"all heathen lands from Cape Bojador eastward even to the Indies." Little by little, therefore, Portuguese navigators were pushing southward until, in 1487, Bartholomew Dias sighted the Cape of Good Hope, and got about as far as Algoa Bay. Then he unwillingly turned back because of the threats of his crew. It was a most remarkable voyage, and one of the shipmates of Dias was Bartholomew Columbus, a brother of the discoverer of the New World.

Ten years later, or five years after the voyage of Columbus, Vasco da Gama sailed from Lisbon for the Cape of Good Hope. As he passed the Cape he was terribly storm-tossed, but the storms carried him in a fortunate direction. And when at last he got his reckonings, he was off the coast of India; he therefore kept along the coast until in sight of a port. The port was the well-known city of Calicut. Two years later he returned to Europe by the same route, his ships laden with spices, precious stones, beautiful tapestries and brocades, ivory and bronzes. The long-sought sea-route to India had been discovered.

A HANSE CITY—HAMBURG, ALONG THE WATER-FRONT

Commerce in Western Europe.—After the discovery of the new route, Venice and Genoa were scarcely heard of in relation to commerce; they lost everything and gained nothing. The great commerce with the Orient was to have a new western terminus, and the latter was to be on the shores of the North and Baltic Seas.

The commerce between Europe and India stimulated trade in western Europe as well. As early as the twelfth century the manufacture of linen and woollen cloth had grown to be a very important industry that had resulted in the rapid growth of population. The older cities grew rapidly, and new ones sprang up wherever the commodities of trade were gathered, manufactured, or distributed.

These centres of trade had two hostile elements against them. The feudal lords used to pillage them legally by extorting heavy taxes and forced loans whenever their treasuries were empty. The portionless brothers and relatives of the feudal lords, to whom no employments save war, adventure, and piracy were open, pillaged them illegally. Along the coasts especially, piracy was considered not only a legitimate, but a genteel, profession. So in order to protect themselves, the cities began to join themselves into leagues.

The Hanse League.—About the beginning of the thirteenth century[4] Hamburg and Lübeck formed an alliance afterward called a hansa; at the beginning of the fourteenth century it embraced seventy cities, having the capital at Lübeck. At the time of its greatest power the League embraced all the principal cities of western Europe nearly as far south as the Danube. Large agencies, called "factories," were established in London, Bruges, Novgorod, Bergen, and Wisby. The influence of the League practically controlled western Europe.

The Hanse League performed a wonderful work. It stopped piracy on the seas and robbery on the land. Industrially, it encouraged self-government and obedience to constitutional authority. Shipbuilding and navigation so greatly improved that the ocean traffic resulting from the discovery of the cape route to India quickly fell into the hands of Hanse sailors and master-mariners. The League not only encouraged and protected all sorts of manufactures, but its schools trained thousands of operatives. The mines were worked and the idle land cultivated. It was the greatest industrial movement that ever occurred.

HANSE ROUTES—THE HANSE LEAGUE REORGANIZES THE TRADE OF THE WORLD

Socially, the Hanse League brought the wealth that gave those comforts and conveniences before unknown. The standards of social life, education, art, and science were raised from a condition scarcely better than barbarism to a high plane of civilization. Indeed, the civilization of western Europe was the most important result of it.

It forced the rights of individual freedom, as well as municipal independence, from more than one monarch, and punished severely the kings who sought to betray it. It crushed the power of those who opposed it,[5] and rewarded those who were faithful to it. Its most important mission, however, was the overthrow of feudalism and the gradual substitution of popular government in its place.

Having accomplished the regeneration of Europe, the Hanse League died partly by its own hand, because of its arrogance, but mainly from the fact that, having educated western Europe to self-government and commercial independence, there was no longer need for its existence. Independent cities grew rapidly into importance, and these got along very well without the protection of the League. The great industrial progress was at times temporarily checked by wars, but it never took a backward step. Indeed the progress of commerce has always been a contest between brains and brute force, and in such a struggle there is never any doubt about the final outcome.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION