Copenhagen, 1807: the bombardment and the seized fleet

In July 1807, at Tilsit, Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I made peace and agreed to force the remaining neutral states, Denmark among them, to close their ports to Britain. Denmark-Norway had tried to steer between Britain and France since its fleet was defeated at Copenhagen in 1801, as Ole Louis Frantzen writes in the Danish encyclopedia Lex. That fleet was still formidable: the National Army Museum counts around 20 ships of the line, 17 frigates and many gunboats. In French hands it could help enforce Napoleon's Continental System, threaten British control of the sea and even support an invasion of Britain.²

Two ultimatums on one day

On 6 August Crown Prince Frederick, who had ruled for his insane father since 1784, received a British demand at the army's camp in Holstein: Denmark must ally with Britain and hand over its fleet, or face war. On the same day the Danish envoy in Paris was given a French ultimatum to join the blockade of Britain. Frederick rejected the British demand before he even knew of the French one. Britain promised to return the ships once the war was over, the National Army Museum notes, but the Danes would not give up their neutrality.³

The landing on Zealand

Britain had already acted. A fleet under Admiral James Gambier and an army under General Lord Cathcart, some 400 ships and transports and over 25,000 men in the National Army Museum's count, reached Danish waters in early August. The navy blockaded Zealand from 2 August, and from 16 August the troops came ashore at Vedbæk, north of the capital, and at Brøndby Strand; Lex puts the army at 30,000 seasoned soldiers. Most of the small Danish army was in Holstein guarding the southern border against a French invasion. The defense of Copenhagen, behind outdated fortifications, fell to about 5,000 regulars and militia according to the National Army Museum, or about 13,000 according to Lex.⁴

The defenders made several sorties without breaking the siege. A relief force of Zealand militia was routed at Køge on 29 August by about 6,000 British troops under Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. The museum gives British losses there as 170 killed, wounded or captured, and the Danes over 150 killed and 200 wounded, with some 1,700 more captured in the days that followed.⁵ › Second Battle of Porto, 1809

Three nights of fire

The commandant of Copenhagen refused to surrender, and on the evening of 2 September the British gun and Congreve rocket batteries opened fire. The bombardment went on for three nights, until 5 September. The city's artillery could not answer effectively, and the fire brigade, modern for its day, lost its battle against the flames, the National Museum of Denmark writes. During the night of 4 to 5 September the spire of the Church of Our Lady went up in flames.⁶

The death toll is uncertain. Danmarkshistorien.dk, the Danish national history portal of Aarhus University, estimates about 6,000 shells and incendiary rockets, several hundred dead, several thousand wounded and about 1,000 destroyed houses. The National Army Museum gives nearly 200 civilians killed. Because the civilian population was the main target, Danish historians have called it the world's first terror bombardment of a European capital.⁷

The seized fleet

On 7 September Copenhagen capitulated. The terms, signed on the British side by Wellesley and Home Popham among others, gave the British the Citadel and the naval dockyard at Holmen, and every warship and all naval stores of the Danish king. The crown prince had ordered the fleet to be scuttled, but the courier was caught and the order never arrived. Many of the ships were later taken into the Royal Navy.⁸

Seven years of war

The attack on a neutral country was heavily criticized abroad, the National Army Museum notes, but it secured the North Sea and the Baltic for British ships. Denmark now joined Napoleon, the only power that would guarantee its territory, and fought Britain with gunboats and privateers for seven years. The end was bitter: the state went bankrupt in 1813, and at the Peace of Kiel in January 1814 Denmark had to cede Norway to Sweden. The Danish navy, the National Museum concludes, never regained its size or position.⁹