_Frederick IV. (1699-1730)_
At the death of Christian V., his oldest son ascended the throne under
the title of Frederick IV. His education had been sadly neglected; but,
by untiring industry and energy after his accession to the throne,
he gained considerable practical knowledge of the affairs of the
government. He gave especial attention to the finances of the country,
and, by a careful reduction of all unnecessary expenses, he succeeded
in almost obliterating the great public debt. To his discredit,
however, it must be admitted that this result was obtained partly with
the blood of his subjects, as he secured large sums for the treasury
by hiring out to the emperor 8,000, and to England and Holland 12,000,
of the soldiers of Denmark and Norway, for service in the Spanish war
about the order of succession. These soldiers distinguished themselves
and fought with honor in many battles.
From his father, King Frederick had inherited certain disputes with
Duke Frederick of Holstein, which led to a war; but the duke received
aid from his brother-in-law, the Swedish king, Charles XII., who
invaded Zealand (Sjælland) and marched against Copenhagen, and King
Frederick was obliged to accept a hasty peace at Traventhal, Holstein,
August 18, 1700, on unfavorable terms.
After the peace at Traventhal Charles XII. turned his forces against
Russia and Poland, where he won victory after victory, until finally,
on the 27th of June, 1709, he lost the battle of Pultowa. On account of
the dangerous position in which this defeat placed the Swedish king,
King Frederick thought the opportunity had come to recover the lost
provinces. He renewed his old allegiance with Russia and Poland, and
began the Great Northern War (1709-1720). With 16,000 men he invaded
Scania and captured several towns; but the Swedish field-marshal,
Magnus Stenbock, hastily gathered an army of undisciplined peasants
and defeated the Danes at the battle of Helsingborg (1710). In this
war also the Danish-Norwegian fleet rendered great service, fighting
the Swedish fleet with success in the Baltic and especially in the
North Sea. On October 4, 1710, it was attacked by the Swedish fleet
in Kjögebugt. The Norwegian, Ivar Hvitfeld (a son of Tonne Hvitfeld,
who had distinguished himself at Frederickshald), commanded the ship
"Dannebrog," which took fire early in the fight. He might have saved
himself by beaching the ship, but there was danger of thus spreading
the fire to the rest of the Danish fleet and to the town. He therefore
stayed where he was, drew closer to the enemy and fired volley after
volley from the forward guns, until the fire reached the powder
magazine. The ship was blown up, and he and his five hundred men
perished.
In the latter part of 1715, Charles XII. returned to Sweden, after an
absence of fifteen years, and succeeded in giving new courage to the
Swedes, who were exhausted from the hardships of the long war. The
winter was very severe, so that the Sound was frozen over, and, in
January, 1716, Charles intended to lead his army of 20,000 men across
the ice and invade the Danish islands; but, just as he was ready for
this exploit, a thaw suddenly set in, so that he could not effect the
crossing, and, not having sufficient transports, Charles decided to
direct his attacks against Norway.
The defences of Norway were in a miserable condition. The trained
regiments had been sent south to Denmark, so that the army consisted
almost wholly of the National Guards, which were without training,
poorly clothed, and without the necessary supplies. The fortresses
were short of provisions, arms, and ammunition, and there was no money
in the treasury. The commanding general, the old and feeble Barthold
von Lützow, had to confine his operations to garrisoning the silver
works at Kongsberg and the principal passes. The natural advantages
of the country and the patriotism and perseverance of the inhabitants
constituted the principal defence.
By three different routes the Swedes invaded Norway. Charles himself
entered Höland in March, 1716. At the Riser farm the Swedish advance
guard was attacked by two hundred Norwegian dragoons under the brave
Colonel Ulrich Christian Kruse, and, during the fight, the colonel
himself killed fifteen men and wounded Charles's brother-in-law, the
prince of Hesse. After a desperate fight, and the fall of the brave
Captain Michelet, Colonel Kruse, who was so severely wounded that he
could not hold his sword, surrendered to King Charles with twenty men;
sixty lay dead or wounded, and the remainder had escaped. The Swedes
had one hundred and seventy killed and wounded. Charles highly praised
his brave opponent, had his own surgeon attend to his wounds, gave him
a sword, and asked him if his brother, King Frederick, had many such
officers. Kruse answered: "Of them he has many, and I am far from
being among the ablest."
