remain in union was deserving of every respect and con- the Danish view, that female succession is admissible in sideration. Chevalier Bunsen alleges that, before 1848, Schleswig, has, to say the least, a great deal in its favour. even the Danish population of Schleswig leaned rather to And the practical conclusion to be drawn is this-that Holstein than to Denmark; but this point seems doubt- England, when she guaranteed to Denmark, in 1720, the ful. If public and general manifestations of sorrow are peaceable possession of ducal Schleswig, was justified in to count for anything, the grief of the Schleswig Danes doing so, and that she would not have abetted illegality at being severed from the little kingdom, in 1864, was or oppression had she maintained that guarantee with all deep-seated and sincere.* her strength as a nation when Schleswig was invaded and The sum of our analysis of the whole question may be violently separated from Denmark in 1864. thus expressed. Chevalier Bunsen, following the King of Prussia in his letter of the 24th March, 1848, to the Duke of Augustenburg, enunciates the German view in the following articles : 1. That the duchies are independent states. 2. That these states are indivisibly united. 3. That male succession is alone permissible in either. Of these articles, the first is admitted by all parties. With regard to the second, the resumé of the facts that we have attempted shows that it is either untrue or highly doubtful. On the third article, we have shown that "Annual Register" for 1864, p. 240. To resume the narrative of events. In the ferment which arose in every capital of Europe after the Revolution in Paris of February, 1848, a violent Danish national feeling manifested itself at Copenhagen, and forced the King, Frederic VII., to issue a proclamation declaring that Denmark and Schleswig were thenceforth to form an inseparable union under a common free constitution. The duchies, incited by a strong democratic and national feeling that had arisen in Germany, regarded this proclamation as a breach of their constitution,* and broke out into The "Constitution of Waldemar" (1326) provided that the duchy of Schleswig should never be united to the Danish crown. A.D. 1864.1 SKETCH OF SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN QUESTION, CONTINUED. rebellion. They were aided, but in a hesitating irreso lute way, by the King of Prussia, and carried on the war with Denmark with various success to the end of the summer of 1850. By the end of 1849, Austria had subdued both Hungary and Sardinia, and had now leisure to look after her interests in Germany. She disapproved of the advances which Frederic William had made to the German democracy, and of his making war on Denmark, and convened a meeting of the Diet at Frankfort with the view of counteracting Prussian schemes. The weak King 85 won the battle. The loss on both sides amounted to about 7,000 men. Schleswig was thus recovered; but the Danish troops halted on the frontier of Holstein, in obedience to an article in the Treaty of the 2nd July, 1850, requiring Denmark to apply for the intervention of the Bund before resorting to hostilities against Holstein. This application was made; and, in reply to it, an Austro-Prussian army, acting in the name of the Bund, marched into Holstein, and required the de facto Government to lay down its arms. Thus was the whole of Schleswig-Holstein mmediately yielded, especially as Russia was giving | pacified (January 11, 1851); but military occupation of Hol urgent and imperious advice the same way; abandoned the duchies, made peace with Denmark (July 2, 1850), and actually assisted her in the task of subjugation. The dachies resolved to continue the war, but they were defeated in a great battle, and soon after compelled to submit. In this battle of Idsted (July 25, 1850), the forces of Schleswig-Holstein, nearly 30,000 in number, were commanded by General Willisen; the Danes were in rather stronger force, and were led by Generals Krogh and Schlepegroll. Schlepegroll fell in the heat of the battle, and the Danish line wavered, but Colonel De Meza assumed the command, led on his troops with the greatest bravery, and stein was still retained by the German Powers, pending the attainment of a definitive arrangement for the affairs of the duchies. Negotiations were at once opened between the King of Denmark, on the one part, and Austria and Prussia, representing the Bund, on the other part, and were protracted through the whole of the year 1851. It would detain us too long to dwell with any fulness of detail on this part of the history. But two points require to be carefully stated:-(1) The nature of the engagements taken by the King of Denmark with respect to the future government of the duchies; (2) the principal terms of the treaty which wound up the negotiations, and was presumed to have finally disposed of the question of expressly reserving those rights, however, should the succession. I. Denmark, in and by a diplomatic correspondence with Austria and Prussia, dated in December, 1851, and January, 1852, formally pledged herself, along with other clauses of less importance, to the following articles : 1. That she would not incorporate, nor take steps towards incorporating, the duchy of Schleswig with the kingdom. 2. That the separate Diets of Schleswig and Holstein should, as to the matters falling within their competence, have bona fide legislative powers, instead of the mere right of advising, which was all they had before possessed; and that the constitutions under which these fuller privileges should be exercised should be framed after consultation with the provincial Estates. The matters falling within their competence were defined to be all such as were connected with taxation, and with the rights of persons and property. 3. That a common constitution should be devised for the monarchy, in which its four constituent parts should maintain a position of equality, none being subordinated to the other; and that, in framing this constitution, the four local Diets should be consulted. 