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Victual Brothers

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Victual Brothers, Vitalien Brothers
Template:Lang-de
Named afterTemplate:Lang-fr (provisioners, Hundred Years' War)[1]: 146 
Formationca. 1393
Dissolvedca. 1440[citation needed]
HeadquartersVisby, Gotland, Sweden
Location
Region
Northern Europe
MethodsPrivateering, blockade running, piracy
Membership
ca. 1400 persons
Official language
(Middle) Low German

The Victual Brothers or Vitalien Brothers[2][3] (Template:Lang-de,[1]: 146 [4][5] Template:Lang-no[6]) were a loosely organized guild of 14th century Germanic privateers that initially included Mecklenburg nobility, but that later became more thoroughly the efforts of commoners, and turned to outright piracy.[1]: 146ff [4][better source needed][7] The guild had a clear historical affect in that era on maritime trade in the North and Baltic Seas.[3][4][better source needed] As privateers, they provisioned blockaded locations[6] and otherwise served as a naval contingent on behalf of regional rulers, with clients that included the Queen of Denmark, and rulers of Mecklenburg and East Frisia.[3] As their activities turned to privacy, the aims devolved to personal enrichment.[3]

The pledge of their adopted base of Gotland to the Teutonic Order by King Albert of Sweden led to that island's invasion and the destruction of Visby by Konrad von Jungingen and the Order in 1398;[8][verification needed] this disruption, the executions of some of their band in Hamburg,[3] and the Hanseatic League's continuing effort to control and make safe trade on the Baltic Sea led to changing maritime influences and a decline of the band.[not verified in body]

The Victual Brothers band either were also sometimes known[1]: 147  or devolved into a somewhat distinct group otherwise known[not verified in body] as the Likedeelers, for their proposed greater generosity with the seaside populations they engaged.[not verified in body] Klaus Störtebeker was identified with both, as a subordinate in the Victual Brothers[2][4][better source needed] and as one in command in the Likedeelers.[not verified in body]

Background

The Victual[2] or Vitalien Brothers,[3] names drawn from the German Vitalienbrüder[1]: 147ff [4] and the Norse vitaliebrødrene[6] were a loosely organized guild of privateers, later turning to piracy, who affected maritime trade during the 14th century in the North and Baltic Seas.[citation needed][3] The name Victual Brothers is derived indirectly from the Latin word for provisions, victualia, and makes reference to their first mission, which was to supply the besieged city of Stockholm.[9][verification needed] More directly and specifically, as Dirk Meier explains in his Seefahrer, Händler und Piraten im Mittelalter (Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates in the Middle Ages):

During the Hundred Years' war [1337-1453[10]], the people who provisioned the army were called vitailleurs. In 1394, when Mecklenburg was at war with Denmark, the Dukes of Mecklenburg hired pirates (known as Vitalienbrüder) whose job was to maintain a supply of food for the city of Stockholm, under siege by the Danes.[1]

As privateers, they served as a naval contingent on behalf of various regional rulers,[citation needed] work that included provisioning blockaded locations,[6] with clients that included the Queen of Denmark, and rulers of Mecklenburg and East Frisia.[3] Eventually, as as the efforts became more thoroughly the efforts of commoners, and especially, as the band turned to piracy, their activities were aimed at their own enrichment, and not the provisioning of others.[citation needed][3][4][better source needed] As historian Jörgen Bracker of Hamburg's Municipal Museum notes, the "Vitalien Brothers divided up all their loot among themselves", arguing that the notion that "these men were willing to give up any of their booty" was a false notion.[3]

History of the Guild

During the 14th century, Queen Margaret I of Denmark was battling Albert of Mecklenburg for Scandinavian supremacy; Albert had been King of Sweden since 1364 and Duke of Mecklenburg since 1383.[9][verification needed] Queen Margaret imprisoned Albert and his son Eric of Mecklenburg in order to subdue the Kingdom of Sweden,[9][verification needed] and her forces began a siege of Stockholm.[6] As the dukes of the House of Mecklenburg were without a navy, they sought instead to wage a Kaperkrieg (Privateers' War) against Denmark and in the relief of Stockholm; to do so it engaged both the owners of commercial ships and the seafaring masses through issue of letters of marque to authorize the taking and disposal of plundered goods—letters that included the ports and towns of Rostock, Wismar, Ribnitz, and Golwitz and that, in the words of Dirk Meier, likely offered a way that the "nobility of Mecklenburg", through their "compact with bands of roving and unorganised pirates", could also encourage some among the minor aristocrats of Mecklenburg to "support and indeed join the pirates, in the hope of sharing some of ther booty".[1]: 146f  Through these letters, Mecklenburg was able to raise a force of Baltic Sea pirates that would rise to number on the order of 1400 persons,[6] a force that in 1392 was pressed into the fight against Denmark, including as blockade runners in the supply of Stockholm.[citation needed]

