On 10 March 1710 a Swedish army raised in a hurry after the disaster at Poltava attacked the Danish invasion army on the heights outside Helsingborg in Scania. Led by Magnus Stenbock, the Swedes broke the Danish lines in a few hours, the Danish commander Jørgen Rantzau was badly wounded, and the beaten army escaped by sea to Denmark. It was Denmark's last attempt to win back the provinces it had lost to Sweden half a century earlier, and the Danes never returned to Scania. Swedish records date the battle to 28 February.
Two dates, one battle
The date needs a word of explanation. Sweden did not adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1753, and in 1710 it used its own calendar, a variant of the Julian. By that reckoning the battle was fought on 28 February; by the Gregorian calendar it was 10 March. The trophies taken in the battle and now held by the Swedish Army Museum are recorded under both dates.1
Denmark's chance
Denmark had lost Scania, Halland and Blekinge to Sweden by the Peace of Roskilde, and Helsingborg had been Swedish since 1658. Lex, the Danish national encyclopedia, tells how Copenhagen saw its chance when news came in August 1709 that the Swedish army had been lost at Poltava. In November 1709 a Danish army landed at Råå, just south of Helsingborg; the town surrendered at once, and over the following months the Danes marched through Scania into Blekinge almost unopposed.2
The governor of Scania, Magnus Stenbock, fell back into Småland and raised a new army about the size of the Danish one, partly from old regiments and partly from new recruits. According to Tacitus.nu, half of his regiments were newly raised, while the Danes had veterans of the War of the Spanish Succession. The Danish army, which depended on supplies from Zealand and had failed to take Malmö and Landskrona, slowly fell back to Helsingborg.3
The battle on the heights
The armies were roughly equal. Lex gives each about 14,000 men; Tacitus.nu gives 13,100 Danes and 15,500 Swedes. The Swedes marched round the town in the night to attack from the north, but lost the advantage of surprise despite the morning fog, and had to attack uphill against the Danish position.4
In the account given by Lex, Rantzau led a cavalry counterattack in person and was shot through the chest, and the Danish army lost its commander in the middle of the fight. Stenbock sent in more cavalry, in which he was the stronger, and broke the Danish wing; Swedish infantry with light three-pounder guns closed with the Danish lines. When Swedish horsemen threatened the Danish rear, regiment after regiment began to flee toward the town. Lex credits the two Danish elite units, the Foot Guards and the Grenadier Corps, with standing their ground and covering the retreat, at the cost of being almost destroyed.5
Losses and the end of a dream
Lex gives the Danish losses as nearly 4,700 dead and wounded and nearly 2,700 prisoners, and the Swedish as 810 killed and 2,098 wounded. Tacitus.nu gives about 1,500 Danes killed, 3,500 wounded and 2,600 captured, with all their guns, and 827 Swedes killed and 2,097 wounded.6
Stenbock did not storm the town but brought up heavy guns to bombard it. The Danes shipped their army back across the Sound; Lex dates the final evacuation to 15 March and says nearly 4,000 horses were killed rather than left to the Swedes. The Danish army left Scania, never to return. For the war's turning point a year earlier, see our article on the Battle of Poltava.7
Note: strengths and losses differ between sources, and the text names the source for each figure.
