HANSE

An alliance or confederation among merchants or cities, for the good ordering and protection ot the commerce ot its members. An imposition upon merchandise. Du Cange. ---Hanse towns, The collective name of certain German cities, ·including Lubeck, Hamburg, and Bremen, which formed an alliance for the mutual protection and furtherance of their commercial interests, in the twelfth cen• tury. The powerful confederacy thus formed was called the "Hanseatic League." The league framed and promulgateq_ a code of maritime law, which was known as the "Laws of the Hanse' Towns," or Jm Hanse at i cum Maritimum.-Han11e towns, laws of the. The maritime ordinances of the Hanseatic towns, first published in German at Lubeck, in 1597, and in May, 1614, revised and enlarged.-Hanseatic. Pertaining. to a han§_e or commercial alliance; but, generally, the uiuon of the Hanse towns is the one referred to, as in the expres- 11ion the "Hanseatic League." [s. 567]