The war Danmark arrived too late to fight

Denmark faced both Prussia and Austria in the Second Schleswig War of 1864. Its defeat transferred territory whose later control made the Kiel Canal strategically secure for Germany. This was a renewed struggle: an earlier separatist effort had been suppressed, leaving the Danish king as duke of Schleswig and Holstein. Danish efforts to integrate Schleswig more closely into the kingdom then met German nationalist agitation, encouraged in part by Bismarck. Holstein's position in the German Confederation and its predominantly German identity gave that movement a stronger institutional basis than a simple foreign territorial claim. These pressures explain why Denmark sought a newly available ironclad even though the ship could not be completed in time for the war.