During the latter years of his reign, two very different movements, independent of the Imperial will, or in spite of it, had been started in Southern and Northern Germany. In Würtemberg the cities united, and carried on a fierce war with Count Eberhard, surnamed the _Greiner_ (Whiner). The struggle lasted for more than ten years, and out of it grew various leagues of the knights for the protection of their rights against the more powerful princes. In the North of Germany, the commercial cities, headed by Lübeck, Hamburg and Bremen, formed a league, which soon became celebrated under the name of "The Hansa," which gradually drew the cities of the Rhine to unite with it, and, before the end of the century, developed into a great commercial, naval and military power. [Sidenote: 1375.] The Hanseatic League had its agencies in every commercial city, from Novgorod in Russia to Lisbon; its vessels filled the Baltic and the North Sea, and almost the entire commerce of Northern Europe was in its hands. When, in 1361, king Waldemar III. of Denmark took possession of the island of Gothland, which the cities had colonized, they fitted out a great fleet, besieged Copenhagen, finally drove Waldemar from his kingdom and forced the Danes to accept their conditions. Shortly afterwards they defeated king Hakon of Norway: their influence over Sweden was already secured, and thus they became an independent political power. Karl IV. visited Lübeck a few years before his death, in the hope of making himself head of the Hanseatic League; but the merchants were as good diplomatists as himself, and he obtained no recognition whatever. Had not the cities been so widely scattered along the coast, and each more or less jealous of the others, they might have laid the foundation of a strong North-German nation; but their bond of union was not firm enough for that.