Charles thereupon occupied Christiania and commenced to besiege the
fortress of Akershus, but could not accomplish much for lack of heavy
artillery. While he lay in camp there he sent out expeditions in
different directions. The Swedish colonel, Axel Löwen, was sent out
with six hundred dragoons to destroy Kongsberg silver works. He was to
proceed by way of Ringerike, because the road from Drammen was blocked
by the Norwegians; and, on the evening of March 28, 1716, he arrived
with his force at the Norderhov parsonage, Ringerike. The parson, the
learned Jonas Ramus, was confined to his bed by sickness, but his wife,
the intrepid Anna Kolbjörnsdatter, received the soldiers well in order
to avoid plundering. Having learned, by paying close attention to her
guests, that it was their intention early the next morning to surprise
a number of Norwegian dragoons, who lay encamped at the Steen farm and
knew nothing of the arrival of the Swedes, she asked and obtained the
permission of the colonel to send her servant-girl out to a neighboring
farm for something that was needed for the table. Thus she was enabled
to send warning to the Norwegians about the plans of the enemy. Under
the leadership of Captain Sehested and Sergeant Thor Hovland the
Norwegians set out at midnight, and, guided by the fires which Anna had
started under pretext of warming the chilly soldiers, they surprised
and overpowered the Swedish force. Colonel Löwen was captured, together
with one hundred and sixty men; thirty were killed, and the remainder
escaped.
In April a Swedish force, under Colonel Falkenberg, was attacked and
defeated at Moss by the Norwegians, under the command of Major-General
Vincents Budde and Colonel Hvitfeld, who took four hundred prisoners
and captured a large quantity of supplies. At the parsonage of Skieberg
the Swedish general, Ascheberg, lay with 2,000 men and could hear the
shooting at Moss; but the parson, Peter Rumohr, who had intercepted the
correspondence between the Swedes at the parsonage and those at Moss,
gave such exaggerated accounts of the defeat of the Swedes and of large
reinforcements to the Norwegians, that General Ascheberg hastily broke
camp and returned to Sweden. When King Charles, some time afterward,
heard of this, he became so enraged at the minister that he caused him
to be captured and brought to Sweden, where he died in prison.
As the roads were becoming very bad, and Charles feared that the
Norwegians contemplated cutting off his retreat, he suddenly
withdrew from Christiania and shortly afterward attacked the city
of Frederickshald. Here the citizens had armed themselves under the
brave brothers Peter and Hans Kolbjörnson, nephews of Kield Stub,
and half-brothers of Anna Kolbjörnsdatter, and the Swedes had to buy
every step with blood. Charles captured the city on the night between
the 3d and 4th of July, 1716, and the Norwegians had to retire to
the fortress, Frederickssteen. That the enemy might not find shelter
behind the houses against the shots from the fortress, the citizens
put fire to the town. Peter Kolbjörnson commenced with his own house,
and soon the whole city was in flames. Charles had to withdraw from
Frederickssteen, with a loss of 1,500 men and three generals, to his
headquarters at Torpum, intending to renew the siege as soon as he
could get his heavy artillery from his transport ships at Dynekilen,
near Svinesund. But in this hope he was disappointed, as the Norwegian
naval hero, Peter Tordenskiold, by a daring attack shortly afterward,
succeeded in capturing or destroying the whole transport fleet at
Dynekilen.
Peter Wessel, afterward ennobled under the name of Tordenskiold, was
born November 7, 1691, in Throndhjem, where his father, Jan Wessel, was
a merchant. As he showed no disposition for college studies, he was
placed with a tailor as apprentice; but he ran away from his master,
came to Copenhagen, where he hired out as a sailor, and made journeys
to the West Indies and to India. Afterward he became a naval cadet,
made another trip to India, and on his return came to Bergen just
as the Great Northern War had broken out. He immediately proceeded
overland to Christiania, where the commanding general, Waldemar
Lövendahl, took a fancy to him and gave him the command of a ship of
four guns, "Ormen" (the Serpent), with which he made cruises along the
Swedish coast. He soon became renowned for his courage, and was given a
better ship called "Lövendahl's galley," a frigate of twenty guns. By
his heroic deeds and brilliant bravery he rose, in the comparatively
short time of ten years, from cadet to vice-admiral, and was ennobled
by King Frederick IV. "For your rare courage and loyalty," the king
said to him, "we have raised you to our nobility. Your name shall
hereafter be Tordenskiold (Thunder-shield)." "Well, then," answered the
young man, "I will so thunder in the ears of the Swedes that they will
say you have not given me the name without reason."
