It is evident, therefore, that the greatest source of wealth to the Hansa was this intermediary traffic.  Several other important commercial connections will be touched upon later.  Casual mention should here be made, however, to the trade with Scotland, Ireland, Brabant, and France, whose annual markets were regularly attended by the Hansa merchants.  While the trade of the cities of the league found such wide extension abroad, however, the traffic with their nearest neighbors, the High-Germans, was very weak.  Their domestic trade, indeed, was confined chiefly to the plains of Northern Germany, extending southward to Thuringia and eastward to the Oder and the Vistula, where Cracow constituted the last outpost.  The great High-German communities along the Main and the Danube pursued different political and economic interests.  Being chiefly manufacturing cities, they formed only temporary unions.  Dependent rather upon the south of Europe, they were also differentiated from their northern brethren by their coinage, inasmuch as they accepted gold as their standard, whereas the Low-Germans preferred silver money, especially that of Lubeck.  Of course each Hanse town formed the nucleus of the local intercourse; and thither came noblemen and peasant to barter the produce of the fields for the merchandise of the city, and to invest, or probably more frequently to borrow, money.  Lubeck and Bruges were in those days the money centres of Northern Europe, and their councillors and commercial magnates were the bankers of kings and princes.

The methods of transportation and intercourse at that time were very different from those of to-day.  There was no postal service, no insurance, very sparse circulation of bills, and very little of that agency—­or commission—­business, which relegates to a third party the transportation and management of goods.  Trade was very largely a matter of individual enterprise, demanding in a far greater measure than to-day the personal superintendence of the merchant.  Usually the latter himself travelled well-armed across sand and sea to distant lands, trusting in God and upon his strong right arm.  As master of a vessel he did not fail to interest his crew in the safety of the ship and cargo by allotting to them part of the profits.  Indeed, his journey was far more perilous than it is to-day.  Upon the public highway he was subject to the attack of the robber barons, who held him prisoner against heavy ransom; and in the innumerable hiding-places of the rock-bound northern coast his course was followed by the watch-boats of pirates.  The occupations of highway robbery and piracy were at that time still regarded among wide circles as excusable.  Dozens of feudal castles, the retreats of robber barons, were destroyed by the soldiers of the municipalities, and dozens of freebooting vessels were annihilated, the robbers themselves being executed with axe or sword or thrown overboard.  The piracy of that age reached its acme in the notorious