4. That the German and Danish nationalities in Schleswig should meet with equal protection. 66 arrangement not be carried out. This reservation was a master-stroke of policy on the part of the Danish court, for the bare prospect of an eventuality" which should scat the gigantic power of Russia in Copenhagen and in Kiel was enough to drive all the diplomatists of Europe into any arrangement calculated to defeat it. The Treaty of London, therefore, signed by Austria, France, England, Prussia, and Sweden, engaged the high contracting parties-not to guarantee-but to re cognise in Prince Christian and his heirs male the right of succeeding to all the states actually united under the Danish sceptre, upon the death without issue of the reigning King. In the same year, the Duke of Augustenburg, representing the male line of the house of Oldenburg, on receiving from the King of Denmark a large sum of money in payment for his estates in Schleswig and the islands, which had been confiscated during the war, gave a written engagement that neither he nor any of his family would do anything to disturb the new order of succession, as regulated by the Treaty of London. The matter thus seemed to be settled, but it really was not. For, in the first place, all that the Princess Lonise could surrender to any one was her right to the succession in Denmark (and possibly in Schleswig); she had no right whatever to the succession in Holstein, because that could only pass to male heirs. Secondly, it was 5. That all ties of a non-political kind between Hol- highly questionable in law whether the Princess could stein and Schleswig should remain intact. Denmark having taken these engagements, Austria and Prussia, on the part of the Bund, gave up what had been the Federal policy during the war, namely, to insist on a real political union between the duchies, withdrew their troops from Holstein, and also undertook, on their own part, to accede to the Protocol of London (August 2, 1850), regulating the Danish succession. The project foreshadowed in that protocol was ultimately embodied in the Treaty of London (May 8, 1852); its origin and general purport were as follows:: II. Of all the Princes of the Sonderburg line of the house of Oldenburg, the only one who sided with Denmark during the war was Prince Christian of Sonderburg-Glücksburg. (The Glücksburg is the younger branch of the Sonderburg line, the Augustenburg being the elder.) Many of the Sonderburg Princes stood nearer to the succession than Prince Christian, but what gave him an advantage (besides the favour with which his conduct during the war caused him to be regarded by the Danish court) was the fact of his marriage with the Princess Louise of Hesse, the daughter of a sister of Christian VIII., who, after her mother, brother, and an elder sister, stood the nearest in succession to the Danish throne under the Lex Regia. The following plan, therefore, was devised and executed. The mother, brother, and elder sister of the Princess Louise renounced their rights to the succession in her favour, and she then renounced her own rights in favour of her husband. Russia, by the Protocol of Warsaw (June 5, 1851), had already renounced in favour of Prince Christian her eventual rights, whatever they were, arising on the extinction of the male line in Denmark, execute a valid renunciation of her rights in favour of one who did not stand next in the order of succession to herself, without the consent of those whose right intervened between her and him; but no such consent was ever obtained. Thirdly, the Duke of Augustenburg might with some reason allege that his abandonment of his rights was not made freely, but under compulsion, or else one of his sons (as actually happened) might declare that his father's act did not bind him. Fourthly, even supposing the renunciation of the Duke of Augustenburg and his family to be persevered in, there were other Princes of the Sonderburg line whose rights, at any rate to the Holstein succession, were prior to that of Prince Christian, and who had not renounced those rights. Fifthly, and chiefly, the German Confederation was not a party to the Treaty of London; it was therefore free to resist the arrangement it contained, if it considered the interests of Holstein and the Bund to require it. Yet, after all, the arrangement provided by the Treaty of London would probably have resulted in a solid settlement, had not the relations between the Danish Government and the German population of the duchies, during the eleven years following the Treaty of London, become strained and embittered to a dangerous extent. For this result Denmark was chiefly responsible. Before 1848, when no province of the Danish monarchy enjoyed representative institutions, but all alike were under the absolute rule of the King-Duke, everything went smoothly, because there was no collision of nationalities. Arbitrary and oppressive acts were sometimes ventured upon, but these usually affected individuals only; and the Danes A.D. 1864.] THE ENGAGEMENTS ENTERED INTO BY DENMARK. 