Copenhagen, 1807: the bombardment and the seized fleet

For three nights in September 1807 the capital of a neutral kingdom burned under British shells and Congreve rockets. Its army was far away in Holstein guarding the southern border, and the prize the attackers wanted was not the city but the ships. Danish historians have called it the first terror bombardment of a European capital.²

Background: a neutral fleet between two empires

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. The National Army Museum notes that the Danes had resisted bitterly then, and that their ships and crews remained of high quality. The Norwegian encyclopedia Store norske leksikon calls the Dano-Norwegian fleet, laid up in peacetime, the fifth largest in Europe.³

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. In French hands the Danish fleet could help enforce Napoleon's Continental System, threaten British control of the sea and even support an invasion of Britain, the National Army Museum writes. Britain decided to demand the fleet, promising to return the ships at a general peace, as both the museum and the naval historian William James, writing in 1837, record.⁴ › Battle of Friedland, 1807

Two ultimatums on one day

On 6 August Crown Prince Frederick, the regent, received the British demand in Holstein, where he was with the army: 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,.⁵

Armies and commanders

The British fleet was commanded by Admiral James Gambier and the army by General Lord Cathcart. The sources count the force differently: the National Army Museum gives 400 ships and transports and over 25,000 sailors and soldiers, Lex and Store norske leksikon 30,000 troops, and James 25 ships of the line and some 40 smaller warships escorting 377 transports with about 27,000 soldiers, more than half of them Germans in British pay. Among the generals was Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington.⁶

Most of the small Danish army was in Holstein, guarding the southern border against a French invasion, and British warships in the Great Belt kept it from crossing to Zealand. The defense of Copenhagen, behind outdated fortifications, fell to about 5,000 regulars and militia in the National Army Museum's count, about 13,000 defenders according to Lex. James explains the gap: some 5,500 regulars and militia, plus sailors and about 3,600 armed citizens, perhaps 12,000 in all. Toward the sea, with its batteries and gunboats, the city was strongly defended; on the land side it was weak.⁷

The siege in phases

The landing. The British fleet reached Danish waters in early August and sealed off Zealand. On 16 August the troops came ashore at Vedbæk, north of the capital, without opposition, and marched to invest the city. Denmark declared war on Britain.⁸

Sorties and gunboats. The defenders made several sorties without breaking the siege, and in the waters off the harbor Danish gunboats and floating batteries fought the British batteries and small craft for days. James describes almost daily skirmishes in the last two weeks of August, with losses on both sides.⁹

Køge. On 29 August the Zealand militia, marching to relieve the capital, was routed near Køge by British troops under Wellesley. After that, the National Army Museum writes, Copenhagen was completely encircled.¹⁰ › Second Battle of Porto, 1809

Turning point: three nights of fire

On 1 September Gambier and Cathcart summoned the commandant of Copenhagen to surrender the fleet, pledging that it would be held only as a deposit; he refused. On the evening of 2 September the British gun, mortar and Congreve rocket batteries opened fire. James notes that the official reports disagree on the hour: Gambier's letter speaks of the morning, Cathcart and the Danes of half past seven in the evening.¹¹

The bombardment went on for three nights, until 5 September. During the night of 4 to 5 September the spire of the Church of Our Lady, the cathedral of the city, caught fire and fell, spreading the flames. Parts of the old town burned down. Because the civilian population was the main target, Danmarkshistorien.dk writes, it has been called the world's first terror bombardment; Lex calls it the first terror bombardment of a European capital.¹²

The death toll is uncertain. Danmarkshistorien.dk, the Danish national history portal of Aarhus University, estimates several hundred dead, several thousand wounded and about 1,000 destroyed houses. The National Army Museum gives nearly 200 civilians killed. Lex notes that tradition put the dead at about 1,600, while more recent research gives about 400, and counts about 300 properties destroyed and over 1,500 damaged; James gives the official figure of 305 houses wholly destroyed and calls the contemporary claim of 2,000 dead probably exaggerated.¹³

The capitulation

After three nights of fire the commandant asked for terms, and the fleet became the basis of the negotiation. The capitulation, signed on 7 September by Walterstorff for the Danes and Wellesley and Lieutenant Colonel George Murray among others for the British, gave the British the Citadel and the naval dockyard at Holmen and every warship and all the naval stores of the Danish king. Private and public property was to be respected, prisoners on both sides were to be released, and the British were to hand back the Citadel and leave Zealand within six weeks.¹⁴

Aftermath

The British sailed away with most of the Dano-Norwegian navy, and many of the ships were later taken into the Royal Navy. The attack on a neutral country was heavily criticized abroad, the National Army Museum notes, and James records that the British public was long divided over it, but it secured the North Sea and the Baltic for British ships.¹⁵

Denmark now joined Napoleon, the only power that would guarantee its territory, and stayed at war with Britain for seven years, with small naval clashes but no more land battles between the two. British warships cut the sea route between Denmark and Norway. At the Peace of Kiel in January 1814 Denmark had to cede Norway to Sweden.¹⁶

Legacy and memory

In Danish memory the bombardment stands as the night the city burned. Its images were made by eyewitnesses: C. W. Eckersberg, then a young painter in Copenhagen, drew the burning spire of the Church of Our Lady and the ruins of Gråbrødretorv, and C. A. Lorentzen painted Kongens Nytorv on the most terrible night, the picture at the top of this page.¹⁷

Historians still debate how far the attack was necessary. The National Army Museum stresses both the international outrage and the strategic gain. For Store norske leksikon the seizure of the fleet, the flåteranet, is the moment that dragged the twin kingdom into the Napoleonic Wars on the losing side, a road that ended with the loss of Norway.¹⁸