Ten Years Near the German Frontier: A Retrospect and a Warning. Maurice Francis Egan
succession was not confined to the male line in Slesvig.
In Holstein the position was different. If the Danish line should become extinct, the succession might fall to the Russian Emperor; but Slesvig must be Danish. On the death of King Christian VIII. in 1848, feeling ran high in Denmark and in Slesvig-Holstein. In truth, all Europe was in a ferment. The results of the French revolt in 1830 were still leavening Europe. The Assembly of Holstein and Slesvig was divided in opinion. The desire of the Germans in the provinces to control the majority became more and more apparent. Danish interests must disappear, the beginning of the German 'Kultur,' not yet developed by Bismarck, must take its place. Five deputies were sent to Copenhagen, with, among other demands, a demand that the Danish part of the country be incorporated into the German confederation.
The citizens of Copenhagen had reason to believe that the Holstein counts, Moltke and Reventlow-Criminel, potent ministers and men of strong wills, might influence King Frederick VII. to give way to the Germans. The king determined to dismiss these ministers; the demands of the Town Council of Copenhagen and the people of Denmark were answered before they were made. His Majesty had 'neither the will nor the power to allow Slesvig to be incorporated in the German Confederation; Holstein could pursue her own course.'[1]
But the German opposition in the provinces had not been idle. Berlin had shown itself favourable to the Duke of Augustenburg, and the Prince of Noer had headed a band of rebels against Denmark and instigated the garrison of Rendsborg to mutiny on the plea that the Danes had imprisoned their king. A contest of arms took place between the two parties. Prussia interfered; but Prussia was not then what it is now. At the conclusion of a three years' war, the rebels were defeated and the King of Denmark decreed that Slesvig should be a separate duchy, governed by its own assembly. The German party so juggled the election—'Fatherland Over All' governed their point of view, the end justified the means—that the Assembly shamefully misrepresented the Danes. It was Prussianised.
The Danes did not lose heart—Slesvig must be Danish; but if they allowed their language to disappear, there could be no hope for their nationality. On the other hand, the Germans held, as they hold to-day, that all languages must yield to theirs. The German press would have extirpated the Danish language; it was seditious; the Danes were rebels. From the Danish side to Tönder-Flensborg, the official speech and that of the people was Danish. Between the two Belts—the space can easily be traced on the map—Danish was spoken in the churches every second Sunday. In the schools both Danish and German was permitted; in the courts of law both languages were used. You made your choice! The world was deceived by an unscrupulous Assembly and the German press into the belief that Slesvig was German, lovingly German, and that the Danes were merely restless malcontents, hating the beneficent Prussian rule simply from a perverted sense of their own importance.
The crucial moment came in 1864. Denmark had no real friends in Europe. The United States, if her people had understood the matter, would have been sympathetic; but, at the moment, she was fighting for her own existence as a nation. The European powers, in spite of all their statecraft, allowed themselves to be blinded. Austria, apparently proud and noble, allowed herself, as usual, to be made the tool of Prussia. The two powers, on the false pretence that the right of Christian IX. to the succession to the duchies was involved, forced Denmark, which stood alone, to surrender Slesvig-Holstein and Lauenburg. This was the beginning of the mighty German Empire; it made the Kiel Canal possible, and laid the foundation of the German Navy. Slesvig, too, supplied the best sailors in the world. Bismarck, when he cynically treated Slesvig as a pawn in his game, had his eye on a future navy—a navy which would one day force the British from the dominion of the sea.
He had his way. He became master of the Baltic and the North Sea. Prussia, in forcing the Danish king to cede Slesvig, admitted his right to the Duchies; yet the pretext for war on Denmark had been that no such right existed. Prussia soon threw off her ally, Austria. She did not want a half owner in the Holstein Canal or in the coming fleet at Kiel.