These privateers and pirates came to be known as the Vitalienbrüder[4][better source needed], and later, in English, the Victual Brothers,[9][verification needed] and they brought food and other provisions through the Danish forces to keep the city supplied,[6][4][better source needed] and otherwise engaged in war at sea.[9][verification needed] Alongside their breaking the blockade, Margaret and Albert came to agreement in 1395, with Stockholm "pantsatt til hanseatene [pledg[ing] to the Hanseatic League]", that led to Albert's freedom;[6] city and sovereign thus freed, the troops of Queen Margaret were withdrawn, and peace returned.[4] Despite having been denied a "grunnlag [basis, for operations][6] and being expected to disband, some sources indicate that the commanders of the privateers—yet "mainly nobles from Mecklenburg"—did not, instead moving their base of operations to Visby, on the island of Gotland.[4][better source needed] (At this time, the storied German pirates Klaus Störtebeker and Michael Gödeke had not yet risen to command.[4][better source needed])

Organized as a brotherhood or guild, the Victual Brothers' main naval enemy in 1392 was the powerful Hanseatic town of Lübeck, which supported Denmark in the war. Apart from Lübeck, the Hanseatic League initially supported the Victual Brothers. Most of the Hanseatic towns had no desire for a victory for Denmark, with its strategic location for control of the seaways. For several years from 1392, the Victual Brothers were a strong power in the Baltic Sea. They had safe harbours in the cities of Rostock, Ribnitz, Wismar and Stralsund. They soon[when?] turned to open piracy and coastal plunder.[11][verification needed] In 1393 they captured the town of Bergen for the first time (plundering it again in 1429), proceeding in 1394 to Malmö and Visby.[6] They occupied parts of Frisia and Schleswig, and plundered Turku, Vyborg, Styresholm, Korsholm and Faxeholm castle at Söderhamn in Hälsingland.[11][verification needed]

At the climax of their power, the Victual Brothers occupied the island of Gotland, Sweden, in 1394 and set up their headquarters in Visby. They also operated from the Turku archipelago;[Knut Bosson, who was the chief of Turku Castle from 1395 to 1398, had allied himself with the people of Mecklenburg, and so he supported the hijacking[clarification needed] activities of the Victual Brothers and allowed them to operate in the area.[12][verification needed] Maritime trade in the Baltic Sea virtually collapsed, and the herring industry suffered from their depredations. Queen Margaret even turned to King Richard II of England and sought to charter English ships to combat the pirates. From 1395 onwards, Queen Margaret gained the upper hand politically. She united Denmark, Sweden and Norway and formed the Kalmar Union. The Hanseatic League was forced to cooperate with her[8][13][verification needed]

Decline

King Albert of Sweden conceded Gotland to the allied Teutonic Order as a pledge (similar to a fiefdom), which was followed by an invasion led by Konrad von Jungingen (1355–1407), the Grand Master of the Order, who conquered the island in 1398—destroying Visby and driving the Victual Brothers out of Gotland.[8][verification needed] After the Victual Brothers' expulsion from Gotland in 1398, the Hanseatic League tried repeatedly but unsuccessfully to completely control the Baltic Sea.[citation needed] Records indicate that some of the band were executed in Hamburg.[3] Many remained at sea, after losing influence in the Gulf of Bothnia, the Gulf of Finland and Gotland, operating instead from the Schlei, the mouth of the river Ems, and other locations in Friesland.[citation needed]

Likedeelers

The summary execution of Störtebeker, 1401; tinted woodcut by Nicolaus Sauer, Hamburg, 1701 (Hamburger Staatsarchiv)

Some component of, or successors to[citation needed], the Victual Brothers came to be known in the written records by the name Likedeelers ("equal sharers");[1] unlike the Victual Brothers, they shared with the poor coastal population.[dubious – discuss][citation needed][14] They expanded their activities into the North Sea and along the Atlantic coastline, raiding Brabant and France and striking as far south as Spain.[citation needed]

