enemy from passing the narrow arms of the sea, and embarked early in the spring with a view to attack Gottenborg; but the approach of the Dutch squadron, which came to assist the Swedes, compelled him to raise the blockade. Although he failed in the main object of his expedition, he succeeded in effecting a diversion by withdrawing the enemy from the invasion of Scania, to the defence of their new commercial capital of Gothland. The Dutchmen took shelter behind the island of Syltoe on the west coast of Sheswig, where they were cannonaded by Christian; but their small draught of water enabled them to lie beyond the reach of his guns, and at last they made their escape to Holland.

The indefatigable monarch now returned to Copenhagen, and refitted another expedition of 40 vessels, with which he set sail, after arranging his worldly affairs and conferring the regency of the kingdom on his son Prince Christian. On the 1st of July a battle took place with the Swedes under the gallant Fleming, near the island of Femeren; in which the Danish high admiral was killed, and the king himself wounded in the eye by a splinter. The enemy's squadron, after ten hours of heavy cannonading, was compelled to retire in a shattered condition into the bay of Kiel, where they were again attacked the following day. The death of Fleming might have secured victory for the Danes; but General Wrangel, an officer who had earned high renown in the German war, assumed the command, and made his escape to the open sea, unperceived by Admiral Galt, who had been left to watch their movements. On his return to Copenhagen, the latter was tried for his negligence and condemned to death. The Swedish squadron was again joined by the Dutch at Calmar, and the combined fleet, consisting of more than thirty vessels, encountered Christian near Laaland (October 13), where they gained a complete victory; fifteen out of seventeen Danish ships having been taken, burnt, or stranded. From this fatal blow their navy did not recover until its supremacy in the Baltic was once more asserted, in the reign of Chris

VOL. II.

E

tian V. under the auspices of that renowned admiral, Niels Juel, the pupil and rival of the De Ruyters and Van Tromps, and the predecessor of the Adlers and the Tordenskiolds, by whom the maritime renown of their country was raised to the highest pitch.

Notwithstanding this disaster, the king had attained his great object of preventing the naval force of the enemy from renewing the invasion of the Danish islands, as meditated by Torstenson. The war now dwindled down into a series of skirmishes and sieges in Jutland and Scania, destitute of interest in their details, and unmarked by any decisive issue, as neither party could succeed in expelling or vanquishing the other. Horn at length reduced Landscrona; and penetrating into the provinces of Halland and Bleking, he defeated the Danes in several rencounters, and took Laholm by assault. On the frontier of Norway the Swedes also made some progress, and got possession of the island of Berkholm. The emperor could not be expected to view this contest with indifference, and accordingly he despatched Count Gallas with an army into Holstein, where he took Kiel, and hoped by a junction with the Danes to shut up the Swedish troops in Jutland. But his career was speedily checked by Torstenson, who drove him from the duchy, and cleared the whole course of the Elbe as far as Magdeburg and Bernburg.

At length conferences for peace between the two nations were opened at Bromsbro, on the frontier of Scania and Gothland, under the mediation of France, which terminated (August 1645) in the signature of a definitive treaty. The exemption of the Swedish navigation from the payment of the Sound duties, was confirmed and secured by the cession of the Danish province of Halland during the space of thirty years, as a pledge for the performance of this stipulation. The long-contested district of Jamtland, on the Norwegian frontier, and that part of Herjeadalen on the eastern side of the Dovrefield, with the isles of Gothland and Oesel, were also ceded in perpetuity to Sweden. Thus did the enterprise and

activity of the Swedes triumph over all opposition, and gain important advantages over a nation formerly their conquerors, at a time when they seemed fully occupied and almost exhausted with their wars in Germany.

Christian justly reproached his nobility with their want of patriotism, as the cause of the hard necessity which had compelled him to accept these conditions, sufficiently humiliating to Denmark, though far from satisfying the exorbitant pretensions of Oxenstiern. In the bitterness of his indignation the aged monarch declared that his nobles cared neither for God, country, nor king, when put in competition with the selfish interests of their own order. To obviate the recurrence of future dangers from that quarter, and to prevent the country from being again surprised in the same defenceless state, he proposed to the senate to abolish the feudal militia, and furnish revenues to keep on foot a permanent military force by a general scheme of taxation, and by farming the crown lands to the highest bidder. This equitable proposition was pertinaciously resisted by the aristocracy, who had hitherto enjoyed a monopoly of the public domains and regal fiefs, whilst they were entirely exempted from the state burdens, except those contributions in money and service voted on extraordinary occasions by the diet called the Herredag.

In order to secure the election of his son Frederick to the throne (his eldest son Prince Christian having died in 1647), the king wrote to the senate, desiring them to take measures for assembling the general national diet, which was summoned to meet in April 1648. But Christian did not live to see the appointment of his successor, having expired on the 28th of February, at the age of seventy-one, after a long and unfortunate reign of fifty-two years. The character of this monarch was adorned with many princely virtues and excellent qualities, which have justly endeared his memory to the Danish and Norwegian nations. His heroic valour, warm patriotism, and unwearied devotion to the welfare of his subjects, contributed to win their esteem, which was

confirmed by the remarkable affability of his manners, and his adopting, without reserve, their vernacular language and customs. Most of his predecessors of the Oldenburg family were considered as German foreigners, who regarded the country and the people they had governed for a century and a half with something like contempt and aversion.

Christian was loved as a native, and the feelings he had inspired at the outset of his reign continued unabated during his whole life. When not engaged in war, he frequently journeyed through the various provinces of Denmark, and never failed to make an annual voyage to Norway, which had long been neglected by the Danish sovereigns. He built Christiania and Christiansand in that kingdom, explored its mineral riches, and published a recompilation of its ancient laws, which had become inapplicable to the altered condition of the inhabitants. He also constructed the fortresses of Christianopel and Christianstadt on the Swedish frontier, Gluckstadt on the Elbe, and the suburb of Christianshaven in the isle of Amager, connecting them by a long bridge with the capital, which he also improved and embellished with several new public edifices, amongst which were the palaces of Rosenberg and Fredericksborg, built in the modern Gothic style after designs by the celebrated Inigo Jones, and bearing a striking resemblance to Heriot's Hospital at Edinburgh and St John's College Oxford, of which, it is well known, that distinguished architect furnished the plans.

Nor was the taste of this monarch confined to erections of a civic or ornamental nature only. He had the good sense to perceive that the sea was the element which the maritime genius of his people had, from the earliest times, indicated as their appropriate theatre of action. With the minutest details of ship-building and navigation he was familiarly acquainted; he commanded his fleets in person, and was even more distinguished as an admiral than a general, although in the latter capacity he had merited and received the eulogiums of the greatest

captains of his age. He endeavoured to encourage trade and manufactures by such means as were deemed at that period the most efficacious, the establishment of companies with exclusive privileges, and the prohibition of rival productions from abroad. With this view, an association of merchants to trade to India was incorporated in 1618; they fitted out several vessels, which sailed with a convoy of ships of war, under Ove Gjedde, to open a commerce with Ceylon; but the traffic of that island being then monopolized by the Portuguese, they repaired to the Coromandel coast, where they obtained from the Rajah of Tanjore the cession of Tranquebar, which has continued ever since in possession of the Danes. Christian likewise rescued the trade of Iceland from the hands of the Hanseatic merchants, who had abused their privileges to the oppression of the natives; and established a Danish company to carry on the commerce of that island. He also sent out two expeditions under Admiral Lindenow, to explore the coasts of