Back within the cold stone walls of the Odense town hall, Major Brandt stared at Christian with an expression of pure, unadulterated awe. "I have served in the army for thirty years, my lord. I have seen generals calm panicked troops, but I have never seen anything like that. You faced a tempest and commanded it to be still."
"Words are temporary, Major. Their anger will return if it is not replaced by something better," Christian said, already shrugging off his coat and turning the room into a command center. "Now, we provide results."
He did not wait a day. He did not wait an hour. He sent a flurry of telegraphs to Copenhagen. By the next morning, officials from the new National Bank, along with clerks and scribes from the Armaments Committee, had arrived on a special train. Christian ordered them to set up tables in the very square where the riot had taken place. A large sign was hammered into the wall of the town hall: "NATIONAL GRANARY – ODENSE PURCHASING OFFICE. ALL GRAINS BOUGHT AT THE CROWN'S FAIR PRICE."
The price was listed publicly, a figure twenty percent higher than what the Odense merchants offered. At first, the farmers were suspicious, watching from a distance. Then one old man, desperate and with nothing left to lose, hesitantly brought a single cart of barley to the tables. He was paid immediately, in cash, with no haggling. He walked away with a look of stunned disbelief. The trickle became a flood. By the end of the day, a queue of farm carts stretched down the main street.
Simultaneously, Christian unrolled a large map of the province of Funen. With the town's engineers, whose deference was now absolute, he designated the first of his public works projects.
"A new, paved road, from here to the port at Kerteminde," he declared, drawing a bold line on the map. "It will cut travel time for goods in half. Major, I want a notice posted. Any able-bodied man seeking work is to report here tomorrow at dawn. They will be paid a daily wage, in cash, to build it."
While he offered the carrot, he also sharpened the stick. "Major Brandt," he said in private, "your soldiers are not here to police the public. They are now an intelligence unit. I want your best men in the taverns, listening. Find me the men who carried the torches. Find me the men who shouted the loudest about a 'tyrant' in Copenhagen. And find out if their pockets were lined with coin that was not their own."
Over the next week, the atmosphere in Odense transformed. The sullen anger was replaced by the bustling energy of commerce and construction. The men who had held pitchforks in the square were now holding shovels on the new road, their anger channeled into labor, their pockets filled with wages. While this was happening, Major Brandt's men conducted a series of quiet, pre-dawn raids, arresting a dozen key agitators—the men who had incited the worst of the violence. There were no public trials or hangings. They were simply removed, sent to Copenhagen to face justice away from the public eye.
One evening, amidst the chaos of his work, Christian found a moment of quiet to respond to Amalie's letter. He sat in his temporary office, the sounds of a town being rebuilt drifting through the window.
"Miss Løvenskiold," he wrote. "You wrote of my 'noble victory' in London. I find myself here in Odense, and I assure you, there was little nobility to be found. Just hard choices, and the hope that a better future can be built from them. Today, we laid the first stone of a new road. It is a small, practical thing. But I find myself thinking that all great change begins this way. Not with grand speeches, but with the laying of a single stone. We shall see what kind of house it builds."
He sealed the letter, a rare moment of introspection in a storm of activity.
After ten days, he stood on a small hill overlooking the outskirts of the city. Below him, the first section of the new road was taking shape, a clear, wide path being carved through the countryside by hundreds of Danish men. They were not rioters anymore; they were a workforce. He had not crushed their spirit; he had redirected it.
He had faced his first great domestic crisis, not with bayonets, but with a more potent combination of force, clemency, and overwhelming economic self-interest. He had learned a crucial lesson. His greatest weapon was not the army, nor the decrees from the King, but his ability to create and control the narrative—to offer a vision of the future so practical and compelling that people would choose it over their own anger. He had proven he could rule.