Originally posted by Christensen
I'd like to see an event where the Sweedish force of 40.000 men that were sent to help Denmark in the first Slesvig War (1848-1850) actually comes in time to be more than just coast guards.
Afterall, with forty thousand troops and the preussians out of the war, it is not unthinkable that Denmark could have forced the German minority in southern Slesvig to drop their German language, thereby, perhaps, avoiding the seccond Slesvig war (1864) where Denmark lost Lauenburg, Holstein and Slesvig (Schleswig).
I don't think anyone stops using his language just like that. The best a victorious Denmark (quite far fetched, but this is a game, right?) could hope for would be that Austria and Prussia allow them to incorporate Schleswig and Holstein de jure into the Danish kingdom, and not just de facto.
That's what both wars were about, in any case. The Danish kings had ruled both duchies since time immemorable, but they had never been allowed to really get those annoying feudal laws out of the way and make them an integral part of Denmark. They had always remained theoretically independent duchies, whose duke was the king of Denmark. (Sort of like with Luxemburg and the Netherlands, or Denmark and Norway.)
BTW... a funny anecdote from the island of Sylt (off Schleswig-Holtstein's north Sea coast) is that at one point, the Danish kings ordered that all houses had to have their doors facing north. At the time, the north Frisians who lived in the area dwelt in rather smallish houses with doors which were lower than a man was tall, so people had to bend forward when they stepped out of the house. The islanders were a poor but independent-minded bunch, and they had often shown their local administrators how little they liked the Danish overlords. So by having all doors face north, the islanders would now have to bow to the Danish king whenever they left their house.
What the people did, though, was that they left their houses backwards from that day on.
(I don't know when they stopped doing so... no shit, this story was in a book about north Frisian history and folk tales.
)
Anyways, it'll be fun to replay the Danish-Prussian wars and see how the game handles a Danish victory. Maybe you'll even be able to stop the German unification before it really starts.
