burg, Lübeck and other powerful Hanseatic | enborg-Rendsborg became extinct, and the cities, supporting Holstein with their fleets, desolated the coasts of Denmark, and ruined her commerce. The greatest dissatisfaction with the incapacity of the king prevailed throughout the kingdoms of the Calmarian union. Erik was deposed, and the first act of his successor, Christopher the Bavarian, was the recognition of the hereditary rights of the house of Schauenborg to the duchy of Schleswig. At the Danish diet in Colding, in 1439, the Duke Adolph, kneeling down before his liegelord, on his throne, surrounded by the court and nobility, took the oath of allegiance, and received from the hand of the king the banner of investiture. The Calmarian union still existed, but it had become a mere phantom; the arrogance of the prelates and nobles, the subjection of the people, and the total want of political liberty and public opinion in that age of ignorance and oppression, did not permit the development of a confederacy among the Scandinavian nations, which otherwise would have promoted their civilization, happiness, and power. Denmark had not gained by her doubtful union with Sweden; she felt the more deeply her recent loss, and all her efforts tended towards the recovery of her alienated possessions on the main land. The Danish nobility, in compliance with this feeling, after the sudden death of King Christopher the Bavarian, in 1448, sent a deputation to Duke Adolph of Schleswig-Holstein, to offer him the crown of Denmark. The Duke was at the time only forty-five years of age; but being without children, and preferring the quiet retirement of his present position, to the cares and vicissitudes awaiting him on the throne of the warring kingdoms, he declined the proffered honor, but directed the attention of the Danes to his young sister's son, Count Christian of Oldenborg, whom he himself had educated and tenderly loved. Count Christian accepted the crown, and became the founder of the present dynasty of Denmark, in the year 1448. Eleven years after this event, 1459, Adolph of Schleswig-Holstein died. His elder brother, Henry, had lived unmarried, and perished in his thirtieth year; the younger, Gerhard, died suddenly on the Rhine, in 1433, without legitimate issue. Thus the house of the Counts of Schau duchy of Schleswig of course escheated to the crown of Denmark, which the king ought immediately to have taken possession of. The county of Holstein, on the contrary, being a German fief, apparently devolved on the nearest agnate heirs of the lateral line of Schauenborg-Pinneberg, who already, in the year 1396, by a treaty, had secured its succession. The princes of the family of Oldenborg, however, were more nearly related to the defunct Count of Holstein than the house of Schauenborg-Pinneberg, but only as cognates. Some historians, in defence of such direct rights of King Christian to the succession of Holstein, mention that several instances were on record in the German states of that time, where the merely cognate heirs inherited. Thus a contemporary chronicler of Lubec, who continues the chronicle of Detmar from 1401 to 1472, and whose work, even by the historians of Holstein themselves, is pronounced to be of the highest authority, says, "that the nobles of Holstein rejected altogether this plea of a family compact between the two lines of the house of Schauenborg, as the council of the land had never sanctioned or confirmed it; and with regard to the inheritance of the Holstein fief, they recognized that King Christian and his brothers were nearer in respect to the succession, than the more distant Westphalian branch of the house of Schauenborg-Pinneberg, as they were sister's children of Count Adolph, and in their land, the female line (Spindle-side) might inherit as well as the male line (Sword-side)." A distinction seems thus to have existed in the succession between the great or banner-fiefs, (feuda vexilli, Fanelehn,) and the minor tiefs of the German Empire; inasmuch as in the former the inheritance was limited to male keirs, while in the latter the female line partook of the same right. Holstein, being originally a dependent fief of the duchy of Saxony, and not a feudum vexilli of the Empire, the direct right of King Christian to the succession of this duchy might have been justly insisted upon at the time; which goes directly against the late assertion of Prussia with regard to both duchies, "that only the agnates were admitted to the inheritance." The great question, however, as to whether Schleswig, an ancient and important province of Denmark, should be at last incorporated with the kingdom and separated from Holstein, or again become united with the latter, by a new investiture of the king, was now to be determined. But a new difficulty had unexpectedly been created by the fact that the Duke Adolph, moved perhaps by his old rancor towards Denmark, against whom he had spent his youth in hard fighting, and still more by his natural desire to preserve the close union of his two beautiful states, had persuaded his young nephew, Christian of Oldenborg, when the crown of Denmark was offered to him in 1448, to renounce his right to Schleswig, and to promise that, according to the constitutio Valdemariana, the duchy of Schleswig and the kingdom of Denmark never