DENMARK

anarchy and inglorious decadence of the authority of the crown, during which the kingdom was brought to the brink of annihilation. Under his great-grandson, Waldemar IV., Denmark made a transient recovery of the conquests of the older Waldemars, rousing the jealousy of the Hanseatic League (q.v,), and the national laws were codified. From his death in 1375 till 1412, his daughter, the great Margaret, widow of Hakon VI. of Norway, ruled not only that country and Denmark, but in course of time Sweden also, with so light yet firm a hand that for once in the course of their history the three rival Scandinavian kingdoms were content to act in harmony. Margaret's successor, Eric, the son of her niece, for whose sake she had striven to give permanence, by the act known as the Union of Calmar (1397), to the amalgamation of the three sovereignties into one, undid her glorious work with fatal rapidity, lost the allegiance and the crowns of his triple kingdom, and ended his disastrous existence in misery and obscurity. After the short reign of his nephew, Christopher of Bavaria | (1440-48), the Danes exerted their ancient right of election to the throne, and chose for their king Christian of Oldenburg, a descendant of the old royal family through his maternal ancestress, Rikissa, the great-granddaughter of Waldemar II. Christian I. (1448-81), who was at the same time elected Duke of Sleswick and Holstein, was the founder of the Oldenburg line, which continued unbroken till the death of Frederick VII. in 1863. His reign was followed by half a century of international struggles in Scandinavia. The insane tyranny of Christian II. (q.v.) cost that monarch his throne and freedom; the Danes chose his uncle Frederick I. to be their king, while Sweden was for ever separated from Denmark, and rose under the Vasas (see GUSTAVUS I.) to be a powerful |

state.

757

but this treatment drove Denmark into Napoleon's arms, and with him the kingdom was obliged to co-operate until the close of 1813.

By the congress of Vienna, Denmark was compelled to cede Norway to Sweden. From this period a spirit of discontent grew up in the duchies, degenerating into mutual animosity between the Danish and German population, which led to an open rupture with Denmark in 1848, immediately after the accession of Frederick VII. (For the whole question, see SLESWICK-HOLSTEIN.) After alternate hostilities and armistices, the war was virtually concluded in 1849, by the victory of the Danes at Idsted; but in 1863 the quarrel was, renewed. On the death of Frederick in that year," Prince Christian of Sleswick-Holstein-Glücksborg ascended the throne under the title of Christian IX., in conformity with the act known as the Treaty of London of 1852, by which the succession to the Danish crown had been settled on him and his descendants by his wife, Princess Louise of HesseCassel, niece of King Christian VIII. of Denmark. A pretender, backed by German influence and help, at once started up in the person of the eldest son of the Duke of Augustenborg, who assumed the title of Duke Frederick VIII. of Sleswick-Holstein; but his cause was speedily merged and lost sight of by Prussia and Austria in their direct aim of incorporating the duchies with the German Confederation. Denmark, unaided by England and France, allies on whose support she had relied, was forced to go single-handed into the unequal contest. After a brave but utterly futile attempt at resistance, the Danes found themselves forced to submit to the terms dictated by their powerful foes, and resign not only Lauenborg and Holstein, but the ancient crown-appanage of Sleswick. By the peace of Vienna, 1864, the Danish king bound himself to abide by the decision which Prussia and Austria should adopt in regard to the destiny of the severed Danish provinces. The dissensions between these two great powers, which led to the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, resulted in the triumph of Prussia, and since then the duchies have remained an integral part of that state. Since the war, Denmark, although reduced to the narrow limits of the islands and Jutland, has recovered from its fall, and has greatly prospered, in spite of the spread of socialistic opinions, and the political dissensions that have ranged the government and Landsthing, supported by the press of the capital, against the Folkething and majority of the people.

Under Christian III. (1536-59), the Reformation was established in Denmark. Christian IV. (q.v.), after his brief share in the Thirty Years' War, proved one of the ablest of all the Danish rulers. His liberal and wise policy was, however, cramped in every direction by the arrogant nobles, to whose treasonable supineness Denmark owes the reverses by which she lost (1658) all the possessions she had hitherto retained in Sweden; and with the relinquishment of these, and consequently of the undivided control of the passage of the Sound, the country's former international importance came finally to an end. The national disgraces and abasement which followed led, in 1660, under Christian's son, Frederick III., to the rising of the people against the nobles, and their surrender into the hands of the king of the supreme power. For the next hundred years, chiefly marked by wars with Sweden, the peasantry were kept in serfdom, and the middle classes depressed; but by the end of the 18th century the peasants had been gradually emancipated, while many improve-navian History (1875), in Macmillan's series. ments had been effected in the mode of administering the laws, and the Danish kings, although autocrats, exercised a mild rule. The miseries of the reign of Frederick VI., who governed as regent from 1784, brought the country to the verge of ruin. Denmark having joined Russia in a compact of the Northern Powers hostile to England, a fleet was sent into the Baltic, and considerable injuries were inflicted by an attack on Copenhagen, in 1801, under Parker and Nelson. From this the country rallied; but in 1807 the British government, suspicious of an intention on the regent's part to violate his neutrality and take sides with Napoleon, demanded the surrender of the entire Danish navy, to be restored at the conclusion of peace. A refusal was followed by the bombardment of Copenhagen in September 1807, and the fleet was given up;

For the geography and statistics, the best Danish works are those of Erslev, Trap, Grove, Falbe-Hansen, O. Nielsen, and Scharling; see also Both, Kongeriget Danmark, en historisk-topografisk Beskrivelse (2d ed. 2 vols. Copenhagen, 1882-85), and Miss E. C. Otte's Denmark and Iceland (Lond. 1881). For the history, works by Paludan-Müller, Barfod, Fabricius, Allen, and Thorsoe may be consulted, and, in English, Miss Otté's Scandi

The

DANISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. Danish language has sprung from the southeastern or Danish-Swedish branch of the dönsk tunga (or lingua danica), which was the common name by which the language of all the Scandinavians was designated in the middle ages by the southern races of the Teutonic stock. From the 11th to the 13th century the Danish-Swedish branch of the Old Scandinavian became more and more markedly distinct from the Norwegian-Icelandic branch, through its replacing the old diphthongs with single long vowels, and dropping the initial h before 1, n, and r; while the latter became characterised by a further modification of the a sound, by the loss of v before r, and by a series of contractions of consonants. In the provincial laws of the 12th and 13th centuries, which (after