Second Schleswig War

The Second War of Schleswig (or the Danish-Prussian War) was fought in 1864 by Austria and Prussia against Denmark. The former were acting on behalf of the German Confederation. Like the First war of Schleswig, the second was fought for control of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. It ended in a victory for the German forces, and in Denmark's ceding control of both duchies.

Background

Throughout the 1850's and 1860's, proponents of German unification increasingly voice the wish to include in their 'Greater Germany' both German-majority Holstein and Danish-majority Schleswig, two sovereign duchies ruled by the King of Denmark. However, ∂anish King Frederick VII had no sons, and the succession rules of the duchies differed from those of Denmark in the event of a lack of a male heir. Furthermore, the Treaty of Ribe (1460) proclaimed that the two duchies must not be separated from each other. As the ailing Frederick grew older, the Danish government became anxious to preserve their control of the duchies, especially Schleswig. In 1863 the government in Copenhagen proclaimed Schleswig an integral part of the Danish state, outraging German nationalist opinion.

Events

The Treaty of Ribe had proclaimed that Schleswig and Holstein were indivisible, but the Danish annexation in 1863 of Schleswig alone politically divided it from Holstein, a territory of the German Confederation. This gave Prussia a good pretext to engage in war with Denmark in order to seize Schleswig-Holstein for itself, both by pleasing nationalists in "liberating" Germans from Danish rule, and by implementing the law of the German Confederation.

In the early 1860s this "Schleswig-Holstein Question" once more became the subject of lively international debate, but with the difference that support for the Danish position was in decline. The Crimean War had crippled the power of Russia, and France was prepared to renounce support for Danish interests in the duchies in exchange for compensations to herself elsewhere. Although Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort Albert had sympathy for the German position, it was tempered by British ministers who saw in the growth of German sea-power in the Baltic Sea as a danger to British naval supremacy and consequently Great Britain sided with the Danes.

In response to the renewed Danish claim to Schleswig as integral Danish territory, on July 29 the German diet (instructed by Bismarck) threatened federal intervention. On November 6, Frederick VII issued a proclamation abolishing the Danish constitution so far as it affected Holstein and Lauenburg, while retaining it for Denmark and Schleswig. King Christian IX ascended the Danish throne nine days later, and was immediately placed in a position of extraordinary difficulty. The first sovereign act he was called upon to perform was to sign the new constitution. However, to sign was to violate the of terms of the very protocol which was his title to reign; to refuse to sign was to place himself in antagonism to the united sentiment of his Danish subjects. He chose what he considered the lesser of two evils, and on November 18 duly signed the constitution. The news was received in Germany with violent manifestations of excitement and anger. The Duke of Augustenburg, whose father had in 1852 renounced a claim to the duchies better than that of the new Danish king, now claimed his right to succeed Frederick VII (arguing that he had had no share in his father's renunciation). Agitation began in his favour in Holstein, extending to Schleswig when the terms of the new Danish constitution became more widely known. The duke's claim was enthusiastically supported by the German princes and people and, in spite of a negative attitude from Austria and Prussia, the federal diet decided to occupy Holstein pending the settlement of the decree of succession.

On December 24, Saxon and Hanoverian troops marched into the duchy in the name of the German Confederation, and supported by their presence and by the loyalty of the Holsteiners the duke assumed government as "Duke Frederick VIII". Despite the vigour of German public opinion, neither Austria nor Prussia were prepared to risk a European war for what Bismarck termed a "folly". It was clear to Bismarck that Austria and Prussia, as parties to the protocol of 1852, must and uphold the succession as fixed by it, and that any action they might take in consequence of the violation of that compact by Denmark must be so correct as to deprive the rest of Europe of all excuse for interference. The publication of the new constitution by Christian IX was in itself sufficient to justify a declaration of war by the two powers as parties to the signature of the protocol. The protests of Great Britain and Russia against the action of the German diet, together with the proposal of Count Beust, on behalf of Saxony, that Bavaria should bring forward in that assembly a formal motion for the recognition of Duke Frederick's claims, helped Bismarck to persuade Austria that immediate action must be taken. On December 28 a motion was introduced in the diet by Austria and Prussia, calling on the Confederation to occupy Schleswig as a pledge for the observance by Denmark of the compacts of 1852. This implied the recognition of the rights of Christian IX, and was indignantly rejected; whereupon the diet was informed that the Austrian and Prussian governments would act in the matter as independent European powers. The agreement between them was signed on the 16th of January 1864. An article drafted by Austria, intended to safeguard the settlement of 1852, was replaced at Bismarck's instance by another which stated that the two powers would decide only in concert on the relations of the duchies, and that they would in no case determine the question of the succession save by mutual consent.

At this stage, had the Danes yielded to the necessities of the situation and withdrawn from Schleswig under protest, the European powers would probably have intervened, and congress would have restored Schleswig to the Danish crown, and Austria and Prussia, as European powers, would have had no choice but to prevent any attempt upon it by the duke of Holstein. To prevent this possibility, Bismarck made the Copenhagen government believe that Great Britain had threatened Prussia with intervention should hostilities be opened, though England had done nothing of the kind. The cynical stratagem succeeded (despite the aforementioned symapthy British politicians had shown the Danes); Denmark remained defiant, and on the 1st of February 1864 the Austrian and Prussian forces crossed the Eider. An invasion of Denmark itself had not been part of the original programme of the allies; but on February 18 some Prussian hussars, in the excitement of a cavalry skirmish, crossed the frontier and occupied the town of Kolding. Bismarck determined to use this circumstance to revise the whole situation. He urged upon during the Austria the necessity for a strong policy, so as to settle once for all not only the question of the duchies but the wider question of the German Confederation; and Austria reluctantly consented to press the war. On March 11 a fresh agreement was signed between the powers, under which the compacts of 1852 were declared to be no longer valid, and the position of the duchies within the Danish monarchy as a whole was to be made the subject of a friendly understanding.

