The war between Prussia and Denmark had been going on for more than half a year, but neither side had suffered many casualties.
Yet neither side wanted to keep fighting. Compared with the direct losses of war, the indirect economic damage was more than either could bear.
Prussia had mustered nearly a hundred thousand troops, and at its peak almost two hundred thousand. Denmark had nearly eighty thousand, including several thousand Swedish and British volunteers.
On top of that, the Danes had mobilized three hundred thousand laborers to keep the front-line troops supplied. Though Prussia had some advantages in railways and canals, it still needed fifty thousand laborers, twelve thousand mules and horses, and three thousand wagons.
In fact, to meet the enormous costs of the war, Friedrich List, who had once again returned to Prussia as finance minister, proposed building a railway in the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein to transport supplies.
In Friedrich List's eyes, this was the best way to reduce the toll of war, and many senior Prussian officials agreed.
It would not only lower the cost of transporting supplies, but also allow troops to be redeployed quickly and reduce the cost of occupation.
The Prussian military even planned to build a railway network in Schleswig-Holstein, then construct several fortresses to strengthen the defenses and train new recruits.
William IV, however, would never have dared do that. He had sent troops to Denmark only because the National Assembly had forced him to, and no one had promised to hand Schleswig-Holstein over to Prussia.
So William IV would rather haul everything by hand and with horses than build a railway for another country.
Denmark's infrastructure was poor. Its railways stretched for barely more than thirty kilometers in total—just one-seventieth of Prussia's and one-three-hundredth of the Austrian Empire's.
Fortunately, the