This was a bit of a dilemma for Cannitz, because he had tried not to fire the cannon before, but the cost of hand-to-hand combat was too great.

And the will of the population is surprisingly tenacious, and if it really relies on bayonets, then thousands of troops are lost every day.

Soldiers are also human beings, they are not a group of puppets that can be manipulated at will, they also have tempers and resentments.

If this method of fighting to the death is continued, there will be desertion and battlefield disobedience, and at worst there will be mutiny.

If it rises from civil unrest to military unrest, then the situation will be difficult to control. If the French had not had the support of the army, Louis XVI would not have been guillotined.

It was impossible for Cannitz to really carry out Wilhelm IV's orders, and certainly he could not have directly disobeyed them.

So the Prussian Minister of War fell ill, and no one was willing to take his place at this critical moment.

In fact, this is also very understandable, no one wants to carry this black cauldron, the king said that he is not allowed to shoot, but how can he fight a war without shooting?

If the losses were too great if they did not shoot, even if the king did not pursue it, those soldiers would not let go of the successor. If the shooting causes too many casualties, His Majesty will most likely push them out to appease the anger of the people.

So everyone chose to remain silent, and Frederick William IV chose to compromise in desperation.

The soldiers stopped attacking and began to gather the corpses and return to their camps. However, the angry crowd took to the streets again and dumped the bodies in front of the palace.

Flowers, coffins, mutilated corpses, angry people, the old palace, and the unsmiling soldiers in front of its doors paint a heavy picture.

In the end, Wilhelm IV had no choice but to come forward and read out the book "To my dear Berliners", which he felt ashamed of, but it was the best solution at this time.

Later, Wilhelm IV attended the funeral of the victims, and he personally apologized to the victims and the people of Berlin on his horse with a black, red and yellow ribbon on his body.

Black, red, and yellow symbolized the revolution in Germany at that time, the tricolor flag.

William IV said a lot of strange things in public.

"I have colors that don't belong to these colors, but I don't want a crown, and I don't want to rule.

I want German freedom, German unity, I want order! From this day Prussia will be annexed to Germany! ”

The people did not understand, but they knew that they had won because the king would convene a joint provincial council to discuss the constitution.

Soon, however, the German nationalists in Prussia made an even more drastic demand, hoping that the king would make good on his promise to unify Germany.

When the nationalist representatives in Berlin made this request to Wilhelm IV, the latter was taken aback, and he immediately thought of sending troops to Austria.

At this time, however, Austria was not showing signs of fatigue despite the war on all sides, and it was difficult to guarantee how Austria's allies would react when Prussia sent troops.

However, if it is possible to dismember Austria, the strongest opponent, in one fight, then it will be worth the cost.

However, the Prussian nationalists did not ask him to go to war with Austria, but demanded the recovery of the Duchy of Schleswig and Holstein, which had been occupied by the Danes.

In fact, nationalism in Germany also affected Denmark, and Danish nationalists were even more desperate, taking advantage of the old king's critical illness to force him to sign a new parliamentary law by threatening him to refuse to recognize the new king.

The new Parliamentary Act provided for all political, military, judicial, and financial powers, and the new King Frederick VII was forced to accept all this as a puppet of the Parliament.

Danish nationalists took control of the parliament, and in the name of the king, they demanded the annexation of the area north of the Elder River, Schleswig.

This caused strong resentment among German nationalists, because according to the agreement of 1460, the Danish crown was in charge of the Duchy of Schleswig and Holstein on the premise that the two principalities would be indivisible forever.

In addition, although Schleswig is mainly Danish, there are also a large number of Germans.

The actions of the Danish parliament were met with direct rebuke from German nationalists, who suffered from the fact that they were not sufficiently armed.

The surrender of Wilhelm IV gave them hope, and Prussia was pushed to the forefront of the war against Denmark.

However, the Danish government was not full of nationalists, some of them were very aware that the Kingdom of Denmark at this time was no longer the Nordic hegemon it once was, and the German Confederation had shown its strong strength and cohesion in many foreign wars in recent times.

This part of the population felt that the Danish government should not provoke the German Confederation, because the former had no chance of winning. Some even felt that the German Confederation was mixing well, and that Denmark should join this more promising organization as a whole.

However, the enthusiasm of the Danish nationalists had not yet dissipated, and they overthrew the relatively conservative government with a grand march.

In its place was the cabinet of the hard-line Oral Lehmann, who began to use knives against the domestic aristocracy while declaring the "unity" of Schleswig and Denmark under a "common constitution of freedom".

With the enactment of the new Parliamentary Act, the confidence of the Danish aristocracy was severely damaged, and no one dared to stand up against Oral Lehmann's approach.

At the same time, this hard-liner is not a reckless man, he knows very well that Denmark is still an agrarian country, and if it wants political stability and more support, it will have to win over the peasants.

At this time, the Danish government enacted a series of actions that bordered on currying favor with the peasants, which seriously affected the rights of the nobles, but they did gain the support of the peasants.

As soon as the conscription order of Oral Lehmann's government was issued, the peasants enthusiastically participated, and the army of the Kingdom of Denmark instantly expanded from 20,000 to 80,000, but he was still not prepared to solve the problem by force.

The Danes held a referendum in Schleswig to "legally" and "voluntarily" annex it to Denmark.

As a result, the German aristocracy in Kiel directly declared independence, and the German nationalists in other states also donated money and materials, and even went directly to the battlefield.

The nationalists of the German Confederation passed a resolution at the congress to go to war against Denmark, and they assigned the Kingdom of Prussia and the Duchy of Hanover to fight against the Danes.

As for why Austria was not allowed to send troops? They are just fanatical and not stupid, and at this time, Austria can still send troops to fight Denmark due to internal and external troubles.

And most importantly, there was not a single representative in the German Confederation who was qualified to represent Austria, and the Austrian government did not send a representative to Frankfurt at all.

The representatives of the Austrian civil society looked down on each other, and they did not recognize each other as representing Austria.

As a result, the nationalists of the German Confederation could only temporarily find Archduke Johann to make up the number, although Archduke John was a celebrity of the Austrian royal family, but he was angry and embarrassed that he had already given up his royal status, so he could not represent Austria in practice.

Frederick William IV did not take Denmark as an opponent at first, and although the latter had temporarily recruited tens of thousands of peasants and patriotic youths into the army, he should have no chance of winning a battle with the regular Prussian army.

What he didn't know, however, was that the Prussian army had entered Denmark on the front foot, and the back foot had caused an international crisis.

(End of chapter)