Where the famous pleasure garden Tivoli now is, the strength of the enemy was massed against the redoubts at the western gate.  The name of “Storm Street” tells yet of the doings of that night.  King Karl had promised to give over the captured town to be sacked by his army three days and nights, and like hungry wolves they swarmed to the attack, a mob of sailors and workmen with scaling ladders in the van.  The moats they crossed in spite of the gaps that had been made in the ice to stop them, but the garrison had poured water over the walls that froze as it ran, until they were like slippery icebergs.  A bird could have found no foothold on them.  Showers of rocks and junk and clubs fell upon the laddermen.  Three times Karl Gustav hurled his columns against them; as often they were driven back, broken and beaten.  A few gained a foothold on the walls only to be dashed down to death.  The burghers fought for their lives and their homes.  Their women carried boiling pitch and poured it over the breastworks, and when they had no more, dragged great beams and rolled them down upon the ladders, sweeping them clear of the enemy.  In the hottest fight Gunde Rosenkrantz, one of the king’s councillors, trod on a fallen soldier and, looking into his face, saw that it was his 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