Hanseatic League
a celebrated confederacy formed in the 13th century between certain commercial towns, with the view at once of restraining the rapacity of kings and nobles, and clearing the Elbe, the German Ocean, and other places from the pirates and robbers by which they were then infested. Becoming powerful, the League concluded treaties with monarchs, raised troops, and made war, as if it had been an independent political power. At the time when the League flourished most, it consisted of 85 confederate towns. It gave a powerful impulse to commerce, and when in 1631 it in large measure fell to pieces, it left behind various free republics which continued for a long period of time.