The entrance to the harbor of Dynekilen is at most places only four
hundred to four hundred and fifty feet wide. On a little peninsula in
the inlet the Swedes had erected a battery of six twelve-pounders, and
on each side of the narrow inlet 4,000 infantry were stationed. On the
evening of July 7th, when Tordenskiold lay with two frigates, three
galleys and two other vessels outside of Stromstad, he learned from
some Swedish fishermen, who were brought aboard as prisoners, where
the Swedish fleet lay, and also that a number of the officers had been
invited to a wedding, while the admiral was to have a banquet on board
for the others. He concluded that the officers, therefore, would be in
poor condition for fighting, and at daybreak he weighed anchor, and
cried over to the brave Lieutenant Peter Grib, who was commanding the
other frigate: "I am informed that the Swedish admiral is going to have
a carousal on his fleet to-day. Would it not be advisable if we went in
with our ships and became his unbidden guests? The pilot says we have
favorable wind." Peter Grib was ready, and Tordenskiold at once steered
into the harbor. Without firing a shot he ran his ship in through a
heavy fire from all sides. It was not till he came so near that his
six-pounders could be of effect, and when he had reached the widest
part of the inlet where he could arrange his ships with the broadsides
toward the enemy, that he commenced to fire. After three hours of
uninterrupted cannonading the Swedish fire began to slacken, and at
one o'clock (July 8, 1716) the Swedish flag was lowered. The Swedes
had then beached as many of their ships as possible, and soldiers
and sailors were trying to save themselves by flight. Tordenskiold's
victory was complete; forty-four ships, carrying sixty guns, were
either burned or sunk. Not a single ship was saved, and the next day
King Charles was on his retreat to Sweden.
In September, 1718, King Charles again attacked Norway. He sent
General Armfeldt with 14,000 men into Throndhjem Stift, where the
commanding general, W. Budde, had to confine himself to the defence
of the city of Throndhjem. King Charles himself moved against
Frederickssteen with 20,000 men and began a vigorous siege. The outer
redoubt was stormed and taken after a brave resistance, and the Swedish
trenches were only two hundred and fifty paces from the fortress
when King Charles was killed in one of the trenches by a bullet from
the fortress, December 11, 1718. A few days later the Swedish army
withdrew and returned to Sweden. General Armfeldt, on receiving this
intelligence, retreated from Throndhjem and started to return to the
frontier across the Tydal Mountains. On the mountain his army was
overtaken by a fearful snowstorm; many hundreds froze to death, and
many of those who escaped became cripples for life.
Frederick IV. now proceeded to Norway himself, and invaded Sweden
with 15,000 men and occupied Stromstad, while Tordenskiold, by daring
strategy, took possession of Marstrand and captured the fortress
Carlsten. The war, which had lasted eleven years, was ended by a peace,
which Charles's sister, Ulrika Eleonora, concluded at Fredericksborg
Castle, 1720. By this peace Sweden was compelled to agree never to help
the Duke of Holstein to recover Schleswig, to pay 600,000 Rigsdalers,
and to relinquish its right to exemption from tolls in the Oere Sound,
a right which Sweden had had since 1645.
Peter Tordenskiold lived only a few months after peace had been
concluded. He was allowed to make a journey abroad, and at Hanover he
thrashed a gambler, Colonel Stahl, who had cheated one of his friends.
For this he was challenged to a duel with the colonel, and in their
encounter he was killed, November 12, 1720, being then a little over
twenty-nine years of age.
The interests of Norway were often neglected during the reign of
Frederick IV. In order to raise money the government sold all the
Norwegian churches, and the lands belonging to them, to private
parties, because the people, who from time immemorial had owned the
churches, could not produce deeds or other documents showing title. The
northern districts of Norway were especially neglected. The trade with
Finmarken had, to the great detriment of that part of the country, for
a long time been leased to the citizens of Bergen; in 1720 it was sold
to three citizens of Copenhagen, and the result was greatly increased
distress among the people.
During the reign of Frederick IV., two Norwegians distinguished
themselves by missionary work. One of them was Thomas von Westen from
Throndhjem, who worked with great zeal for the cause of Christianity
in Finmarken. The other was Hans Egede, a clergyman from Vaagen
in Nordland, who proceeded to Greenland, where, for years, he
indefatigably devoted himself to the work of promoting the spiritual
and material welfare of the inhabitants.
Frederick IV. died in 1730, fifty-nine years old.