CITIES OF THE MIDDLE AGES 169 North, those that had their ports on the Baltic or on the North Sea, Liibeck, Hamburg, and Bremen. In those times commerce was carried on only with arms in the hands. The merchant had to defend his ships and his merchandise while en route, and to make him- self respected in the marts of trade. In order to be stronger, the merchants of the commercial towns formed an association. Their league was called the Hanseatic League. One by one all the towns in North- ern Germany from the Baltic to the Low Countries became members of it; there were eighty of them in the sixteenth century, extending from Riga in the East to Bruges in the West. In each port of Sweden, Norway, and Russia the league had a mansion, a veritable fortress, guarded by a band of armed em- ployees, all unmarried, organized as a guild, with a master, journeymen and apprentices. No stranger was allowed to go through the building, and at evening the watch-dogs were turned loose. The building served as a storehouse for merchandise, a market and a tribunal. Each year great ships laden with linens and cloths from Flanders, spices and silks from the Orient, departed from the Hanse towns; these ships armed for war had their complement of soldiers, their decks were defended by two strong forts made of wood. They arrived at the foreign ports, at Bergen, Riga or "Novgorod;1 the merchants took lodgings within the walls, unloaded and put on sale their goods. Disputes were adjudicated by a tribunal of the Hanse, Then the ships set out again, laden with woods, wax, skins, and especially with dried fish. At this period 1 Novgorod was a great trade centre, but not a port—ED.