should be united again under the same sceptre, and that the duchy of Schleswig-Holstein should remain forever and ever undivided—ewich tosammend ungedelt. This curious Low German document of Count Christian of Oldenborg is dated 28th of June, 1448, more than a year before his coronation at Copenhagen as King of Denmark on the 28th October, 1449. It had no validity, because Count Christian could not give away any territory or rights of the kingdom of Denmark, the crown of which he did not wear; nay, he could not even do so after he had been crowned king, except with the consent of the states in a general dannehof or diet. This renunciation and promise of the young Count may therefore be considered null and void. We said that Christian, as a cognate heir, had no right to the succession in Holstein in 1459. His ambition however incited him to go any length in order to acquire both the estates, Holstein as well as Schleswig, and to unite both with the kingdom in spite of his own renunciation of 1448. Instead, therefore, of drawing in the escheated fief of Schleswig, and incorporating it with Denmark, he did not. enforce that right, but simply offered himself as a candidate for the free election of the Schleswig and Holstein nobility. Thus he placed himself on a level with the indigent counts of Schauenborg-Pinneberg, well knowing that the large sums he had by underhand means distributed among the avaricious prelates and nobles, and the powerful influence of the family of Rantzau, would procure him the majority of | the votes. In this manner King Christian gained his object, but not without great sacrifices, which through his whole reign pressed hard on the kingdom of Denmark. He settled his patrimonial counties of Oldenborg and Delmenhorst on his younger brother, with forty thousand florins. The Counts of Schauenborg received an indemnification of four hundred and thirty thousand florins, the county of Pinneberg, and several other possessions. The prelates and nobles secured their most extensive privileges, throwing all the burdens of the commonwealth on the more numerous and industrious classes of the citizens and peasants. On his actual election to the duchies he declared by a charter of rights (Haandfæstning) dated the 5th of March, 1460, which the Holstein historians consider as a renewal of the Valdemarian Constitution, that the estates of Schleswig and Holstein were to remain inseparable; that they had of their own free will, without any regard to his being King of Denmark, chosen him for their Duke and Count, that they likewise after his death were entitled to elect his successor from among his children, or in case of his having no issue, from among his lawful heirs, and that if he should leave but one son to succeed him on the throne of Denmark, the estates should have the right to choose some other chief, provided only he were of the kin and lineage of the deceased. The future position of Schleswig for several centuries was now decided. A few years later, in 1474, Holstein was erected into a duchy, and though Schleswig remained a Danish fief, which did not belong to the empire, it now entered by its relation to Holstein into a more intimate intercourse with Germany. The mass of the people still spoke Danish, as they do to this day, but the all-powerful nobility, by intermarriages in the sister duchy, and the clergy, by the great spiritual movement in the south, became more and more Germanized. Within half a century, the diet in Schleswig began to be held in the Low-German dialect. In the times of the Reformation, the Lutheran translation of the Bible in the High-German language was still nearly unintelligible to the great majority of the common people, both in Holstein and Schleswig, yet by the mighty influence of the German civilization from the south, and the indifference of the Oldenborg kings, who themselves spoke the German at the court of Copenhagen, the Danish lost ground, and the High-German at last gaining the victory, became the language of the pulpit, of the bar, and of the national assemblies. The university of Kiel was erected in 1665, and the young Schleswigers as well as the Holsteiners, having received their education at that institution, extended their travels to Germany, in order to finish their studies and bring German literature and science back to their native countries. Nor were the commercial relations with the Hanseatic confederation less influential in alienating the Schleswigers from their Danish brethren. The naval establish-ed, and a very remarkable division of the ments (Styrishavne) of the victorious Valdemars, who with their Danish fleets subjected all the southern coasts of the Baltic, and extended their feudal dominion over Esthonia, Pomerania and Rügen, had gone to ruin during the civil wars of the fourteenth century. The eighty-five cities of the rich and powerful Hansa had for nearly two centuries possessed the entire commerce of the Baltic and northern seas, and by their exclusive rights and privileges, kept the Scandinavian kings in the most abject bondage to a commercial aristocracy. No wonder, then, that Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen had become the schools and places of general resort of the active mariners of Schleswig and Holstein. dynasty, quite contrary to the spirit of the principle of