As for the main thrust of this book, it’s astonishing to me that this episode in Napoleonic history is not more widely known. It was undoubtedly of global significance and at a time of the Emperor’s highest pinnacle of conquest. Given the odds against her, Britain was arguably at greater peril even than on the eve of Trafalgar. She chose to make a bold and desperate stroke that some have termed a war crime – but it worked, at the cost of abhorrence at home and abroad. There was questionable intelligence, true; there was politicking and ambition; but there is proof that Bonaparte intended to invade Denmark and seize its fleet. This was at a time when he was overheard boasting to Fouche, his chief of secret police, ‘Europe is a rotten whore who I will use as I please with my eight hundred thousand men.’
The Royal Navy’s part in this largely army-mounted bombardment was crucial. The Great Belt sailing isolated the island of Sj?lland and sealed the fate of the Danes before even a shot was fired. It was a feat of great seamanship and deserving of recognition, the irony being that today, instead of the direct route through the Sound, modern ships of deep draught prefer this passage, tracking the dybe rende, as Keats and his squadron did.
The future King Louis XVIII did flee from his Mitau exile, leaving his family, but it was actually a Swedish frigate that ferried him to safety in England. He was a distinct embarrassment to the British government who were anything but grateful to those who brought him. Far from a triumphant landing, he was kept cooped up in his ship for a fortnight off Yarmouth while the cabinet debated what to do with him. Customs and Revenue were given the awkward task of coming up with a stream of pretexts to delay his touching English soil. In the event he was granted residency and allowances from the Prince Regent. He set up a court in exile at a modest mansion in Buckinghamshire until, after Waterloo, he became the restored Bourbon King of France.
Bernadotte became increasingly disenchanted with his ever-rapacious master and later turned on him, eventually facing and defeating his compatriot marshals Oudinot and Ney in battle. Such was his charm and appeal that he was beseeched to accept the throne of Sweden, and the House of Bernadotte still reigns in Sweden today.
One can only sympathise with the hapless Danes. Struggling to maintain their strict neutrality, trapped between giants locked in mortal combat, they had no chance. It did not help that the Crown Prince abandoned Copenhagen to the plodding Peymann, who took his orders so literally, among other things failing to evacuate the city of civilians when invited to by the British, and playing it out so hopelessly to the bitter end. On his return to the city, after everything was over a furious Crown Prince Frederik put the old soldier on trial for his life but then relented.
At bay in an impossible situation the Danes grimly fought back – one’s heart can only wring with pity at the thought of country-folk with pitchforks sent against the future victor of Waterloo or men in tiny gunboats going in against a mighty battle-fleet. Of the previous time of Danes against English, Nelson had declared, ‘The French fought bravely, but they could not have stood for one hour the fight which the Danes had supported for four!’
For the British, while they eventually employed four of the captured fleet, the main objective was achieved – the Danish fleet could not close the Sound, and its warships were denied to Bonaparte either as battleships or as invasion troop transports. Above all, the vital Baltic trade was saved. Canning and others, however, endured much vilification in Parliament and the press for a barbarous act, and debate about its morality continues to this day.
In Copenhagen there is little left to show of the devastation wreaked over those four days except some atmospheric displays at several fine museums and the sight of an iron ball still embedded in the wall of the Rosenborg barracks on the Norrevold side. Congreve’s rockets are still talked about; they would go on to achieve immortality with their red glare in Baltimore.
As an aside, the Crown Prince, fleeing with frail King Christian, was stopped by one of Keats’s patrols but in a cunning disguise they made it through, an incident I ascribe to Bowden in Chapter 60. Even more improbably, the ancient Crown Jewels of Denmark could not be evacuated in time and were successfully hidden in a coffin in the crypt of a church, preserved to this day for visitors to admire in the undercroft of Frederiksborg Castle.
One could be forgiven for thinking that the inhabitants of this charming city, which endured twice at the hands of the British, might set their face against an Englishman, but my experiences when researching this book and in quite another role as a naval liaison officer during the Cold War have been nothing but warm and friendly.
I especially think of Kaptajn Poul Grooss, who very kindly undertook a battlefield tour for me, and Jakob Seerup and Soren Norby who pointed me in the right directions academically. There was also Marcus Bjorn, who went out of his way to make my path smooth, and Henrik Hey of the superbly preserved Skibsklarerergarden, with its archives where ships’ masters cleared for the Sound, and Peter Kristiansen at the Rosenborg Castle with his insights into court life at the time. And never forgetting the larger-than-life retired Danish submarine captain Johan Knudsen, whose reflections sailing under the Orlogsflaget were essential to this tale.
As usual, my sincere appreciation of their efforts must go to my editor at Hodder amp; Stoughton Oliver Johnson and his team, my agent Carole Blake, and my wife and literary partner Kathy – never forgetting Chi and Ling, our pair of Siamese author cats who run a very tight ship indeed!
Glossary
barky
affectionate term for ship
beckets
small lengths of rope used to tidy or secure
between wind and water
close to the waterline
block sheaves
the grooved moving part at the interior of a block
breeks
trousers
canvas-backing
sleeping in one’s hammock
chinks, a hill of
an impressive pile of coin
claw dog
two-armed hinged hooking device
cobbs
generic term for coin, unknown Spanish
cully
colloquial neutral form of address
curlicue
flourish of adornment in older forms of calligraphy
dan-buoy
small buoy used temporarily to mark a position at sea
dimber
exceptionally fine, admirable
Exchange
London Stock Exchange
fanfaronade
swaggering ostentation
firkling
Scottish; rummaging about as in a pocket
flamming
fooling
geggy
Scottish; mouth
hard a-weather
put the helm down to come perilously close to the wind
havering
talking to no purpose
hookum snivey
tricks with hook and line that a burglar uses to lift articles from a house
jorum
the amount of liquor a large vessel, like a bowl, contains
juggins
thick-headed low-life
kiddleywink
Cornish; tavern
killick
anchor
knaggy
behaving objectionably
long bowls
firing at a range where a hit is uncertain; after lawn bowls where jack is at a distance