a window-pane in the castle:

I am happy in my lot,
And thanks I give to God.

The queen-mother saw it and wrote under it her own version:

You wouldn't, but you must.
'Tis the lot of the dust.

KING AND SAILOR, HEROES OF COPENHAGEN

Of all the foolish wars that were ever waged, it would seem that the
one declared by Denmark against Sweden in 1657 had the least excuse.
A century before, the two countries had fought through eight bitter
years over the momentous question whether Denmark should carry in
her shield the three lions that stood for the three Scandinavian
kingdoms, the Swedish one having set up for itself in the
dissolution of the union between them, and at the end of the fight
they were where they had started: each of them kept the whole brood.
But this war was without even that excuse. Denmark was helplessly
impoverished. Her trade was ruined; the nobles were sucking the
marrow of the country. Of the freehold farms that had been its
strength scarce five thousand were left in the land. It could hardly
pay its way in days of peace. Its strongholds lay in ruins; it had
neither arms, ammunition, nor officers. On its roster of thirty
thousand men for the national defence were carried the dead and the
yet unborn, while the Swedish army of tried veterans had gone from
victory to victory under a warlike king. To cap the climax,
Copenhagen had been harassed by pestilence that had killed one-fifth
of its fifty thousand people.

So ill matched were they when a stubborn king forced a war that
could end only in disaster. When one of his councillors advised
against the folly, he caned him and sent him into exile. Yet out of
the fiery trial this king came a hero; his queen, whose pride and
wasteful vanity[1] had done its full share in bringing the country
to the verge of ruin, became the idol of the nation. In the hour of
its peril she grew to the stature of a great woman who shared danger
and hardship with her people and by her example put hope and courage
into their hearts.

[Footnote 1: It is of record that Queen Sofie Amalie used one-third
of the annual revenues of the country for her household. The menu of
a single "rustic dinner" of the court mentions 200 courses and
nearly as many kinds of preserves and dessert, served on gold, with
wines in corresponding abundance.]

Karl Gustav, the Swedish king, was campaigning in Poland, but as
soon as he could turn around he marched his a