The War Court and Lap Pillow, Austria's Mandate of Heaven

Chapter 1836 The Past Reappears
"Fellow countrymen! We cannot be blindly angry! We need swift and decisive action!"

First, we must electrify the entire Confederation! Let our voices resound in every corner of the Confederation! We must send our voices to Vienna! To Berlin! To Munich! To Dresden! To Hanover!

Let all Germans know that we are their indomitable brothers! We need their help! And in doing so, we are helping ourselves!

Today the Danes can colonize us, but who knows if it will be their turn tomorrow? The German nation has reached its most perilous moment! We must unite!

The procession grew larger and larger, and people shouted loudly.

"Yes! All Germans, unite! We're on our way to the telegraph office now! We mustn't let those guys stop us from sending telegrams!"

"Yes! Let's go together!"

"go together!"

Leon Stein took a deep breath. These lines seemed familiar, but this time he sensed that the public's attitude had become more resolute and hardened.

However, some things must be said beforehand.

"Secondly! We must issue our strongest protest to the Danish government! We demand an explanation and punishment from the Danish government, and a public apology from those who treated us as colony slaves!"

The angry crowd was somewhat puzzled, but some who didn't want to escalate the situation were relieved.

In reality, a considerable number of people still believed that the king was good, but had been misled by his corrupt ministers.

Some of these people are naive and kind; others are driven by self-interest. After all, there have been many cases of Germans and Danes intermarrying and working for the Danish government over the centuries. In fact, due to the increasing influence of Germany in recent years, intermarriage and official positions have become more and more common.

Another group of people are Danes themselves. They also think the Danish government is acting stupidly, but they are more afraid that the Germans might go crazy and commit a massacre.

In fact, Germans have frequently fought civil wars over the centuries, each one resulting in countless deaths. The Thirty Years' War, in particular, reduced the total population of the German region by at least one-third.

The Danes were both participants and witnesses. After witnessing the true cruelty of war, this nation, which rose to power through war, completely retreated, and Denmark abandoned its ambition to become the dominant power in Europe.

Moreover, Denmark is currently powerless to stop the German invasion. Rather than being used as a pawn on the chessboard by the Germans, British, Swedes, and Russians, it would be better to stay in the German Confederation and live a carefree life.

However, most people still seemed puzzled. Did they really intend to settle things this way?

“Third!” Leon Stein raised his voice. “If the Danish government refuses to apologize, then we will take up arms! Let them know the price of trying to enslave us!”

There can only be one winner on the Jutland Peninsula! That winner is us! Long live the German Empire!

"Long live the German Empire!"

The German anthem played again, but some uninformed people might mistake it for the Austrian Empire's national anthem, since the two songs have the exact same melody, or even are actually the same song.

In fact, because Franz devoted most of his energy to dealing with the civil war and the Jews in 1848, his purge of German nationalists was extremely incomplete.

Although various countries have apprehended a large number of unsettled individuals within their own borders, not all of them are German nationalists; most are simply individuals who are not easily controlled.

True German nationalists could remain unscathed simply by playing dead and distancing themselves from the Jews.

Even now, many of them still retain the flags and costumes from back then, and even swords and guns.

Leon Stein's words instantly caused a stir among the crowd, and the square erupted in thunderous cheers once again.

In a corner where the cheers couldn't be heard, the sound of breaking apart rang out. Several hot-blooded young men, instigated by a few old thugs, began to smash up the shops of "outsiders" in the city.

They don't dare to rob locals yet; they only dare to rob immigrants from other parts of Denmark.

However, if left unchecked, the scope will soon expand, and competing shops and neighbors with whom they have a bad relationship will become their next targets.

Someone should have stopped this, but there were too few police officers and everyone was on edge, since even a small spark could start a war.

As lackeys of the Danish government, if they were to arrest those young people who were waving the German flag at this time, they might fall right into someone's trap, or even be directly labeled as accomplices and beaten to death on the spot.

