is own son breathing his last. He bent over and
kissed him, and went on fighting.

In the early morning hour Karl Gustav gave the order to retreat. The
attack had failed. Many of his general officers were slain; nearly
half of his army was killed, disabled, or captured. Six Swedish
standards were taken by the Danes. The moats were filled with the
dead. The Swedes had "come in their shrouds." The guns of the city
thundered out a triple salute of triumph and the people sang Te
Deums on the walls. Their hardships were not over. Fifteen months
yet the city was invested and the home of daily privation; but their
greatest peril was past. Copenhagen was saved, and with it the
nation; the people had found itself and its king. That autumn a
second Swedish army under the veteran Stenbock was massacred in the
island of Fyen, and Karl Gustav exclaimed when the beaten general
brought him the news, "Since the devil took the sheep he might have
taken the buck too." He never got over it. Three months later he lay
dead, and the siege of Copenhagen was raised in May, 1660. It had
lasted twenty months.

* * * * *

Seven score years and one passed, and the morning of Holy
Thursday[2] saw a British fleet sailing slowly up the deep before
Copenhagen, the deck of every ship bristling with guns, their crews
at quarters, Lord Nelson's signal to "close for action" flying from
the top of the flag-ship _Elephant_. Between the fleet and the shore
lay a line of dismantled hulks on which men with steady eyes and
stout hearts were guarding Denmark's honor. Once more it had been
jeopardized by foolish counsel in high places. Danish statesmen had
trifled and temporized 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