With the Five-Year Plan adopted by the committee and backed by the King, Christian began to move. He did not inch forward; he launched a blitzkrieg. Using the sweeping authority of the royal decree, the committee issued a series of proclamations that sent shockwaves through the kingdom.
The first announced the formal establishment of the Royal Colonial Office, a small ministry tasked with "exploring new overseas markets and establishing commercial outposts." It sounded innocuous, a mere bureaucratic shuffle. The second announced the charter for the new National Bank of Denmark, which would, under committee supervision, direct capital toward "projects of national importance."
But it was the third decree that caused the eruption. It was titled the "Land Consolidation and Efficiency Act," but it was quickly, and fearfully, nicknamed the Enclosure Act.
The Act was a direct assault on the ancient, inefficient traditions of Danish agriculture. It mandated the consolidation of the old patchwork of communal strip-farms into larger, enclosed, privately managed plots. It offered state-backed buyouts to smallholders, effectively forcing them to either become more productive tenant farmers or sell their ancestral lands.
Christian knew it was a brutal but necessary step. To fuel his industrial revolution, he needed two things: a massive surplus of food to feed city workers, and a massive surplus of landless labor to work in his new factories. The Enclosure Act was designed to create both.
The political backlash was instantaneous and violent. The landed aristocracy, who had been silenced by Christian's success in the war, now had a new, powerful cause to rally around.
In the Landsting, Count Ahlefeldt, finding his voice again, delivered the most passionate speech of his career. He no longer attacked Christian's patriotism, but his soul.
"The Count of Eskildsen speaks of efficiency!" Ahlefeldt roared, his voice trembling with genuine outrage. "But he means to tear the heart from our countryside! He would use the force of law to drive the proud, independent farmer—the very backbone of this nation—from the soil his family has worked for five hundred years! And for what? To turn them into a rootless, urban rabble, forced to toil for pennies in the smoke-belching factories owned by his friend, Baron Fievé! This is not progress! It is the destruction of our people and our traditions!"
The speech was powerful. It resonated with a deep, cultural fear of industrialization and the loss of a traditional way of life.
Christian, however, did not deign to answer him in the chamber. The decree was law. Instead, he fought a new kind of war: a war of information. The newspapers controlled by Fievé's allies began publishing a coordinated series of articles. They featured glowing interviews with "farmers of the future," like Soren from Eskildsgård, who spoke of the miracle of the new plows and the astonishing yields from the four-field system. They printed charts and graphs, created by Christian himself, projecting a future free from famine, with cheap and plentiful food for all. The articles painted the opponents of the Act as sentimental relics, clinging to a past of poverty and starvation, standing in the way of a prosperous new Denmark.
The social and political life of Copenhagen became a battleground of ideas. It was in this tense atmosphere that he next saw Amalie Løvenskiold, at a somber gathering at the British embassy. She found him standing alone, observing the crowd.
"Count," she began, her usual confidence tempered by a note of concern. "The things people are saying… that you are driving families from their homes. That the countryside is full of anger. Is it true?"
He turned to face her, appreciating that she came to him directly rather than listening to the whispers.
"It is true that I am changing a way of life that has existed for centuries, Miss Løvenskiold," he admitted, his voice low. "A way of life that also includes crop failures, periodic famine, and crippling poverty. To build a stronger Denmark, a nation that can feed its people and defend its borders, some old and painful things must be cleared away to make room for the new."
He saw the conflict in her eyes, the struggle between the traditions of her class and the logic of his words.
"It is not a choice I make lightly," he confessed, a rare moment of vulnerability showing through his controlled facade. "But the alternative—to do nothing and let our nation slowly stagnate and weaken—is a price the entire kingdom would eventually pay. My methods are disruptive. But the disease of inaction is fatal."
She held his gaze, and for the first time, seemed to grasp the immense, lonely burden of his perspective. She saw not a predator, but a physician performing a painful, necessary surgery on the nation itself.
Christian left the gathering shortly after. As his carriage passed the sprawling construction site of the new steel foundry, its skeleton of scaffolding rising into the night sky, he could feel the deep schism he had created. He had launched a social and economic war against the very soul of old Denmark. The outcome was far from certain, and the resentment building in the countryside was a dangerous, combustible fuel. He had started his Five-Year Plan, and its first, immediate consequence was a nation turning against itself.