Republican Demonstrations (Schleswig-Holstein)

Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
No. 97, 8 September 1848

* Rendsburg, 5 September. The current issue of the *Schleswig-Holsteinische Zeitung* reports the general indignation of the country over the armistice. In Rendsburg, Flensburg, and Glücksstadt there reigns the greatest excitement; popular assemblies are being called to consider the means of overturning the disgraceful convention.

An article by a German officer says:
“To bleed for the fatherland, for the freedom of a German people, we came here and drew our swords united with this brave people; scarcely a fortnight passed and the enemy abandoned his own country to us. Then God in his wrath sent us these German diplomats, this gang of soul-mongers, whom we believed we had wiped out through our revolutions. With a hundredweight’s heaviness they hang on our heels, and the victorious army was turned into border and shore guards! – But not content with that, these pen-wielding heroes have been brewing for two months a little potion that, centuries later, would still drive the blood of shame into the foreheads of our descendants, and have the utmost impudence to hold this concoction, stirred together out of cowardice, servility, and treason against the people, to the lips of us Germans. Shame upon those who dare that, but a thousandfold shame upon a German people, upon a sovereign people, that tolerates this!
Not at the frontiers do our most dangerous enemies stand; no! they stand among us, and, parading around with German flags, spouting phrases of freedom about Germany, etc., are always ready to betray and sell the freedom of the peoples.
Therefore be on your guard, you Germans, you Schleswig-Holsteiners, and defy them boldly. But we German warriors, who are no mercenaries, we intend to keep our hand on our sword and to ask those peace-brewers what we fought, bled, and conquered for; what right they had to insult the honour of our arms and our honour?”

In Rendsburg itself, numerous soldiers – Prussians, Hanoverians, Schleswig-Holsteiners, all mixed together – yesterday paraded through the streets, with a red ribbon in their buttonholes and to the cry: “Long live the Republic!” The Prussian treason can bear its fruits.