rmy against Denmark,
scattered the forces that opposed him, and before news of his
advance had reached Copenhagen knocked at the gate of Denmark
demanding "speech of brother Frederik in good Swedish." A winter of
great severity had bridged the Baltic and the sounds of the island
kingdom. In two weeks he led his army, horse, foot, and guns, over
the frozen seas where hardly a wagon had dared cross before. Great
rifts yawned in their way, and whole companies were swallowed up;
his own sleigh sank in the deep, but nothing stopped him. Danish
emissaries came pleading for peace. He met them on the way to the
capital, surrounded by his Finnish horsemen, and gave scant ear to
their speeches while he drove on. Before the city he halted and
dictated a peace so humiliating that one of the Danish commissioners
exclaimed when he came to sign, "I wish I could not write." Perhaps
the same wish troubled the conqueror's ambitious dreams. The peace
was broken as swiftly as made. In five months he was back before
Frederik's capital with his whole army, while a Swedish fleet
anchored in the roadstead outside. "What difference does it make to
you," was the contemptuous taunt flung at the anxious envoys who
sought his camp, "whether the name of your king is Karl or Frederik
so long as you are safe?" He had come to make an end of Denmark.

Copenhagen was almost without defences. The old earth walls mounted
only six guns, with breastworks scarce knee-high. In places King
Karl could have driven his sleigh into the heart of the city at the
head of his army. But for the second time he hesitated when a swift
blow would have won all--and lost. Overnight the Danish nation awoke
to a fight for its life. King and people, till then strangers, in
that hour became one. Frederik the Third met the craven counsel that
he fly to Norway with the proud answer, "I will die in my nest, if
need be, and my wife with me." With a shout the burghers swore to
fight to the last man. The walls of the city rose as if by magic.
Nobles and mechanics, clergy and laborers, students, professors and
sailors worked side by side; high-born women wheeled barrows. Every
tree was cut down and made into palisades. The crops ripening in
the fields were gathered in haste and the cattle driven in. The city
had been provisioned for barely a week and garrisoned by four
hundred raw recruits. Sailors from the useless ships took out their
guns and mounted them in the redoubts. Peasants fl