THE WAR (SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN)

Neue Rheinische Zeitung.  
No. 4, June 4, 1848

Schleswig-Holstein, May 30. The Danes, after completing their foray, had withdrawn again across the Als Sound before the advancing Prussian superior force, but they appear to have landed once more. The Prussians continue their retreat, the Danes press on from Jutland and have already set foot again on Schleswig soil. The German inhabitants of Schleswig are outraged at the behaviour of the German governments. Most are fleeing from the inevitable excesses of the Danish army. “Private letters from Hadersleben and Apenrade,” says the Weser-Zeitung, “depict the situation of the inhabitants there in the most distressing colours. Forty families,” says one letter from Apenrade, “fled last night and today. We are staying here with many others tonight; perhaps tomorrow we shall hear more details about the unfortunate Hadersleben. The Danes are indeed there in great numbers; the volunteer corps held out and maintained order in the already infuriated town to the last; they sent here for help. Whether the Prussians will now advance again, nobody knows; the Danes are expected here tonight; but there are troops here and not so much Danish rabble, whom we fear more than Danish troops. Two gunboats and a steamship were lying in the harbour of Apenrade and shelled the town this morning. At Alsen there has also been a massacre, as the Danes landed. It is said that Wrangel now intends to wage war more seriously.”

Many of these refugees have already arrived in Rendsburg. Meanwhile the Danes seem to be in very high spirits; Russian and Swedish princes and warships are arriving in Copenhagen, captured German ships are being condemned, and the newspapers are more bellicose and impudent than ever. “Well-informed” German newspapers, of course, know “from the most reliable source” that peace is nearer than appearances suggest; but meanwhile the Stettin shipowners are going bankrupt and sea-girt Schleswig-Holstein, “sublime sentinel of German custom,” watches with bleeding heart as the beloved tricolour withdraws southwards. The Pomeranian guardsman, with a painful handshake, sighs his parting consolation to the Apenrade peasant:

Schleswig-Holstein, kindred by descent,  
Stay true, my fatherland!

and with that he abandons him to Danish magnanimity.