It must be remembered that, when Christian IX. had ascended the throne of Denmark, it had been with the consent of all the great European powers. They had practically guaranteed him the right to rule Slesvig-Holstein, and yet England and France and Russia stood by and allowed the outrage to take place. France made an attempt to satisfy her conscience. In the treaty of peace France had this clause inserted:
'H.M. the Emperor of Austria hereby transfers to H.M. the King of Prussia all the right which according to the Treaty of Peace of Vienna of October 30, 1864, he had acquired in respect to the Duchies of Slesvig and Holstein, provided that the northern districts of Slesvig shall be united to Denmark, if the inhabitants by a free vote declare their desire to that effect.'
This was a 'scrap of paper'—nothing more! Nevertheless a scrap of paper may be inconvenient. Austria, never scrupulous when the acquisition of new territory was expedient, was willing to help Prussia to tear it up. Bosnia and Herzogovina raised their heads. Austria wanted help from Prussia. Here was the Prussian chance to induce her to abrogate her part in clause fifty of the peace treaty. What matter? Denmark, in time, must be German, as Slesvig was German, in spite of all right. Austria would play the same game with the Slavs as Prussia had played with the Danes. Individuals might have consciences, but nations had no system of ethics, and therefore no canons (except those of expediency), to rule such consciences as they had. Prussia treated the right of the Danes in Slesvig, guaranteed by a 'scrap of paper,' to a free vote as to their fate, with contempt. It had amused Bismarck to deceive France, the exponent of the new democracy in Europe, but that was all. Slesvig was to be crushed until it became quiescently Prussian. Prussia needed it, therefore it must be Prussian. Fiat!
This is a plain, unvarnished tale. Few of my fellow-countrymen have known it. Some who knew it hazily concluded that Slesvig had become German of its own free will that it might belong to a prosperous and great empire. Others, who remembered that, even in their struggle for freedom in 1864, the Danes paused for a moment to give us their aid at the request of President Lincoln, had a vague idea that wrong had been done somehow; but how great the wrong, and how terrible the effect of the wrong was to be on the history of the world, none of them even dreamed; and yet it was plain enough to those who watched the policy of blood and iron of this, the new Germany.
People who believed that Prussia had any respect for an engagement that might seem to work against her own designs ought to have been warned by the experience of Denmark. But there were those who believed that the acquisition of Heligoland from the British was a mere trifle, in which Germany had the worse of the bargain, as there are people who held that the Danish West Indies were of no manner of importance to us. They classed these acquisitions with that of Alaska—'Seward's folly!'
And, in 1864, the old powers of Europe were so satisfied with their own methods, or so engaged with internal questions, that they let the monstrous tyranny of the conquest of Slesvig pass almost in silence. Prussia alone kept her eyes on one thing—the increase of her military power. In 1878 she induced Austria to abrogate her part in the treaty of Vienna of October 30, 1864. Austria agreed to give up any rights acquired by her in Slesvig-Holstein under the fifth clause of that treaty. This withdrawal (not to be irreverent, it was like the washing of the hands of Pontius Pilate) left Slesvig naked to her enemy. The Prussian autocrats chuckled when they found themselves bound by a 'scrap of paper' to the restoration of the northern districts of Slesvig to Denmark, 'if the inhabitants by a free vote declare their desire to that effect.'
The Imperial German statesmen, astute and unscrupulous, have always taken religion into consideration in making their propaganda. The German Crown Prince's sympathy with the same methods as used by Napoleon Bonaparte was perhaps inherited from his ancestors, as Napoleon, too, knew the political value of religion. The Church, an enslaved Church in a despotic state—the reverse of Cavour's famous maxim—has always been one of statesmen's tools. They have never hesitated to use religion as the means of accomplishing the ends of the state. In fact, the Catholic Church in Germany was in great danger of being enslaved. The old wars of the popes and the emperors—so little understood in modern times—would be very possible, had the victory of Germany been a probability.
Let us see what happened in Slesvig. Since '64, Prussia has governed Slesvig. This rule has been a prolonged and constant attempt to force the Danes from their