87 a people of its mother tongue, of the loved and intimate vesture of its moral and intellectual being, could not but arouse a feeling of deep indignation, a burning sense of wrong. Many Danish clergymen were intruded into benefices which had formerly been served by Germans; and these, it was remarked, were more bitterly antiGerman than even the lay officials. Police agents were everywhere, and arbitrary arrests were frequent. In short, according to an expressive phrase well understood on the continent, while Denmark was a constitutional state, Schleswig and Holstein were treated as police states. were no better off in this respect than the Germans. But after the disturbances of 1848, Denmark became a constitutionally governed country in the strictest sense; the King could only govern through his Ministry, and that Ministry could only retain power through enjoying the confidence of the majority of the Rigsraad, or Parliament. Had the majority in the Danish Rigsraad been actuated only by equitable and enlightened sentiments, the new arrangement would have answered as well in Schleswig and Holstein as the old one. But unhappily this was not the case, and perhaps it was not in the nature of things that it should be. The majority in the Rigsraad was largely influenced by the views of the It is therefore abundantly clear that the fourth of the Eider Dane party, a set of politicians fanatically bent above-named engagements, by which Denmark had upon the elevation and extension of the Scandinavian pledged her word to Austria and Prussia that "the nationality. This party, unable to expel from their German and Danish nationalities in Schleswig should minds the feelings of animosity which the war had meet with equal protection," was not kept. Nor can it engendered, regarded the German inhabitants of the be reasonably doubted that the fifth engagement—“That duchies as the population of a conquered country, and all ties of a non-political kind between Holstein and resolved, so far as they dared, and in spite of the engage- Schleswig should remain intact "-was not faithfully obments by which their King was bound to Austria and served. But, in point of form, it was not the breach of Prussia, to make them feel and taste their subjection. either of these engagements, but that of the third, binding Hence ensued a line of conduct on the part of the Danish Denmark to submit the common constitution of the Government towards the German inhabitants of the monarchy to the previous examination of the four local duchies, which appears, from multiplied and unimpeach- Diets, which led directly to the Federal execution and all able testimony, to have been intolerably vexatious, and its momentous consequences. The sequence of events was often actually oppressive. The following summary, though as follows:-A common constitution for the monarchy taken from a pamphlet written on the German side of was framed in 1854, and having passed the Danish Parliathe question, does not, it is believed, at all overstate the ment, was published by royal ordinance (October 2, 1855), magnitude of the grievance. "The protective Danish for the duchies of Holstein, Schleswig, and Lauenburg, tariff was extended to both duchies, their revenue appro- without any previous consultation of their Diets. priated to the interests of the kingdom; their military the Imperial Parliament summoned under this constituestablishment, hitherto kept separate from the Danish tion met, in 1856, the representatives from Holstein and forces, was incorporated in that army, and, for the first from the German portion of Schleswig moved that since time in history, Schleswig-Holstein troops were stationed the common constitution could not yet be considered legal, in Denmark, Danish troops in the duchies. The best it should be forthwith submitted, in order that it might offices in Schleswig were given to Danes, in violation of obtain that character, for the approval of the local legisthe old privileges of the land, and of the law requiring latures. This motion was rejected, whereupon the Holevery holder of a higher office to have passed two years stein members and the German members from Schleswig, at the University of Kiel. In the churches and schools except the nominees of the King, left the assembly. The of Schleswig, the Danish language was substituted for matter was taken up by the Federal Diet, which, in 1858, the German, even in districts where not one in twenty declared that by Federal law the common constitution understood a word of Danish, and the inhabitants were proclaimed in 1855 was illegal, so far as Holstein and prohibited from employing private German teachers in Lauenburg were concerned, because it had not been their families. Thus, for more than ten years, and assented to by the legislatures of those states, and decreed against repeated warnings of both England and Russia, a Federal execution in Holstein in case of the non-abroDenmark carried out a system of oppressive encroach- gation of that constitution. After many endeavours to ment, not upon abstract principles, but upon the ancient, evade compliance, Denmark (November, 1858) did abropositive, recorded rights and liberties of the duchies-gate the common constitution, so far as Holstein and a patrimony derived from their fathers, and to be transmitted to their posterity."* This grievance with respect to language was no light or fanciful one. The petition of the Diet of Schleswig, in 1860, states that, against the wish of the inhabitants, and notwithstanding the humble petition of the Diet, the language used in school and church in the parishes comprised in the deanery of Schleswig had been arbitrarily changed from German to Danish. This attempt to strip "Schleswig-Holstein Succession." 1864. When Lauenburg were concerned. The execution was accordingly stayed (1860), but on the understanding that the King and his Holstein subjects would in concert frame some arrangement by which, in a manner acceptable to them and to the Diet, Holstein might participate in the common constitution. Between 1860 and 1863, much bickering took place between the King and the Diet as to the provisional relations which should exist between Holstein and the kingdom, pending the settlement of the constitutional question; but into these differences it is unnecessary for us to enter. On the 30th March, 1863, the King published, of his own mere motion ("octroya "), a proclamation fixing the future position of Holstein in the monarchy. The ruling idea of this proclamation was, that since Holstein would not come in to the common constitution on Denmark's terms, and since it was backed up by the Bund in this resolve, it must be allowed to remain outside; while, as between Denmark and Schleswig, the