The ‘Golden Age’ of the Hanseatic League 71
because the money was to be collected and then distributed centrally, not, as
later, by the towns themselves—, the Pfundzoll became an important instru-
ment of the Hanseatic League’s policies, to be revived again in 1367.
The whole campaign was determined by bad luck and wrong decisions.29
Though the agreements with the counts of Holstein, the Teutonic Knights,
and the kings of Sweden and Norway were clear, there was only one attack of
Holstein against Jutland, while the Wendish towns had to carry the burden of
the war nearly all alone. The fleet, under the command of the mayor of Lübeck,
Johann Wittenborg, in April 1362, first turned to the fortresses at the Øresund to
secure free passage from the Baltic to the North Sea. When help from Sweden
failed to materialize, Wittenborg decided to employ the men from the ships
in the siege of Helsingborg. At this point, Waldemar attacked the Hanseatic
fleet and was able to destroy or capture the greater part of the ships so that
Wittenborg was forced to conclude a disadvantageous truce. Though he suc-
ceeded in bringing back the weakened fleet to Lübeck, he soon ran into difficul-
ties because of earlier personal misbehaviour and died, perhaps by execution.30
Waldemar flanked this success by a diplomatic offensive. He persuaded
Magnus of Sweden and Håkon of Norway to change sides, gaining Håkon’s sup-
port through marriage with his younger daughter Margaret. He also travelled
to the rulers of Christian Europe, visiting the Emperor Charles iv in Prague,
Pope Urban V in Avignon, and others. He won over King Kazimierz iii of
Poland who kept the Teutonic Knights and the towns in Prussia and Livonia
from interfering in the conflict. Meanwhile, the truce had been prolonged sev-
eral times. Finally, in September 1365, because acts of piracy had no effect and
the situation had deteriorated, the towns were forced to conclude the peace of
Vordingborg. By this, their privileges in Scania were only partly renewed.
But this did not mean a full Danish success. In Sweden, in 1363, the Council of
the Realm had expelled King Magnus and his son, King Håkon of Norway, who
had been co-ruler of Sweden. Magnus’s successor was his nephew, Albert iii
of Mecklenburg who did not support Waldemar’s policies. When Waldemar
did not keep to the promises made in the treaty of Vordingborg and raised
taxes and customs on Scania and for the passage through the Øresund, he not
only roused resistance by the Wendish, but also by the Prussian and Dutch
towns which had not participated in the last war. Again the assemblies of the
towns’ representatives played a key role in bringing the towns from different
regions together.
29 Götze, Greifswald, 88.
30 See the article of Gerald Stefke, “Der Lübecker Bürgermeister Johan Wittenborch, hinge-
richtet 1363,” Hansische Geschichtsblätter 126 (2008), 1–144.