Their retreat would inevitably hasten the collapse of social order, and the orders from the people of the two principalities were quickly responded to, with various official and unofficial arms dealers bringing in large quantities of weapons.

The governors of Schleswig and Holstein were the most troubled, as they had police and troops under their command.

But the problem was that everything happened too fast; thanks to the invention of the telegraph, the news spread throughout Denmark almost overnight.

The Governor-General's Office of Schleswig.

"The rioters not only occupied the city, but even the farmers who toiled in the fields were considering joining them."

The Germans are bringing in crates of weapons and ammunition from the sea and along the border.

We should cut off the railway, blockade the port, and declare martial law right now, immediately!

The governor ignored these opinions and sat down to ponder.

His subordinates were right, but if he dared to do that, it would confirm that the Danish government was hostile to the Germans.

No one could bear such a huge burden; the German Confederation was far too large for Denmark to handle at present.

Even without the Austrian Empire joining the battle, the smaller states within the German Confederation could have reduced Denmark to ruins and then hanged its governor.

“Send a telegram to Copenhagen and ask the King and Parliament what their decision is.”

"Your Excellency, we must act immediately! It will be too late if we wait until those bureaucrats make their decisions!"

His men tried to persuade him further, but Governor Schleswig simply shook his head.

"We are sitting on a volcano crater, with fragile ice beneath our feet. Although we are all going to die sooner or later, we might be able to delay our death by making fewer movements."

"The parliament is full of idiots; they'll get us all killed sooner or later!"

The governor of Holstein, Ludwig Nicholas von Scheele, held a completely different attitude.

"Let them make a fuss. We'll just focus on protecting our own little corner of the world."

The aides standing nearby were somewhat puzzled.

"But sir, if we don't intervene, the riots will soon sweep across the entire region. Not only will we be unable to explain ourselves to the country, but we ourselves will also suffer."

Those rioting Germans probably won't buy it either.

Ludwig Nicholas von Scheler, however, smiled.

"Do you know? My family has been rooted here for over three hundred years. Germans, Danes, Swedes, French, and even the Holy Roman Empire have all come to this land."

But ultimately, it was my family who remained to manage this place. Do you understand why?

Because we know how to assess the situation.

The Kingdom of Denmark is now in decline, and His Majesty the King and his advisors are just as arrogant and conceited.

What was clearly just a matter of a few broken bicycles was blown out of proportion into a national issue affecting the entire Confederation.

They will pay the price for their arrogance and stupidity; we don't need to drag them down with us! (At the same time in Copenhagen.)

Frederick VII had just woken up from a hangover and hated being disturbed, but the reality was that there were always people who liked to bother him for various reasons.

"Damn it! Rammond, I was almost going to have an heir! Why did you have to bother me! Today is absolutely terrible!"

Frederick VII continued rambling on as he grabbed the half-full glass of brandy that remained on the table.

Foreign Minister Ramon Ditreev was somewhat helpless, as the king was an alcoholic with a chaotic private life and even had an affair with the entire ballet company.

He married three times but had no children. He liked to interfere in politics but lacked the ability to solve problems and was also very lazy.

The Danes' prejudice against Germans largely stemmed from His Majesty the King.

"Your Majesty, even if you succeed, he will be an illegitimate child, which will be of no benefit to Denmark."

Rammond spoke frankly, but before Frederick VII could react, Rammond continued.

"This is truly terrible. Your appointed prime minister openly referred to the two duchies as colonies of the Kingdom of Denmark in a routine government report."

Even worse, before the Germans could crush us, war broke out within our own parliament.

Frederick VII asked with some doubt.

"what happened?"

In truth, Frederick VII didn't think there was anything wrong with calling the two duchies colonies. After all, the words used by the parties in Parliament to attack each other in recent years were much more serious and unpleasant.

And what's with this war breaking out within parliament?

"Your Majesty, the remarks of your appointed Chancellor, Jacob Bijn, have completely ignited the war between the German faction and the native faction."

