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 attempted 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 Valde mars, 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 et the Hanseatic cities, to recognize their independence.

King Hans died in 1513, and was sarceeded by his spirited, but violent ad cruel son, Christian II., who immediately on his accession called together the states of Schleswig and Holstein to a gezeni diet in Flensborg, in order to be elected duke of the royal share in the duches The states assembled; but before t swore allegiance to the king, they demand ed the confirmation of all their privil and rights, and certain restitutions to Da

discipline of their enemies. The Danes were commanded by the old Count John Rantzau, the head of one of the noblest families of Holstein, to whose military talents the house of Oldenborg was highly indebted for its victories and grandeur. Adolph too was a prince of uncommon bravery and skill, who fought in the hottest of the battle, and thrice rallied his troops, whom the desperate valor of the enemy had forced to give ground. After a violent struggle the victory declared for the Danes; it was as complete and decisive as they could wish. All the towns and forts surrendered; the vanquished sued for peace, which was granted them. They paid homage to the King of Denmark as their lawful sovereign, and took the oath of perpetual fidelity to him and his successors. They paid the expenses of the war, and delivered up the standards and military trophies taken from King Hans.

Though the victors in apparent concord divided the conquered territory, yet the dispute about the investiture of Schleswig still continued. As no party would yield, the decision of that odious question was referred to the Elector of Saxony, the Landgrave of Hesse, and the Duke of Mecklenburg, as umpires. In May, 1579, the sentence was given at the Congress of Odensee. Schleswig was to be considered as a hereditary military fief of Denmark, with which the king was bound to invest the dukes of the Oldenborg family. The king was to consult the dukes about questions of war and peace, and they then pledged themselves to render him military service as their liege-lord, with forty knights and eighty foot-soldiers! This ridiculous act was then signed by the plenipotentiaries of the foreign princes, the vassals, and the sagacious Council of Denmark. The states in the duchies showed far more resolution and perseverance in the maintenance of their rights. They refused in 1563 to recognize the sovereignty of the Duke Hans, the younger brother of King Frederik II., on whom he settled the principality of Sonderborg, on the island of Als, nor did the descendants of this line ever succeed in obtaining the recognition of that dignity to this day.*

*The present Duke of Sonderborg-Augustenborg, and his brother Prince Noer, who have taken arms against their cousin, King Frederik VII. of Denmark e the direct offspring of that family.

The decision of Odensee, though not satisfactory to Denmark, did at least settle two important points: the obligation on the part of the dukes to renew the investiture, and the recognition of the mili tary service, which though in itself insignificant, still formed the strong link between the duchy of Schleswig and the kingdom. The ceremony took place on the 3d of May, 1580, on the large square of Odensee, where the royal throne had been erected. The three dukes at the same time laid their hands on the banner of Dannebrog, and swore the usual allegiance to their liege-lord as faithful vassals. A few months later, the Hadersleben line became extinct by the death of Duke Hans the elder. All the possessions were now equally divided between Duke Adolph of HolsteinGottorp and the King, while the subdivisions which entailed so many evils on the duchies were put a stop to, in 1608, when the right of primogeniture was established in the ducal part, and, in 1650, extended to the royal province.

Christian IV. reigned with a strong hand, and taught the dukes to respect the feudal rights of Denmark; but tremendous events were forthcoming, which once more overturned the old relations and at last subjected them to the decision of the sword. In 1618 the terrible thirty years' war broke out between the Protestant and Catholic parties in Germany, and King Christian IV., as chief of the Low-Saxon circle, entered Germany with his Danish army. By the treachery of his Saxon allies he was de feated in the bloody battle of Lutter am Baremberg, in 1626, and the imperial General Wallenstein, pursuing the retreat ing king, overran the duchies and all the mainland of Denmark with his wild bands The Duke of Holstein-Gottorp then broke his allegiance and declared against the king, and though he lost all his possessi in the course of the war, they were stored to him by the treaty of Lübeck, e 1629, between the Emperor and the K of Denmark. The hatred between the reigning lines had become inveterate. Th Duke again united with Sweden, and Carl Gustav, crossing the belt on the ice, during the winter, 1658, forced Frederik III., son and successor of Christian IV., in the treaties of Roeskilde and Copenhagen, the same year, to concede to the Duke and

his descendants the sovereignty and supreme dominion of the Gottorp division of Schleswig. The feudal dependence on Denmark was thus abolished in the Holstein-Gottorp dynasty, but continued with its military service and other duties in the lateral lines of Sonderborg, and the introduction of a hereditary succession in Denmark, in 1660, strengthened the ties between the larger or royal part of the duchy and the kingdom.

The revolution of 1660 forms a new period in the history of Denmark. It overturned the old elective constitution, with its powerful oligarchical council of state, (Rigsraad) and the extravagant privileges of the nobility. The king, according to the new lex regia, (Kongelov,) became the most absolute monarch in Europe, and the succession of the crown was settled both on the male and female descendants of the Oldenborg dynasty. The duchies did not subscribe the new act of sovereignty, or renew their oath of allegiance, nor did they directly take any part in those transacctions; the lex regia, however, distinctly expresses the leading principles, which remain as the guiding rule for the question about the relations of Schleswig to the kingdom. In its 19th article it enjoins the king to secure, entire and undivided, under the Danish crown, not only the realms of Denmark and Norway, with all the provinces and islands belonging to them, but moreover all possessions which may be acquired by the sword, or other legal titles, and thus expresses the indivisibility of the kingdoms and all other possessions which belonged to Denmark in 1665. The grand-son of King Frederik III. at last found an opporunity to realize this principle by uniting and incorporating the whole duchy of Schleswig in 1720. The hostile relations between the house of Holstein-Gottorp and the crown of Denmark continued luring the remainder of the seventeenth century, and on the breaking out of the great northern war between Sweden, Rusia, Brandenburg and Denmark, Duke Charles Frederik of Holstein-Gottorp, who had taken side with Charles XII. of Sweden, lost all his possessions in Schlesvig. They were conquered by King rederik IV. and his Danish army in 1713, nd at the general peace that followed the eath of Charles XII. in Norway, 1718, enmark, giving up all her other con

quests, secured the duchy of Schleswig as a permanent and inalienable possession by the strongest guaranty of Sweden, England and France.*

By letter patent of the 22d of August, 1721, the inhabitants of the conquered territory were called upon to do homage to Frederik IV. as their lawful sovereign, and the two districts of Apenrade and Gottorp were incorporated with that part of the duchy, which previously had belonged to the Danish crown. The estates of Schleswig took the oath of allegiance to the king and his hereditary successors, according to the lex regia, at the castle of Gottorp, on the 4th of September, 1721. The junior branches of the house of Oldenborg, the Dukes of Augustenborg and Glücksborg, who did not possess any sovereign rights, gave their oath in writing. In the letter patent and the formulary for the oath of allegiance, the king expressly mentions Schleswig as an integral part of the crown of Denmark, from which it had been torn away in disastrous times, and declares it henceforth eternally to be incorporated as a part of the kingdom. This declaration is definite, but it was not completely executed. King Frederik IV. did not realize his first intention of incorporating Schleswig as a province. It remained a separate hereditary duchy, enjoying its ancient privileges, but by its participating in the regulations of the lex regia of 1665, it now followed the cognate succession of Denmark. In accordance with the new relations into which Schleswig thus entered in 1721 with the kingdom, the arms of the duchy were quartered with those of Denmark Proper; "and so," says the excellent historian, Professor Christian Molbech, "after a partial separation this fertile and important province again became an organic and indivisible part of the state."

And yet was the possession of Schles: wig far from being undisturbed. Den