After the failure of Wullenweber's bold schemes and his ignominious death, after the enmity against Lübeck, and consequently against the League, that had been fanned to yet greater fury by late events, it is easy to understand that the relations of the Hansa to the Scandinavian kingdoms suffered an entire change. Denmark was the first to avail itself of the liberty it had regained. The country forthwith began to draw profit from its "gold mine" the Sound. Then Norway followed suit. The town of Bergen, above all, so long oppressed by the League, now took its revenge. Gradually as the inhabitants beheld the enfeeblement at home and abroad of their rivals they withdrew from them privilege after privilege until the time came that the natives of Bergen recovered both their commercial activity and their fortune. The justice of history is less pressed for time than the justice of man, but it is yet surer and more inexorable. This inevitable justice, which punishes the children for the sins of their fathers, fell upon the Hanseatics in full measure at Bergen. The time actually came when it fell to the people of Bergen to advance funds to impoverished or ruined Hanseatics, and, on the principle of returning a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, insult for insult, they advanced these moneys under the same hard conditions that had been employed towards themselves. The dispossession of the Hanseatics was naturally a work of time, but in course of years it became complete. The last occasion when the four chief "games" were performed, which according to a reporter at the Hanseatic Diet were designed "to keep off rich folks' children from Bergen and secure the profits of the trade to poor young fellows," seems to have been about 1590. It is true that up to the eighteenth century German merchants retained certain prerogatives in Norway, but they were no longer the Hanseatics of the League, they were merely the members of an association reduced to slender proportions, an association as impotent to sustain its dignity as to restore the rights of its predecessors. Sweden was no less happy in its efforts after emancipation from Hanseatic tutelage. Gustavus Vasa laid the foundations for this exemption from tolls, monopolies, and harassing restrictions. He taught his subjects the great lesson how to trade to their own profit. After his position as ruler was once well assured he did not hesitate to speak in open court of the German merchants as "butchers," comparing his predecessors to "good milch kine," and adding that he should never forgive himself, but should be ashamed before God and man, did he sacrifice the well-being of his kingdom to the rapacity and selfishness of the Lübeckers. And he kept his word. So long as he lived he checkmated the League with all the resources at his command, and he left his desire to raise the commercial prosperity of his kingdom as a legacy to his son.