How could Denmark win this conflict, and what would be the results? The war's usually presented as an important stage in the rise of Prussia, so would a Danish victory be enough to butterfly away the unification of Germany?
How could Denmark win this conflict, and what would be the results? The war's usually presented as an important stage in the rise of Prussia, so would a Danish victory be enough to butterfly away the unification of Germany?
Very close to impossible. Armaments were very poor on the Danish side, using front loaded muskets when the Prussians had just developed their new super-weapon, the Dreyse Needle rifle, and their Krupp artillery was vastly superior to the Danish artillery at the time. Rearming the Danish army with better artillery would be costly, and Denmark just did not have the money.
You will also need to alter basic Danish military thinking in the period. The navy was prioritized over the army, great importance was placed on almost non-existing fortifications at Dannevirke as has been pointed out. Revolutionary weapons like the espignol, a kind of early machine-gun, were not properly invested in due to an archaic reliance on the indidvidual bravery and fighting spirit of the Danish infantryman. For some reason the military establishment were convinced the Danes were still vikings, and relied on that idea in spite of all rational thinking. And the Danish government relied too much on a vague promise of help from Britain.
Another principal factor was the idea of Scandianvianism, big in intellectual circles at the time. It was widely believed by some nationalist elites that a union between Sweden, Norway and Denmark was the way forward, that Scandinavians possessed a bond of brotherhood. Not unlike the ideas of common Aryan ancestral bonds that German intellectuals would advance later.
However, this wildly optimistic idea did not materialize in Swedish or Norwegian aid to Denmark as the nationalists had seriously counted on. Neither country had anything to gain from a Danish war of conquest and wisely kept away.
I assume Denmark can't *win* straight out. But if it can turn the thing into a stalemate, they can probably get a compromise peace that at least lets them keep part of Schleswig. Keeping Holstein is probably impossible, though.
Would it be possible, though, to avoid the war entirely? What if Christian IX refuses to sign the new constitution? Would that keep the rickety personal union going and not give Bismarck a pretext? It would be hard to see Franz Joseph, at least, supporting nationalist agitation if Denmark hadn't violated any treaties.
Keeping Holsten wasn't the goal, but separating Slesvig and Holsten by annexing Slesvig into the Kingdom and letting Holsten go was. That however broke the London agreement of 1852 and the very inflexible staunch of the Danish Government made an international agreement very difficult.
No, the majority of guns would have been the 9 cm Stahlkanone mit Kolbenverschluss, C/61. This has the Wahrendorff breach- they went to the Kreiner double-wedge breech with the C/64, which still had major issues, and then settled on Krupp's cylindro-prismatic wedge with the C/73.AFAICT the important Krupp gun for their 1870-1 superiority was the C/64, and I can't tell if this was in widespread use in early 1864. I suspect it was not.