The last Hanse diet, at which only nine towns were represented, was held in 1669. In reality the organisation had ceased to function long before that. Some small sense of purpose survived into the second decade of the seventeenth century, but the events of the Thirty Years War, above all the domination of northern Europe (including much of Germany) by Sweden, finally proved that the Hanse had no place in the modern world. What needs to be explained, however, is not why it finally succumbed now but why it had lasted so long. The Hanse was essentially an institution of the middle ages and its demise was heralded when the Muscovites closed the Novgorod Kontor in 1494. This Kontor was reopened in 1514, but it was never the same again. Novgorod had lost much of its importance by 1494, so to that extent its closure was more of a symbol than a critical blow. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that the decline of the Hanse dates from the late fifteenth century. One possible cause which has been identified is the reorganisation and expansion of trade routes which began about that time. On the one hand, the geographical discoveries resulted ultimately in a world-wide trade centred on the Atlantic ports. On the other hand, aggressive firms of merchants based in south-German cities such as Augsburg, Nuremberg and Ulm began to divert trade in their direction.