unity expressed in the act of 1460, which in this manner was abolished de facto by the Schleswig and Holstein states themselves. Christian I. died in 1441, and left two sons by his Queen Dorothea-Hans, who was elected King of Denmark, and Frederik, at that time only ten years of age. The ambitious queen dowager, desiring her younger son, Prince Frederik, to be elected in the duchies, succeeded by her intrigues in delaying the final decision of the states for nine years, when at last, in 1490, both the royal brothers were elect King Christian I. of Oldenborg, having thus, in 1460, been elected Duke of Schleswig and Holstein, it might have been supposed that the great question about the duchies had at last been solved; but most unhappily for the tranquillity and welfare of the Danish monarchy, new divisions followed thirty years later (1490) which at different periods, for nearly two centuries and a half, were the causes of dynastic dissensions, foreign invasions, and incalculable distress and misery in the whole monarchy. Although the crown Although the crown of Denmark continued elective for two hundred years (1460-1660) after the accession of Christian I., it descended nevertheless as regularly from father to son, as if it had been hereditary. But in the duchies, where the nobility (Ritterschaft) alone formed the states, this oligarchy simultaneously elected different descendants of the house of Oldenborg, and the lands thus became divisible and subdivisible among distinct lines of the two provinces took place. Instead of de- against his brother, and taking advantage of the unruly spirit of the Swedes, he even attempted by flattery and promises to be elected their king. A civil war would no doubt have broken out with King Hans, if a feud against the Ditmarskers in Holstein had not caused the brothers to unite their forces against the common enemy. The Ditmarskers, a people of Saxon descent inhabiting a small fertile district between the Elbe and the Eyder, in that part of Holstein which faces the Western ocean, had during several centuries lived in perfect independence. They formed a commonwealth, which was governed by bailiffs and aldermen, and united by the love of freedom, they had maintained themselves in this situation against all aggression. At the conquest of Holstein by King Valdemar the Victorious, they followed the Danish banner; but during the bloody battle of Bornhöved in 1227, they, by treacherously attacking the Danes in their rear, caused their total overthrow. This treachery was rewarded by the counts of Holstein with perfect independence, and although Count Gerhard afterwards at tempted to subdue them, they defeated and slew him, foiled all subsequent invasions, and obtained from the German Emperor the privilege of being placed beneath the protection of the archiepiscopal see of Bremen. Nor would those poor and brave herdsmen and fishermen have been disturbed in their tranquillity, if they had not, like the Swiss on the Alps, relying on their victories, become troublesome aggressors on their neighbors. King Christian I. had already resolved their reduction, and having represented them to the Emperor Friederich III. as a set of lawless and unruly rovers, he received permission to make the conquest of their territory. But he died, and his sons would perhaps have left the Ditmarskers to themselves, if they had not taken an active part in the dispute between Duke Frederik and the Hanseatic cities of Lübeck and Hamburg, and destroyed the ducal dépots and custom-houses on the island of Helgoland. The king and the duke now resolved the war. The brilliant feudal array of Denmark and the duchies assembled in Holstein during the winter of 1500, and was strengthened by six thousand mercenary Saxon lance-knechts, commanded by the haughty condottiere Junker Slents, who | promised the king that he would take Ditmarsk even if it was chained to heaven itself. Thus the best appointed army Denmark had ever sent forth, consisting of thirty thousand combatants, advanced through the low marshes against the six thousand armed herdsmen, who in vain had demanded the aid of the cities on the Elbe. On the 13th of February, the Danes occupied the open town of Meldorf, which had been abandoned, and only the aged and the defenceless fell victims to the wild soldiery of the time. But their cruelty and presumption met with the justest chastisement. Animated by despair, and resolved to perish in the cause of their liberty, this handful of people, led on by the heroic Wolf Isebrand, occupied a small fort situated on an eminence between Meldorf and Hemingsted. The royal army had to pass on a narrow and swampy road, hemmed in on both sides by ditches and marshes. While the Saxon infantry advanced, they were received by a destructive fire from the batteries on the hill. They lost their commander, and falling back in disorder upon the Danish chivalry, they were furiously attacked on all sides by the light-armed Ditmarskers, who, on their long spears, with dexterity jumped over the ditches and began an indiscriminate slaughter on the defenceless flanks of the crowded column. Three hundred and sixty nobles of the most distinguished families in Denmark and the duchies, and more than fifteen thousand troops, perished on the battle-field. The king himself escaped with difficulty. The old