Wishing to defeat Denmark before the German, Austrian, and Prussian troops arrived, 7,000 Schleswig-Holsteinian soldiers under General Krohn occupied Flensborg on March 31, 1848.

[1] Danish troops landed on the Holdnaes peninsula east of Flensborg and, worried that he would be surrounded, Gen. Krohn asked for permission to withdraw his soldiers from the settlement.

They decided that the left flank of the Danish army would launch a diversionary attack, whilst the right wing and cavalry would encircle the enemy.

The avantgarde under von Magius with 3rd Hunter Corps and 12th Battalion, supported by 4 guns, attacked from the northeast the Schleswig-Holsteinian main position at Bov.

From the east, the 1st Hunter Corps and a couple of companies of the 5th and 9th Battalions carried out an attack on the Schleswig-Holsteinian position in the forest around Kobbermøllen.

Bov eventually fell to the Danish avantgarde, and the Schleswig-Holsteinians withdrew, first to Nyhus and then to Harrislev, where they had barricaded the entrances to the town and arranged the houses for defense.

The Schleswig-Holsteinians were forced back to Flensburg, where they occupied a new position in the woods north of the town, in some brickworks and houses on the northern outskirts.