The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-07 00:00:00

The War in Denmark.

(From the Times Special Correspondent lately at the Danish

head-quarters.)

COPENHAGEN, May 3.
The Danes are brought to a state which is neither
war nor peace; and strange :o say, they (11 not
seem to consider it a particularly uncomfortable
condition of being, Dybbol Is gone and Ale is
going; Fredericia fallen; Jutland as freely open
to invasion as Schleswig;
Egremont-Lin den krone,
with his 3,500 horse and foot, is eluding the Aus-
trians in some far away corner of the Cimbrian
Peninsula, dodging the enemy behind some inlet of
the sea, watching his opportunity to embark and
take himself and the fortunes of Denmark out of
the lett mainland.

On this side the Little Belt, at Strib and
Midilefart, the Dannebrog is still waving defiance
to the German birds of prey, one-headed and two-
btot, to ail appearance, under defending
the island of Funen to the utmost. Defence, how-
ever, necessarily implies attack ; and it, moreover,
supposes, on the part of the defenders, means some-
what commensurate with the forces of theassailants.
An attack upon Funcn, on the part of the Austro-
PrussianB, is more than can be expected even of the
vanity and infatuation of those two Powers; nor is
it at all likely that they will be induced to adopt
suck a course simply because the Danes wish it,
and augur well from it for themselves. Should
the Germars really make the attempt to force their
way across the Strait, it is not so certain that all
the strength of what still remains of the little
Danish army would have power to hinder them, or
to hold any part of the island against them, not, at
least, until the Danes can muster in the field better
artillery than they now have—an artillery which,
as experience has shown, is no more a match for the
Prussian rifled cannon than a penknife fora sword-
blade. The Danes, however, aro not so very san-
guine as to their ability to keep Funen if the Ger-
mans put forth their strength to take it. They
foresee the day in which all their dominions may be
reduced to their sovereign island of Zealand ; nor
are they confident that even their boasted maritime
superiority may not vanish before the combined
that
oa
tf their
barbaric
ab capital.ri h
king
; whose
efforts of the German and Austrian fleets, and that
satded
upon every suggestion
the war may not be brought to the shores of the
io
Sound and to the ba
We have all read of n h
ambitious plans expanded
of what was to follow after the fulfilment of each
scheme of conquest, Syria after Egypt, Media
after Syria, and Baotria, and India—and then ? The
Danes reverse all that, and you cannot drive them
into a corner and &Main an answer to your question
as to what will be left to lose after ail is lost. Jut-
land and Schleswig, Funen after Jutland, the fleet,
and the capital. What nest? When nothing is
left to fight for, will they make peace ? Will they
accept the conqueror's terms when not an inch of
ground remains whereon to sign their name to the
treaty ?

The Danes ventured on this war upon false ex-
honour nor for tte interest of Europe t
ex-
pectations. They thought that it was neither for the
should be saerifieed. They trusted to the chapter of
accidents. They felt sure that something would turn
up in their favour—that they could not be without
natural allies or protectors in the world. They are
that they
now in the condition of a gambler who has staked
his whole on a losing card; they are growing des-
perate, and contend that the If Red" must turn up
after all ; so lorg as there is life there is hope; the
game has only to be kept up, and where'a defender
failed, an averger may arise. Europe immolates
them to her flexions love of
peace ; she would not
fight to keep them alive; obe may have to battle
on their grave, and be involved in their ruin.
The political horizon is certainly not unfavour-
able to those who are on the look-out for squalls,
and Holstein have
Schleswig
abeenr e
ltaaiktne
endf roonm D
behalfen -
mark, but it is not very clear for whose benefit
they were conquered. They: e
of Germany.
But who, as yet, has been able to
make out what is Germany ? Success he done
wonders towerds identifying Prussia with that
misty abstraction, and the German papers already
cry
out not only for the annexation of the 4g sea.
girt" provinces to the Brandenburg monarchy, but
also for the rallying of the Vaterland nationality
round the throne of the Hohenzollern, Will Aus-
tria ever reconcile herself to the blunder which
made her inferumental towards placing the German
higemonie in the hat's of her hereditary rival P
Will she allay? it
to be said that she wasstupid
enough to heirs
Denmark, to enrich Prussia with the spoils of
of Germa-
.1 ar.d to enlist in her favour those suffrages
patriotism which the Cabinet of Berlin
had frr.en 1813 to 1863 done ail in its power to
aliP.nate ? Will Austria avow that she has thus cut
tier own throat, and lavished her gold and blood to
shut herself out of Germany?
These are the questions the Danes put to them-
selves, and they are ready to reckon upon their
present Austrian foe as a possible future ally. They
are aware, also, that there are three Germans in
the field ; that there is in the free cities, in the
small Courts, in the democratic unions of that
besotted Vaterland, a party no less hostile to
Prussian ambition than A uetria herself, There is

