CHAPTER X.
We have now reached a period with which readers of to-day have more or less personal familiarity. This hour of deep depression in Germany was the one which comes before the dawn.
The Schleswig-Holstein episode was a complicated, tiresome tangle, even while it was enacting, and now is to most people only another name for a rusty German key with which Pandora's box was opened for Europe just twenty-five years ago. But it was a pivotal incident, and must be understood in order to make clear the rapid succession of events following, of which it was the first link in the chain.
The two adjacent dukedoms of Schleswig and Holstein, which constitute a sort of natural bridge about one hundred and fifty miles long and fifty miles wide, between Denmark and Prussia, are, by the way, the land of nativity for the Anglo-Saxon race, the Angles having inhabited Schleswig, and the Saxons Holstein, at the time they so kindly protected the Britons from the Picts and Scots!
So it is probable that every member of this Anglo-Saxon family has ancestral roots running back to that fertile strip of pasture land, which was geographically and, at a later day, historically so important.
At the time we are now considering, it had for many years been under the Danish protectorate, the King of Denmark being, by virtue of his position, also Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, just as the German Emperor is now King of Prussia by virtue of his imperial office.
But this little people were by no means merged with the Danish by this arrangement; on the contrary, they preserved very jealously their own traits and ancestral traditions. Among these, was the exclusion of women from the royal succession—the Salic law, framed by their Frank ancestors centuries before on the banks of the river Saale, being part of their constitution. Hence, when King Frederick VII. of Denmark died in 1862 without male heir, and King Christian IX. became king, the people of the two dukedoms hotly refused to recognize him as their lawful ruler, but claimed their right of reversion to Duke Frederick VIII., who was in the direct male line of succession.
Had the Salic law prevailed in Denmark, this Duke Frederick (father of the present young Empress of Germany) would now (1890) be King of Denmark instead of Christian IX. But it did not exist, so Christian, father of the Empress of Russia—of the Princess of Wales—and of King George of Greece—became, in 1862, lawful King of Denmark, with rights unimpaired by female descent.
This was the beginning of changes destined to alter the face of Europe.