common constitution of 1855 should still be maintained. The most important clause was this: That, as regarded the common affairs of the monarchy, the legislative power should be exercised by the King and the Holstein Diet conjointly. The effect of the proclamation was-or would have been-the "severance of the Danish monarchy into two distinct groups, united by the personal nexus only-the line of intersection falling between Holstein and Schleswig." * When this proclamation became known in Germany, it aroused a strenuous spirit of opposition. In the Diet, it was regarded as a repeated and more flagrant violation of the third engagement taken by Denmark in 1851-2, not to frame a common constitution without first consulting the local Diets. It deeply offended German feeling, by the disruption which it seemed to declare and consummate between Schleswig and Holstein, states which the national sentiment insisted on regarding as indivisible. The Diet, in July, demanded the retraction of the Ordinance of March 30, and on the Danish Government's refusal to comply, decreed that Federal execution should take place with the due forms. The mode of procedure was, that, after due notice had been given to the state against which execution had been decreed, Federal commissioners should be sent into it, supported by a sufficient force of Federal troops, and should administer the government in the name of the Diet until the offending state should have satisfied the demands of the Confederation. So far from attempting to appease the rising wrath of Germany, the Danish Government made matters worse by issuing (November 18) a new constitution for Denmark and Schleswig, intended to complete the scheme of government which the Patent of March 30 had commenced. This constitution was little more than a transcript of that of 1855; but, as Holstein was now excluded, the Germans regarded it as little less than equivalent to an incorporation of Schleswig with Denmark, contrary to the first of the engagements of 1851-2. Whereas in the Constitution of 1855 it was said, "The legislative power in common affairs is vested in the King and the Rigsraad conjointly;" in the new Constitution, for the words "in common affairs" were substituted the words "in respect of the common affairs of Denmark Proper and Schleswig." On the 7th December, the Diet voted for immediate execution, and entrusted the fulfilment of its mandate to Saxon and Hanoverian troops. Denmark then withdrew the Ordinance of March 30; but the excitement in Germany had by this time risen to such a point, that the execution could no longer be stayed, though its character was somewhat altered. It now assumed an international "The Dano-German Conflict and Lord Russell's Proposals of Mediation." London, 1863. instead of a strictly Federal character, and aimed at compelling Denmark to fulfil the engagements, in respect of Schleswig (which was no part of the Bund), by which it had bound itself to Germany in 1851-2. On the 24th December, 1863, the Saxon troops entered Altona, the border town of Holstein, through the Nobis Thor, and were received with demonstrations of wild delight and enthusiasm by the populace. The Danish troops quietly marched out of every town of Holstein just before the Germans marched in. In most places the Danish arms were then taken down, and the Schleswig-Holstein tricolour hoisted; but the execution was completed without bloodshed, and on the last day of the year the troops of the Bund were facing the Danes along the line of the Eider. It is now time to ask, what part England had been taking in the transactions and negotiations which had resulted in so grave a complication. In September, 1862, Lord Russell had proposed, with reference to the dispute between the Bund and Denmark as to the common constitution, that the schedule of common affairs" should be greatly curtailed, and that a large part of what had been hitherto deemed such should be placed within the legislative competence of the local Diets. This proposal Denmark had rejected, on the ground that its adoption must inevitably lead either to anarchy or to a return to arbitrary government. Again, in July, 1863, some days after the decree of the Bund ordering execution in Holstein, Lord Palmerston, then Prime Minister, had declared, in his place in Parliament, with reference to the proceedings of the German Powers, that (under certain circumstances) "it would not be with Denmark alone they would have to contend." This public declaration inspired the Danes with a firm confidence that England would come to their assistance in case of need, and doubtless made them resist the demands of Germany more obstinately. The despatches of Lord Russell to Lord Bloomfield at Vienna (July 31) and to Sir Alexander Malet at Frankfort (September 29) assume a high-almost a menacing-tone. Considering indeed that execution is a Federal, not an international, act, and may be regarded as a sort of measure of internal police employed by the whole Bund against a refractory member, there seems reason for saying that Lord Russell's interference in regard to Holstein erred as much on the side of vigour as his interference in regard to Schleswig, when the question had become international, erred on the side of weakness. Taught, however, by their experience of English intervention in favour of Poland, German diplomatists were not much disturbed by the vehemence of tone which characterised the despatches from our Foreign Office. Baron von der Pfordten, the Bavarian envoy to the Diet, told Sir. A. Malet one day that "he looked on Earl Russell's despatches as so much waste paper." Still the greater German Powers thought it expedient to proceed with caution; and as Lord Russell, in a Memorandum dated November 24, 1863, had said that "should it appear that Federal troops had entered the duchy on international grounds, Her Majesty's Government might be obliged to interfere," Austria and Prussia persuaded the Diet to proceed by |