the Augustenburg faction, the Universal Suffrage
set. Prussia will ha ve to settle with them ; she
will have to settle with those who sympathise with
them.

Suppose Prussia takes Holstein, Schleswig, Sat.
land, Fumen, Zealand, the Sound ; suppose the pres-
tige of conquest wins over to her every patriotic
heart in Germany; suppose she snubs the Frankfort
Diet, spurns the small fry of princes, beats Austria
from the field, builds up the old empire of the 0 thos
and the Hohenstaufen. She may not be out in her
reckoning with Germany: bet rha't of the rest
of Europe? The annexation of Holstein, and even
of a part of Schleswig, to a strong German State
infallibly leads to the occupation of the Sound and
the maritime supremacy of Germany in the naltic
at no distant period. Will Denmark be the only
loser by such an arrangement ? Have Russia,
Sweden, and England nothing to say to it? The
aspirations of Germany are boundless. They are
in inverted ratio with the state of prostration and
impotence in which the country has so long been
lying. It is because the Germans are nothing
that they expect to become everything. Should
the Teutonic os only get rid of the iron ring which
his rulers have cunningly driven through his nose,
he would become a very buil in the European
ohina shop. Mayhap, there are those who find
1 it is for tho common good that the useful animal
should thus be ringed and chained to his stall.
Mayhay, France is not in a hurry to have so
powerful a neighbour near her, and is not to be
propitiated by the little strip of territory in the
valley of the Save, with which Prussia might hope
to compound for the consent of the Emperor Na-
poleon to her projected aggrandisement. The
" rectification of her natural frontiers" is doubt-
less, a great object with that country whi';h has
just annexed Savoy and Nice. The question is
whether France would gain more by thwarting
or by humouring her Rhenish neighbour. The
great Imperial cat has been pretending to
be asleep all the time these German mice had
their dance and carouse. It was not without an
inward purr that he saw the incautious Prussian
removing his neighbour's landmarks. "Go on,
gentlemen," he said in his heart, " trample on the
sacredness of old treaties; appeal to the right of
the strongest; set up the cry of nationality; hallow
the principle of universal suffrage. Trouble the
waters of Europe, and let us see who shall fish the
deepest in them."

The war in Denmark, the Danes think, began
with the silent consent of France ; it can hardly
terminate without her outspoken fiat. Whatever
Prassia and Germany may gain by their aggressive
policy, they have surely placed themselves at the
mercy of the Emperor Napoleon. They will either
have to relinquish their hold of Danish territory,
or they will have to make amends to France either
by a spontaneous offer, or by a forcible spoliation.
And how can France be won over by a paltry dis-
trict on the Save, when she can seize upon a whole
region on the Rhine. Oh ! but England and
Russia, and all Powers interested in the public
order of Europe, will stand up for Belgium, at
least, if not for the Prussian provinces of the
Rhine. Possibly ! But they will have equally to
uphold the rights of Denmark on her own posses.
sions. Europe is a castle of cards, and the whole
edifice topples down if only one of the paste-
boards on which it is based be removed. Nothing
easier than to sacrifice Denmark and leave her to
her fate. Hardly possible to avoid a universal
subversion of the existing state of things ; hardly
possible to escape the dangers of a general Euro-
pean war.