Justice satisfied, Max Meyer returned to King Henry's Court, and was
once more made a welcome guest. Whether he was empowered by the city to
act as plenipotentiary, or whether, in the first instance, he acted on
his own account, does not appear. But what is certain is that he made a
number of proposals to King Henry, to which the latter lent a willing
ear, that Meyer was knighted by his royal host, and received from him a
golden chain in token of the honour in which he held him, and that Henry
further promised him a yearly income of three hundred and a half golden
crowns. The terms were that the English king should advance a
considerable sum to Lübeck towards her war expenses--a sum which the
city promised to refund and to double, out of the first profits derived
from the conquered Danish kingdom.
Henry's object in this alliance was chiefly to harass and annoy his
Catholic compeers, and to have a rich Protestant ally in the
complications that were thickening round him. There was not much result
from the friendship on either side; but for the moment, the news that
the King of England was their friend and supporter, gave renewed courage
to the democratic party in Lübeck. It also gave them ready cash
wherewith to carry on the war with the Netherlands and their friends the
Danes. For war it must be. This Wullenweber openly advocated, after
various vain attempts to induce the Danish king to grant the Hansa's
requests. Wullenweber himself had on two occasions been sent by Lübeck
as their ambassador to Copenhagen, and had returned home furious at the
want of success that met his negotiations. Why should not the Hansa, he
pleaded, once more play the _rôle_ of king-maker? Gustavus Vasa had
proved a failure and a disappointment to the League, had broken every
promise he had made to them. Let a new king be put in his place. Those
who had helped the Swedish king into power with a hundred marks, should
help him out of power with five hundred marks, he boasted; adding that
before the next carnival he should make a masquerade before King
Gustavus that he would not despise. For Denmark too he had his plan; and
this was no other than to reinstate Christian II., once the enemy of the
League. Christian had always opposed the aristocracy and the clergy, and
had proclaimed himself the friend of the people. Reinstated by the
Hansa, he would owe them gratitude, so reckoned Wullenweber, and being
popular with the lower classes in Denmark the League might reckon upon
their support. To aid him in this enterprise the dictator turned to the
Count of Oldenburg, a relation of the dethroned king, an intrepid and
intelligent Lutheran known as the Alcibiades of the North.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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