The Bombardment of Copenhagen
The British bombed the Danish capital for a second time, on September 2nd, 1807.
The British had shelled the Danish capital before, in 1801, but the second onslaught was even more devastating. The Danes had repaired their city and their fleet in the meantime, but late in July 1807 the new British Foreign Secretary, George Canning, received intelligence that the Franco-Russian alliance signed at Tilsit had included a secret agreement to force Denmark and Sweden into Napoleon’s continental blockade of British trade. There was clearly a possibility of Napoleon seizing the Danish fleet, and Canning sent troops to the island of Zealand, ready to besiege Copenhagen, while a fleet of warships under Admiral James Gambier, amply equipped with bomb vessels, sailed menacingly up The Sound between Copenhagen and Sweden.
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