The local faction wanted to use this opportunity to distance themselves from the German Confederation, while the German faction demanded complete integration into the German Confederation.

The local faction believes that Germans are Germans and they will never become Danes.

The German faction, on the other hand, felt that the Danes were a ridiculous and conservative concept.

They believe that Denmark is just a small country with a population of just over one million, and if those of mixed Danish descent are excluded, the total population may be less than one million.

The Austrian Empire alone had a population of over 50 million within the German Confederation. How could Denmark possibly deal with such a behemoth?

"To resist to the end will only lead to self-destruction, and the German faction believes that since everyone is of Germanic descent, there's nothing wrong with joining Germany."

Frederick VII gave a heavy snort; he was clearly very dissatisfied with the German perspective and did not consider himself weak.

However, Frederick VII was also dissatisfied with the local faction. As a monarch who insisted on absolutism, he always felt that all the people were his subjects, and that Danes and Germans were all nonsense.

"That's it? Let them fight like dogs!"

Clearly, Frederick VII did not truly realize the seriousness of the problem.

Ramon was also a little annoyed, and he coughed twice.

"Your Majesty, the flames of war have spread throughout Copenhagen, or more precisely, throughout the whole of Denmark."

Whether in bars, salons, or classrooms, the two sides were engaged in fierce exchanges.

In just two days, fifty brawls have broken out in Copenhagen, with at least 100 people injured and more than 500 arrested.

Other regions also experienced varying degrees of unrest, with riots breaking out in the two principalities.

The leaders of public opinion in the two principalities demanded the dismissal and punishment of the prime minister and 27 other officials, as well as a public apology and legislation to protect the rights of Germans.

Frederick VII roared in fury.

"Traitors! Traitors! They're all traitors! What are the army and police doing? Why aren't they taking action?"

Ramund said slowly and deliberately.

"They are waiting for your orders."

"Wait for my orders? Don't they have brains or eyes? Don't they know what their duty is?"

Frederick VII slammed his wine glass down on the table, startling the woman on the bed who quickly covered herself with the blanket to hide her exposed skin.

Ramon didn't even glance at the woman; he simply said...

"Your Majesty, those people are armed, and they have gathered in numbers of several thousand, or even tens of thousands."

This left Frederick VII speechless, considering that the entire Danish army numbered only a little over 30,000.

"Damn it! Those mobs are breeding like bedbugs, is there anyone who can help us?"

Rammond opened his briefcase and took out a thick stack of documents.

"Your Majesty, the major countries within the German Confederation have all sent telegrams."

"Show me quickly."

Frederick VII's face turned very ugly after reading it.

"How dare they look down on me! What gives them the right to point fingers at my country?"
They care more about those lowly people! They've ignored me, the rightful king!
"At worst, we'll declare war on the German Confederation!"

Rammond was completely stunned after hearing this. He carefully looked around, afraid that others might overhear.

"Your Majesty, most of the countries in the German Confederation are predominantly German (except for Austria and Belgium, the former being too diverse and the latter having a larger French-speaking population), so they will certainly take into account the impact on their domestic populations."

Moreover, Denmark is really not that important to the German Confederation countries. If the interests are sufficient, they might actually come to attack.

I advise you to be more cautious; Prime Minister Youn's strategy is too radical.

This is actually what Ramon really wanted to say: he has always been at odds with Prime Minister Jacob Biyenne, and now is a good opportunity to kick him out of the core of power.

In fact, Ramund was also a localist, but he only cared about the power in his hands and did not care about the so-called ethnicity.

Ramond's main reason for presenting himself as a nationalist was to make it easier to gain more power.

For greater benefits, he could certainly become a German nationalist.

However, it is absolutely impossible to get Ramon to give up his power, which is second only to the emperor.

"A bunch of hypocritical bitches! Sons of bitches!"

Frederick VII was still hurling insults; he hated nothing more than others interfering with his rule.

What broke Frederick VII's heart even more was that no one cared about him; almost all the monarchs were concerned about the issues between the two duchies.