It seems strange to us of to-day to find as the leading spirits among these Brothers the names of Moltke and Manteuffel, doubtless forbears of the famous modern German generals. These pirates founded masses and charitable institutions on the one hand, and robbed and sacked remorselessly on the other. Peace being concluded, the Hansa naturally had to clear the seas of these pests, but it had been easier to call them into activity than to suppress them. A large body of men had found profitable employment coupled with stirring adventure; this latter being a powerful incentive in those days, and were loth to quit their free wild life. They continued their association, nay, even enlarged it, forming themselves into a corporation, after the pattern of the Knights Templars, and divided all booty equally among their body. In a brief space they became the scourge of all the commercial cities. "God's friend and all the world's enemy" was their audacious motto. Masters of both seas, the Baltic and the German Ocean, on one occasion they even seized, plundered, and burnt down Bergen (1392) and took prisoner the bishop. Gothland became their stronghold, and Wisby, once the Hansa's glory, was turned into a pirate's nest near which the merchant sailed with fear and trembling. It seems strange, to our modern ideas, even to think that piracy was once a reputable calling. It was held as such, for example, in ancient Greece, as we may read in Thucydides, book i. chap. 5. No offence was in those days either intended or taken if one Greek asked another if he were a pirate. In the Baltic, like duelling in more polished climes, this practice long survived the positive laws framed against it. Pirates would even give back empty ships to merchants, wishing them a happy return with fresh and fuller cargoes. In vain did Margaret of Sweden protest against the audacities of the Victual Brothers. She was helpless against them. The measure of her impotence can be gauged by the fact that she begged from Richard II., king of England, permission to hire three ships at Lynn for the protection of her kingdom. In vain, too, on the days when the Hansa met in council, was this theme discussed. For three whole years all fishing on Scania had to be abandoned. The result was severely felt throughout the length and breadth of Christian Europe, for herrings and other Lenten food became rare and costly. [Illustration: SHIP-BUILDING IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.] Stronger and stronger grew these pirates, so that at last it was decided to send out an army against them. Once more recourse was had to a poundage tax to raise supplies and thirty-five large vessels with three thousand men were sent to sea in 1394. After long and arduous struggles they at last broke the power of the association, but for long afterwards separate bands of pirates, once members of the mighty gang, rendered the navigation of these seas a peril.