Still by steady persistence the German cities got their will, and of course they exercised it first on members of their union. The defaulting city had to pay a fine of something like two to three hundred pounds of our money to the common fund of the Union, and, in event of a recurrence, was threatened with expulsion from the community. This punishment was called _unhansing_, and it was inflicted several times, and was only atoned for by the heaviest penalties not only of money tributes, but often of pilgrimages to some distant sacred shrine, to wipe out the disgrace that the city had drawn down, not on itself alone, but also on its brethren of the League, by the fact that there could be such a black sheep among them. Such, briefly, was the empire that, by the middle of the thirteenth century, was exercised by a community of German men of commerce, who had their seat of control, not at home, but on a foreign soil. Such, briefly, was the rise of these powerful merchants who not only dared to dictate terms to distant cities, but were absolutely obeyed. Such, briefly, was the transformation of bands of pirates and adventurous traders into a peace-loving and industrious association. Let us now take a rapid glance at what had occurred meantime in the Holy Roman Empire and the towns. FOOTNOTES: [2] Julin in Danish, Wolin in Sclavonic, Winetha in Saxon. A learned author, pointing out the community of origin of the Venetians of the Adriatic, and the Venedes or Vends of the Baltic, draws a parallel between the Venice of the Adriatic, and the Venice (Winetha) of the north. "Singular destiny," he writes, "this of the two commercial cities, which seem the issue of one trunk, that grew up at the same time in the Adriatic and the Baltic, almost under the same name, the one to arrive at the greatest splendour, enriched by the trade of the East, the other to serve as a starting-point for the commerce of the north." [3] Under the term of Greeks, Adam, and other writers of the period, include the Russians, on account of their adhesion to the Greek form of the Catholic Church. [4] It is worth mentioning that on the coast of Scania, once so rich in herring fishery, this industry is now almost extinct. The fish rarely come into these waters, owing perhaps to the increase of traffic in the Sound (for herrings, as is well known, dislike noise and movement and seek out quiet seas); or because the great whale fisheries of Greenland have altered their course, for whales now pursue less often than formerly the shoals of herrings that were thus forced to take refuge in the Sound; or this may be simply due to the diminution of the crustacean called _Astacus harengum_, on which the fish so largely feeds--the fact in any case remains. III. FOREIGN TRADE.