while England, facing all Europe alone in the fight for her life, made ready to strike a decisive blow against the Armed Neutrality that threatened her supremacy on the sea.  Once more the city had been caught unprepared, defenceless, and once more its people rose as one man to meet the danger.  But it was too late.  Outside, in the Sound, a fleet as great as that led by Nelson waited, should he fail, to finish his work.  That was to destroy the Danish ships, if need be to bombard the city and so detach Denmark from the coalition of England’s foes.  So she chose to consider such as were not her declared friends.

[Footnote 2:  The battle of Copenhagen was fought April 2, 1801.]

Denmark had no fighting ships at home to pit against her.  Her sailors were away serving in the merchant marine.  She had no practised gunners, nothing but a huddle of dismantled vessels in her navy-yard, most of them half-rotten hulks without masts.  Those that had standing rigging were even worse, for none of them had sails and the falling spars in battle lumbered up the decks and menaced the crew.  But such as they were she made the most of them.  Eighteen hulks were hauled into the channel and moored head and stern.  Where they lay they could not be moved.  Only the guns on one side were therefore of use, while the enemy could turn and manoeuvre.  They were manned by farm lads, mechanics, students, enlisted in haste, not one of whom had ever smelt powder, and these were matched against Nelson’s grim veterans.  Even their commander, J. Olfert Fischer, had not been under fire before that day, for Denmark had had peace for eighty years.  But his father had served as a midshipman with Tordenskjold and the son did not flinch, outnumbered though his force was, two to one, in men and guns.

The sun shone fair upon the blue waters as the great fleet of thirty-odd fighting ships sailed up from the south.  From the city’s walls and towers a mighty multitude watched it come, unmindful of peril from shot and shell; the Danish line was not half a mile away.  In the churches whose bells were still ringing when the first gun was fired from the block-ship Proevestenen, the old men and women prayed through the long day, for there were few homes in Copenhagen that did not have son, brother, or friend fighting out there.  A single gun answered the challenge, now two and three at once, then broadside crashed upon broadside with deafening roar.  When at length all was quiet a tremendous report shook the city.  It was the flag-ship Dannebrog that blew up.  She was on fire with only three serviceable guns left when she struck her colors, but no ship of her name might sail with an enemy’s prize crew on board, and she did not.