The conditions were such as rendered warlike operations between England and the Teutonic order inevitable. It is impossible to trace in any detail the guerilla tactics which were adopted on both sides. It is only necessary for our present purpose to convey some idea of the sea power which the Hansa exercised in order that we may better understand the ambitions of Germany to which the Emperor William the Second and Grand Admiral von Tirpitz gave expression in the early years of the twentieth century. At the outset of its career, its warships were manned by the burghers themselves, but as the fleet increased in size--it was quadrupled during the first half of the fifteenth century--recourse to mercenaries became more and more general. The commanders of the ships were invariably citizens of the towns which had equipped them, and were frequently members of the governing council, while the admiral of a fleet was always a councillor, and usually a burgomaster. The officers of the land forces, which were raised as occasion demanded, were principally drawn from the impoverished nobility, whose members welcomed any opportunity of repairing their shattered fortunes by martial adventure. Of the naval resources of the League, some idea can be formed from the fact that, in the war against the Scandinavian Kingdoms in 1426, it sent out a fleet of 260 ships, manned by 12,000 sailors and fighting men. For the exhausting, if not inglorious, seven years' war against Gustav Wasa's successor, Lübeck alone fitted out 18 men-of-war, of which one, the _Adler_, carried 400 sailors, 500 fighting men, and 150 "constables." Her armament consisted of 8 carthouns, 6 demi-carthouns, 26 culverins, and many smaller pieces of ordnance. Among her munitions were 6,000 cannon-balls and 300 hundredweight of powder. CHAPTER II The First German Fleet In one of the window niches on the ground floor of the Military Museum (Zeughaus) at Berlin lies an old and dilapidated 8-pounder gun. In its deep and disfiguring coat of rust it is an inconspicuous object, and, amid that rich and varied collection of artillery from all the ages, the eye of the casual visitor will not rest upon it for more than a disparaging moment. And yet few of the treasures of the museum have a more interesting history to tell, for it is the sole remaining relic of the first serious experiment in naval and colonial policy ever made by a German ruler. On an elevation rising from the beach of Cape Three Points, on the Gold Coast, now British territory, are still to be seen the crumbling ruins of the fort of Gross-Friedrichsburg, built there by the Elector of Brandenburg in 1681, and when the German corvette _Sophie_ visited the spot, with pious purpose, in 1884, this corroded gun was unearthed from beneath the weeds and brushwood that have overgrown the decayed ramparts.