Lübeck

That network made Lübeck the capital of the Hanse in all but name. The first general diet of the League met here in 1356, and after Valdemar IV of Denmark took Visby in 1361, the war the cities waged against him ended with the Peace of Stralsund in 1370, the height of Lübeck's power in the Baltic. At home the council stayed in the hands of patricians grouped in the exclusive Circle Society, and the craftsmen, who wanted a voice in return for the taxes they paid, rose against them in the butchers' revolt of 1384 and deposed the council in 1408.

The decline came from the west. In the early 16th century Dutch skippers began sailing straight into the eastern Baltic, bypassing Lübeck's staple. When Denmark refused to hand over the castles on the Sound, the burgomaster Jürgen Wullenwever tried to restore the old supremacy by force, melting down church silver to pay for intervention in the Danish civil war known as the Count's Feud. The venture failed by 1536, and Wullenwever was driven from office and later executed. The Hanse lingered on for another century, and its last diet met in Lübeck in 1669.