In 1818 the weak Charles XIII. died and the strong Bernadotte, or Charles John, ascended the throne as Charles XIV. The remainder of his reign was one of peace and growing prosperity, and when he died in 1844, leaving the throne to his son Oscar, the grateful people of Sweden felt that they owed much to their soldier king. _THE DISMEMBERMENT OF DENMARK._ The time once was when, as we have seen, all Scandinavia, and England also, were governed by Danish kings, and Denmark was one of the great powers of Europe. Since that proud time the power of the Danish throne has steadily declined, until now it is but the shadow of its former self. A great blow came in 1814, when it was forced to yield Norway to Sweden. All its possessions on the Baltic had vanished and its dominion was compressed into the Danish peninsula and its neighboring islands, with the exception of the duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg lying south of the peninsula. The time was near at hand when it was to lose these and more and be reduced to a mere fragment of its once great realm. The new trouble began in 1848, when the French revolution of that date stirred up all the peoples of Europe to fresh demands. North of Holstein lay the duchy of Sleswick, occupying the southern half of the peninsula, its inhabitants, like those of Holstein, being nearly all Germans. These duchies had long chafed under Danish rule, though for centuries they had formed part of Denmark, and now they made an eager demand for union with what they termed their true "Fatherland." A new king, Frederick VII., ascended the Danish throne in January, 1848. In February the French revolution broke out. Almost instantly the duchies were in a blaze of revolt, and on the 23d of April a Danish army of eleven thousand men met one of nearly three times its strength, composed of the insurgents and German allies, and was defeated after a hard fight and forced to take refuge on the little island Als, where it was protected by Danish ships of war. This was the beginning of a struggle that continued at intervals for nearly three years, the great powers occasionally intervening and bringing about a truce. In 1849, the Danes gained some important successes, followed by a second truce. The most severe battle was that of July 24, 1850, when a Danish army nearly forty thousand strong attacked the insurgents and battle went on amid mist and rain for two days, ending in the triumph of the Danes. New successes were gained in September, Sleswick being fully occupied and Holstein invaded, when a strong Austrian army marched into the latter province and again the war was brought to an end. Sleswick was left under the Danish king, but a joint commission of Danes, Austrians, and Prussians was formed to govern Holstein until its relations to Denmark could be determined.