Second Schleswig War
| Second Schleswig War | |||||||||
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| Part of the wars of German unification | |||||||||
 Painting of the Danish attack at the Battle of Dybbøl by Vilhelm Jacob Rosenstand (1894) |
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
 Prussia Austrian Empire
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 Denmark |
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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William I Otto von Bismarck Helmuth von Moltke Friedrich Graf von Wrangel Franz Joseph I Wilhelm von Tegetthoff
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Christian IX Ditlev Gothard Monrad Christian Albrecht Bluhme Christian Julius de Meza |
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| Strength | |||||||||
| At the outbreak of war: 61,000 158 guns Later reinforcements: 20,000 64 guns |
38,000 100+ guns |
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| Casualties and losses | |||||||||
| 1,700+ killed, wounded, or captured | 1,570+ killed, 700+ wounded, 3,550+ captured | ||||||||
Austro-Prussian victory
The Second Schleswig War (Danish: 2. Slesvigske Krig; German: Deutsch-Dänischer Krieg) was the second military conflict as a result of the Schleswig-Holstein Question. It began on 1 February 1864, when Prussian forces crossed the border into Schleswig.
Denmark fought Prussia and Austria. Like the First Schleswig War (1848–51), it was fought for control of the duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg due to the succession disputes concerning them when the Danish king died without an heir acceptable to the German Confederation. Decisive controversy arose due to the passing of the November Constitution, which integrated the Duchy of Schleswig into the Danish kingdom in violation of the . Reasons for the war were the ethnic controversy in Schleswig and the co-existence of conflicting political systems within the Danish unitary state.
The war ended on 30 October 1864, when the Treaty of Vienna caused Denmark's cession of the Duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Saxe-Lauenburg to Prussia and Austria.
The secessionist movement of the large German majority in Holstein and southern Schleswig was suppressed in the First Schleswig War (1848–51), but the movement continued throughout the 1850s and 1860s, as Denmark attempted to integrate the Duchy of Schleswig into the Danish kingdom and proponents of German unification expressed the wish to include the Danish-ruled duchies of Holstein and Schleswig in a 'Greater Germany'. Holstein was a part of the German Confederation and before 1806 a German fief and completely German, whereas Schleswig was a Danish fief and linguistically mixed between German, Danish and North Frisian. The northern and middle parts of Schleswig spoke Danish, but over time, the language in the southern half had shifted gradually to German. German culture was dominant among the clergy and nobility; Danish culture had a lower social status and was spoken mainly by the rural population. For centuries, while the rule of the king was absolute, these conditions had created few tensions. However, when ideas of liberal democracy spread and nationalist currents emerged about 1820, identification was mixed between Danish and German.
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