded an existing Estonian settlement and trading station.

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hen the Danes had to leave in: 1227

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With them came 200 German merchants who quickly settled in the town.

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t stay beyond their defeat in: 1236

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But the Hanseatic merchants held on in Tallinn.

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They convinced the Danish king Eric Ploughpenny to grant them the city laws of Lubeck.

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And Tallinn quickly gained a high degree of independence from the Danish crown and integration into the Hanseatic League.

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Now Tallinn is even closer to Novgorod than Riga.

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And became a key harbor for the trade with fur, beeswax, cloth and salt.

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Two other places became important.

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One was Narva, even further along the coast and closer to Novgorod.

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But despite its attractive geographic position, Narva never really thrived.

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The citizens of Tallinn did not very much like the competition and cut them off from trade flows and even from participation in the Hanseatic League.

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The other important Hanseatic city in Estonia and still Estonia's second largest city is Dopat Tatu in Estonian.

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Tatu is deep inland on the road to Novgorod and had been a trading post since at least 11th century.

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others conquered the place in: 1224

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Dorpat Tatu became a member of the Hanseatic League and a rich trading city now, as the Danish Kingdom went through its darkest time in the 14th century, the Teutonic Knights bought Estonia off the King of Denmark and held it until the 16th century.

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Riga, Reval, Tallinn and Doppart Tartu played a major role in the Hanseatic League history.

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The contour of Novgorod that was so crucial to Luberg and visby in the 12th and 13th century came more and more under the control of these Baltic cities.

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Within the Hanseatic League, the Livonian cities, together with Visby formed one of its regional division, its drittel, or thirds.

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And that made sense.

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The trade with Novgorod and along the Dogavar was almost entirely in their control.

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And hence the cities involved in it formed their own special interest within the league.

Narrator: 00:25:09

Another group of cities that may have been part of this drittel were the Swedish cities, Stockholm, Kalma and Nicoping.

Narrator: 00:25:16

Those and the role of German merchants in Sweden during the Middle Ages will be subject to the next episode, as will be another important trait, the trade in fish.

Narrator: 00:25:25

And maybe my pronunciation of Swedish, Norwegian, Estonian and Latvian names will also improve by next episode.

Narrator: 00:25:33

And we will finally get to talk about the city of Bergen and the pier that was called Tiskebrygen for centuries and is now called Just Briggin.

Narrator: 00:25:43

I hope you will join us again.

Host: 00:25:46

And now before I go, let me explain to you how the show works.

Host: 00:25:49

You're currently listening to a podcast about the Hanseatic League.

Narrator: 00:25:54

All these episodes you get here are.

Host: 00:25:55

Also available on the main feed under History of the Germans podcast.

Host: 00:25:59

This episode is the episode 110 of this main podcast.

Host: 00:26:04

So if you enjoy this show and you want to hear more, go over to the History of the Germans podcast.

Host: 00:26:09

We have already covered the Ottonian empire in episodes one to 21.

Host: 00:26:12

The investiture contest in episodes 22 42, the reign of Frederick Barbarossa and his immediate predecessors in episodes 43 to 66, the time of the civil wars between the Welf and the Hohenstaufen and the reign of Frederick ii in episodes 70 to 94 and the history of the Great Stepmduchy of Saxony in episodes 95 to 108.

Host: 00:26:34

And as you've heard in the beginning, the History of the Germans and all its offshoots are funded entirely by the generosity of our patrons.

Narrator: 00:26:43

So if you feel it's worth supporting.

Host: 00:26:45

This effort, go to patreon.com historyofthegermans or to my website historyofthegermans.com support and make either a one time donation or sign up for a monthly or yearly contribution.

Narrator: 00:26:57

If you do the latter, you get.

Host: 00:26:59

Access to occasional bonus episodes, but mostly you're supporting the show.

Host: 00:27:04

And if Patreon isn't for you, you can also support the show by simply raising its profile.

Narrator: 00:27:10

The best way is to tell your.

Host: 00:27:11

Friends, your family, Strangers in the street, simply anyone that you love the show.

Host: 00:27:16

And you can do that face to face or on social media.

Host: 00:27:19

And if you want to link to my content, I'm on Twitter undermanshistory and on Facebook under hotgpod.

Host: 00:27:27

All the links are also in the.

Narrator: 00:27:29

Show Notes and last but not least, the bibliography.

Narrator: 00:27:32

And for this episode I relied heavily on Philipp Dillinger, Die Hanse Die Hanse Lebenswerdigkeit und Mutos Heraus Geben by Jurgen Brucker, Volker Henn and Rainer Postel.

Narrator: 00:27:43

Rolf Hammel Kieslow, Die Hanse Erik Christensen, the Nordic Crusades and since we're at it, I came across a really interesting article about the trade in beeswax in the middle ages by Dr.

Narrator: 00:27:55

Alexandra Sebosnik titled Bees in Medieval Economy.

Narrator: 00:27:59

I've put a link in the transcript that you find on the History of the Germans website.

Narrator: 00:28:03

It is a bit niche, it's very geeky but also very fascinating.