Meanwhile, Lord John Russell, acting on behalf of Great Britain and supported by Russia, France and Sweden, had intervened with a proposal that the whole question should once more be submitted to a European conference. The German powers agreed on condition that the compacts of 1852 should not be taken as a basis, and that the duchies should be bound to Denmark by a personal tie only. But the proceedings of the conference, which opened at London on the 25th of April, only revealed the inextricable tangle of the issues involved. Count Beust, on behalf of the Confederation, demanded the recognition of the Augustenborg claimant; Austria leaned to a settlement on. the lines of that of 1852; Prussia, it was increasingly clear, aimed at the acquisition of the duchies. The first step towards the realization of this latter ambition was to secure the recognition of the absolute independence of the duchies, and this Austria could only oppose at the risk of forfeiting her whole influence in Germany. The two powers, then, agreed to demand the complete political independence of the duchies bound together by common institutions. The next move was uncertain. As to the question of annexation, Prussia would leave that open but made it clear that any settlement must involve the complete military subordination of Schleswig-Holstein to herself. This alarmed Austria, which had no wish to see a further extension of Prussia's already overgrown power, and she began to champion the claims of the Duke of Augustenburg. This contingency, however, Bismarck had foreseen and himself offered to support the claims of the duke at the conference if he would undertake to subordinate himself in all naval and military matters to Prussia, surrender Kiel for the purposes of a Prussian naval harbour, give Prussia the control of the projected North Sea Canal, and enter the Prussian Customs Union. Austria, the other leading state of the German Confederation was reluctant however to engage in a "war of liberation" because of its own problems with various nationalities. After Christian IX of Denmark merged Schleswig and Holstein into Denmark in 1863 after his ascension to the Danish throne that year, Bismarck's diplomatic abilities finally convinced Austria to participate in the war, with the assent of the other European large powers and under the auspices of the German Confederation. On June 25th the London conference broke up without having arrived at any conclusion. On the previous day, in view of the end of the truce, Austria and Prussia had arrived at a new agreement, the object of the war being now declared to be the complete separation of the duchies from Denmark. As the result of the short campaign that followed, the preliminaries of a treaty of peace were signed on the 1st of August, the King of Denmark renouncing all his rights in the duchies in favour of the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia.

This Second War of Schleswig of 1864 was presented by invaders to be an implementation of the law of the Confideration (Bundesexekution) in Germany. It was brief; after the defeat in the Battle of Dybbøl, the Danes were unable to defend the borders of Schleswig and had to retreat to Danish teritory proper, finally being pushed out of the entire Jutland peninsula before capitulating. In it's first clash of arms since reorganization, the effectiveness of the Prussian forces proved clear, something the Austrians ignored to their cost just 18 months later. However it was as (uneasy) allies that Prussia and Austria took over the respective administration of Schleswig and Holstein under the Gastein Convention of August 14, 1865.

Consequences

It did not take long for disagreements between Prussia and Austria over both the administration and the future of the duchies to surface. Bismark used these as a pretext to engineer what became the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Austria's defeat at the Battle of Königgrätz was followed by the dissolution of the German Confederation and Austria's withdrawal from Holstein, which in turn was annexed by Prussia, along with Schleswig. In spite of these events, the region's mix of Danes and Germans combined with the various feudal obligations of the powers involved lead many to consider the Schleswig-Holstein Question as an intractable one. Referring to the issue, Lord Palmerston is quoted as saying that only three people understood the Schleswig-Holstein question, and of these, one was dead, the second had gone insane, and the third (himself) had forgotten it.

The position of the Danes in Schleswig after the cession was determined, so far as treaty rights are concerned, by two instruments: the Treaty of Vienna (October 30, 1864) and the Treaty of Prague (August 23, 1866). Under Article XIX. of the former treaty the Danish subjects domiciled in the ceded territories had the right, within six years of the exchange of ratifications, of opting for the Danish nationality and transferring themselves, their families and their personal property to Denmark, while keeping their landed property in the duchies. The last paragraph of the Article ran: "Le droit d'indignat, tant dans le royaume de Danemark que dans les Duchés, est conserve a touts les individus qui le possdent a l'époque de lchange des ratifications du present Traité". By Article V of the Treaty of Prague Schleswig was ceded by Austria to Prussia with the reservation that the populations of the North of Schleswig shall be again united with Denmark in the event of their expressing a desire so to be by a vote freely exercised. Taking advantage of the terms of these treaties, about 50,000 Danes from North Schleswig (out of a total population of some 150,000) opted for Denmark and were expelled across the frontier, pending the plebiscite which was to restore their country to them. But the plebiscite never came. Its inclusion in the treaty had been no more than a diplomatic device to save the face of the emperor Napoleon III; Prussia had from the first no intention of surrendering an inch of the territory she had conquered; the outcome of the Franco-German War made it unnecessary for her even to pretend that she might do so; and by the Treaty of Vienna of October II, 1878, the clause relating to the plebiscite was formally abrogated with the assent of Austria.

The Schleswig-Holstein Question after 1864 became merged into the larger question of general relations between Austria and Prussia, and later developments were a result of the war of 1866. The Question survived in a form between Danes and Germans, narrowed down to the question of the fate of the Danish population of the northern duchy. This question is of great interest to students of international law and as illustrating the practical problems involved in the assertion of the modern principle of nationality.

• Schleswig-Holstein
• First war of Schleswig
• Seven Weeks War
• Franco-German War