es of the empire
were allied with Denmark and Poland against him. With skill and energy
which can hardly find a parallel in the tales of romance, he baffled all
the combinations of his foes. Energy is a noble quality, and we may
admire its exhibition even though we detest the cause which has called
it forth. The Swedish fleet had been sunk by the Danes, and Charles
Gustavus was driven from the waters of the Baltic. With a few transports
he secretly conveyed an army across the Cattegat to the northern coast
of Jutland, marched rapidly down those inhospitable shores until he came
to the narrow strait, called the Little Belt, which separates Jutland
from the large island of Fyen. He crossed this strait on the ice,
dispersed a corps of Danes posted to arrest him, traversed the island,
exposed to all the storms of mid-winter, some sixty miles to its eastern
shore. A series of islands, with intervening straits clogged with ice,
bridged by a long and circuitous way his passage across the Great Belt.
A march of ten miles across the hummocks, rising and falling with the
tides, landed him upon the almost pathless snows of Langeland. Crossing
that dreary waste diagonally some dozen miles to another arm of the sea
ten miles wide, which the ices of a winter of almost unprecedented
severity had also bridged, pushing boldly on, with a recklessness which
nothing but success redeems from stupendous infatuation, he crossed this
fragile surface, which any storm might crumble beneath his feet, and
landed upon the western coast of Laaland. A march of thirty-five miles
over a treeless, shelterless and almost uninhabited expanse, brought him
to the eastern shore. Easily crossing a narrow strait about a mile in
width, he plunged into the forests of the island of Falster. A dreary
march of twenty-seven miles conducted him to the last remaining arm of
the sea which separated him from Zealand. This strait, from twelve to
fifteen miles in breadth, was also closed by ice. Charles Gustavus led
his hardy soldiers across it, and then, with accelerated steps, pressed
on some sixty miles to Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. In sixteen
days after landing in Jutland, his troops were encamped in Zealand
before the gates of the capital.

The King of Denmark was appalled at such a sudden apparition. His allies
were too remote to render him any assistance. Never dreaming of such an
attack, his capital was quite defenseless in that quarter. Overwhelmed
with