Their most famous leader of the Likedeelers was Klaus Störtebeker,[citation needed] born in 1360 in Wismar,[3] a ship captain who first appears in the record as a Victual Brother around 1394.[citation needed] The Low German word Störtebeker means "Down the beakerful", a name he allegedly was given because could swallow four litres of beer without taking the beaker from his mouth (though possibly just a family name from Wismar).[original research?][citation needed] In 1401, the Hamburg warship Die Bunte Kuh, leading a small fleet under Commander Simon of Utrecht, caught up with Störtebeker's forces near Heligoland; after a 3-day running battle, Störtebeker and some of his followers were overpowered, trapped and executed.[citation needed] Contrary to this account, Historian Jörgen Bracker of Hamburg's Municipal Museum notes that "[w]hile... other Vitalien Brothers were executed in Hamburg, 'there's no evidence that Störtebeker was among them'",[3] though artistic renderings of the Störtebeker execution, from that city, exist.[citation needed]

Other Likedeelers, sans their leader, continued their piracy and coastal raiding until about 1440, with maritime trade in both the North and Baltic Seas remaining in serious danger of attack.[citation needed]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vitalienbrüder.

References and notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Meier, Dirk (2006). Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates in the Middle Ages. Translated by McGeoch, Angus. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: Boydell Press. ISBN 9781843832379. Retrieved January 28, 2022. [p. 146] During the Hundred Years' war, the people who provisioned the army were called vitailleurs. In 1394, when Mecklenburg was at war with Denmark, the Dukes of Mecklenburg hired pirates (known as Vitalienbrüder) whose job was to maintain a supply of food for the city of Stockholm, under siege by the Danes. ... [p. 147] The Vitalienbrüder became a new and unpredictable power, no longer beholden to anyone. In the written sources, we not only find the name 'Vitalienbrüder', but also 'Likedeeler' ('equal sharers') Yet the risks the pirates took were not small. Note, the sole reference to the Likedeelers in this book source is in this quotation. In the rest of the book, only the name Vitalienbrüder is used about the band.
  2. ^ a b c Konstam, Angus (2011). Piracy–The Complete History from 1300 BC to the Present Day. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 27–28. ISBN 9780762768356. Retrieved January 28, 2022.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Stegen, Gudrun (August 23, 2011). Bowen, Kate (ed.). "Germany's Most Famous Pirate a Cross Between Robin Hood, Odysseus". Deutsche Welle/DW.com. Retrieved January 28, 2022. ...Störtebeker was born in Wismar in 1360, and hooked up with the Vitalien Brothers, a pirate syndicate that was regularly commissioned by various clients to rob ships in the Baltic Sea. "Customers" ranged from the Danish queen to the rulers of Mecklenburg to the chieftains of East Frisia. / Historian Jörgen Bracker doesn't see anything heroic in thievery. He works at Hamburg's Municipal Museum and is one of the few experts in all things Störtebeker. / 'These Vitalien Brothers divided up all their loot among themselves... People should surrender the notion that these men were willing to give up any of their booty,' he added...Either way, people love a legend... Störteneker's death is all part of that legend, too. While the other Vitalien Brothers were executed in Hamburg, "there's no evidence that Störtebeker was among them," Bracker said.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Note, the following is a children's source. Bachmann, Birgit & Müller, Stefan R. (2002). "Piraten in Norddeutschland [Pirates in North Germany]". Blinde-Kuh.de (in German). p. 3. Archived from the original on February 10, 2013. Anfang 1389 herrschte Dänemark fast schon über ganz Schweden, nur Stockholm, eine Stadt hanseatischer Kaufleute, leistete noch Widerstand. Die Dänen versuchten Stockholm zu gewinnen, in dem sie die Stadt belagerten und so die Bevölkerung immer weniger Lebensmittel erhielt. Die mecklenburgischen Städte Rostock und Wismar stellten Kaperbriefe für alle aus, die auf eigene Faust versuchten, dem dänischen Reich zu schaden, wann immer es ging, um Stockholm zu helfen. So riefen diese Hansestädte ihre alten Feinde um Hilfe. Und diese ließen nicht lange auf sich warten. Als Verbündete, genannt die Vitalienbrüder, weil sie Lebensmittel nach Stockholm durch die dänischen Linien brachten, gelang es den Piraten, die dänische Blockade zu brechen. Stockholm war wieder frei, Königin Margarete zog ihre Truppen zurück und ein Jahr später kam es wieder einmal zum Frieden. / Eigentlich sollten sich auch die Freibeuter wieder auflösen, da der Krieg ja nun zu Ende war, aber das taten sie nicht. Auf der Insel Gotland, in deren Hauptstadt Visby, schlugen sie ihr Hauptquartier auf. In dieser Zeit waren Störtebeker und Michael Gödeke noch keine Kommandanten bei den Freibeutern, dies waren vorwiegend Adlige aus Mecklenburg.