3-011-858 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Schleswig-Holstein Difficulty: the Danish troops leaving the Mint in Altona before daybreak, 1864. 'The correspondent of one of our contemporaries writes...in a letter dated Altona, Dec. 25: "As I told you in my last, the "execution" [ie regime change] has been put in. The German Diet has made its levy, and "seized" Holstein - or at least the capital of it. Altona is in the hands of the military brokers, ready either to be "bought in" or to be knocked down - by the Austrian and Prussian artillery - should the Prince of Augustenburg be rash enough to "make a bid" for it... The Danes are away. I saw the last of them; for, after I had watched them slink off in the dark from the old Mint, where some hundreds had been quartered, and after I had noted the final detachment drawn up, fully accoutred for the flight, with their entire kit on their backs...in front of the principal "guardhouse" in connection with the prison, waiting for the news of the entry of the Saxons - I was present when two of the troops, who had been sent down to the Altona Gate to carry off the earliest tidings of the arrival of the German soldiers, were hooted and hissed by the citizens as a mob only can hoot and hiss those who are hated by the populace".' From "Illustrated London News", 1864.