Dannebrog, the Danish banner from the times of the Valdemars, was lost together with all the cannon, arms, and an immense baggage. The Ditmarskers, pursuing the retreating army, made devastating incursions into Holstein, which forced the king, by the mediation of the Hanseatic cities, to recognize their independence. King Hans died in 1513, and was succeeded by his spirited, but violent and cruel son, Christian II., who immediately on his accession called together the states of Schleswig and Holstein to a general diet in Flensborg, in order to be elected duke of the royal share in the duchies. The states assembled; but before they swore allegiance to the king, they demanded the confirmation of all their privileges and rights, and certain restitutions to Duke Frederik, which King Hans, in 1503, had engaged to make to his brother. The young king, nourishing a deep-rooted hatred against the powerful nobility, whom he, as a crown prince, had already with the axe and the sword almost annihilated in Norway, and whose exorbitant privileges he intended to circumscribe in Denmark, refused the demands of the states. Serious discussions now arose; and both prelates and nobles declared that if the king did not confirm all their rights and claims, they would immediately elect his uncle Frederik as their only sovereign duke. Christian II., knowing the ambition of that prince, and fearing the general dissatisfaction in Sweden, yielded at the time; he deferred his intended reforms, acknowledged the rights of the oligarchy, and received their homage as Duke of Schleswig and Holstein. Yet the enmity between the two princes continued, and was fomented by the disloyal and treacherous conduct of Christian towards his uncle. The horrible slaughter of the Swedish nobility in Stockholm on the 8th of November, 1520, and the subsequent rebellion of the Danish nobles in 1523, decided the fate of Christian the Tyrant. He fled to Germany, and Frederik, being called to the Danish throne, immediately took possession of all the royal castles in the duchies, which thus were united a second time. They remained undivided till the year 1544; during which period King Christian III., the son of Frederik I., had governed them in the name of his younger brothers, Hans, Adolph, and Frederik. Another favorable opportunity had thus presented itself to the Danish Council for reclaiming the ancient Danish province of South Jutland, and by uniting it with Denmark, to establish anew the old Scandinavian frontier of the Eyder-or at least, by adopting the advice of the distinguished general, John de Rantzau, at once to declare the right of primogeniture in the duchies. This principle had at that time already been introduced with success into Bavaria and Mark-Brandenburg. But the Danish oligarchs, says a native historian, were more intent upon fortifying their castles and extending their farms, on buying and selling their poor serfs, who were no better than slaves, than on securing the welfare of their king and country. The Council consented to another still more | disastrous division. The king, and his brothers Hans and Adolph, received different districts both of Schleswig and Holstein, with their castles, convents and towns, which were denominated after the principal residences. The king's share was called that of Sonderborg. Duke Hans obtained Hadersleben, and Adolph, Gottorp. The younger brother Frederik became bishop of Hildersheim in 1551. The ducal claims to the possession of Hamburg and the territory of the Ditmarskers, and many privileges and taxes, remained in common; for every one of the dukes possessed the full sovereignty in his own principality, though he recognized the emperor as his liege-lord for Holstein. Yet the royal brothers, on their presenting their homage to the king, refused to perform the usual military service for Schleswig as a Danish banner-fief; acting upon the illegal pretension of the old dukes of South Jutland, that the duchy was a frank-fee exempted from every feodary duty. Years passed on in violent disputes, and at last, when the ceremony of investiture was to take place at the general assembly at Colding, in 1547, in the presence of the king, the dukes on a sudden refused; a tumult arose, the ceremony was suspended, and the princes, mounting their horses, hurried off in disgust. But King Christian did not yield, and though he lived nearly in the same dissensions with his brothers as the unhappy Erik Plough-penning had done, three hundred years before, he still vindicated the right of the Danish crown. Adolph of Holstein-Gottorp, a prince of a hot and impetuous temper, again turned his arms against the courageous Ditmarskers, who, ever since the terrible defeat of King Hans, had enjoyed uninterrupted possession of their independence. Christian III., however, who wished to rule in tranquillity over his dominions, succeeded in preserving peace till his death in 1559. But his son and successor, Frederik II., was more willing to enter into the designs. of his uncle, being afraid of his conquering the whole territory and keeping it to himself. The king, with his Danish army, therefore joined the duke's, and better care was now taken to insure success. The conflict was long and bloody; but the intrepidity of the Ditmarskers could not prevail against the military knowledge and |