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ The following is a machine translation of the preceding German citation quote: "At the beginning of 1389, Denmark ruled almost all of Sweden, with only Stockholm, a city of Hanseatic merchants, still resisting. The Danes tried to win Stockholm by besieging the city and so the population received less and less food. The Mecklenburg cities of Rostock and Wismar issued letters of marque to anyone who tried to harm the Danish Empire on their own initiative whenever they could to help Stockholm. So these Hanseatic cities called their old enemies for help. And the[y] were not long in coming. As allies, dubbed the [Vitalienbrüder] because they brought food to Stockholm through the Danish lines, the pirates managed to break the Danish blockade. Stockholm was free again, Queen Margarete withdrew her troops and a year later peace was restored. / The buccaneers were supposed to disband, since the war was over, but they didn't. They set up their headquarters on the island of Gotland, in the capital Visby. At this time, [Klaus] Störtebeker and Michael Gödeke were not yet commanders of the privateers, these were mainly nobles from Mecklenburg." Emphases added; translation by Google Translate, January 28, 2022.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Salvesen, Helge. "Vitaliebrødrene [Vitalie Brothers]". In Opsahl, Erik (ed.). Store norske leksikon [Large Norwegian Encyclopedia] (in Norwegian). Trondheim, Norway: Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim. Retrieved January 28, 2022. [The Vitalie Brothers... were about 1400... pirates who operated specifically in the Baltic Sea. / The name was especially used about hijackers from northern German ports who tried to bring food (victuals) to Albrecht of Mecklenburg, who was besieged in Stockholm by Queen Margrethe's army in 1389. The hijackers captured Bergen in 1393 and Malmö and Visby in 1394. / An agreement between Margret[h]e and Albrecht in 1395 led to Albrecht being set free and Stockholm pledged to the Hanseatic League. This deprived the Vitalie [B]rothers of their foundation, but they continued with piracy and plundered Bergen as late as 1429.] For the machine translation of this page that was used for the chapter and title translations, see this link.
  7. ^ The point at which the transition from privateers to pirates occurred is not clear from sources, and some sources use the terms seemingly interchangeably. Hence, the children's source Bachmann & Müller (2002) refers to the group, at its advent, when it involved nobility and was employed by Queen Margaret to provision Stockholm, as "pirates". See this source, cited in following.
  8. ^ a b c Schulzke, Marion (2001). Dombrowsky, Rainer (ed.). "Die Vitalienbrüder". jadu.de [Das Internet-Magazin und E-Bibliothek] (in German). Berlin, Germany: JaDu—Internetworld. Archived from the original on February 4, 2005.
  9. ^ a b c d e Bjørkvik, Halvard (February 13, 2009). "Dronning / Margrete Valdemarsdatter [Queen Margrete Valdemarsdatter, Margaret I of Denmark]". In Bolstad, Erik (ed.). Norsk biografisk leksikon [Norwegian biographical lexicon] (in Norwegian). Trondheim, Norway: Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim. Retrieved January 28, 2022.
  10. ^ Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia (January 2022). "Hundred Years' War". Encyclopedia Britannica. Chicago, Ill.: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved January 28, 2022.
  11. ^ a b Engström, S. (1921). "Vitalianer". In Westrin, Th. (ed.). Nordisk familjebok: Konversationslexicon och Realencyklopedi [Nordic Family Book: Conversation Dictionary and Real Encyclopaedia] (in Norwegian). Vol. 32 (Uggleupplagan [Owl (2nd)] ed.). Stockholm, Sweden: Nordisk Familjeboks Förlags AB. pp. 859–861. Retrieved January 28, 2022.
  12. ^ Harjula, Janne; Hukantaival, Sonja; Immonen, Visa; Ratilainen; Tanja & Salonen, Kirsi (2018). Koroinen: Suomen Ensimmäinen Kirkollinen Keskus. Turun Historiallinen Arkisto (in Finnish). Vol. 71. Turku, Finland: Turun Historiallinen Yhdistys [Turku Historical Society]. p. 17. ISBN 9789527045084. ISSN 0085-7440.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ Jähnig, Bernhart (1980). "Konrad von Jungingen". Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German). 12: 517–518 – via deutsche-biographie.de.
  14. ^ See Meier (2006), op.cit., where the term Vitalienbrüder is used throughout the book, and Likedeeler only appears once, as a seeming synonym (p. 147).

Further reading

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