Part 15

Young Willemoes was spared the grief of seeing the last Danish man-of-war strike its flag. In the hottest of the fight, as he jumped upon a gun the better to locate the enemy in the gloom, a cannon-ball took off the top of his head. He fell into the arms of a fellow officer with the muttered words, “Oh God! my head—my country!” and was dead. In his report of the fight Captain Jessen wrote against his name: “Fell in battle—honored as he is missed.” They made his grave on shore with the fallen sailors, and as the sea washed up other bodies they were buried with them.

The British captured the wreck, but they could only set fire to it after removing the wounded. In the night it blew up where it stood. That was the end of the last ship of Denmark’s proud navy.

Footnotes:

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.

The battle of Copenhagen was fought April 2, 1801.

THE TROOPER WHO WON A WAR ALONE

Jens Kofoed was the name of a trooper who served in the disastrous war of Denmark against Sweden in Karl Gustav’s day. He came from the island of Bornholm in the Baltic, where he tilled a farm in days of peace. When his troop went into winter quarters, he got a furlough to go home to receive the new baby that was expected about Christmas. Most of his comrades were going home for the holidays, and their captain made no objection. The Swedish king was fighting in far-off Poland, and no one dreamed that he would come over the ice with his army in the depth of winter to reckon with Denmark. So Jens Kofoed took ship with the promise that he would be back in two weeks. But they were to be two long weeks. They did not hear of him again for many moons, and then strange tidings came of his doings. Single-handed he had bearded the Swedish lion, and downed it in a fair fight—strangest of all, almost without bloodshed.

The winter storms blew hard, and it was Christmas eve when he made land, but he came in time to receive, not one new heir, but twin baby girls. Then there were six of them, counting Jens and his wife, and a merry Christmas they all had together. On Twelfth Night the little ones were christened, and then the trooper bethought himself of his promise to get back soon. The storms had ceased, but worse had befallen; the sea was frozen over as far as eye reached, and the island was cut off from all communication with the outer world. There was nothing for it but to wait. It proved the longest and hardest winter any one then living could remember. Easter was at hand before the ice broke up, and let a fishing smack slip over to Ystad, on the mainland. It came back with news that set the whole island wondering. Peace had been made, and Denmark had ceded all its ancient provinces east of the Öresund to Karl Gustav. Ystad itself and Skaane, the province in which Jens Kofoed had been campaigning, were Swedish now, and so was Bornholm. All unknown to its people, the island had changed hands in the game of war overnight, as it were. A Swedish garrison was coming over presently to take charge.

When Jens Kofoed heard it, he sat down and thought things over. If there was peace, his old captain had no use for him, that was certain; but there might be need of him at home. What would happen there, no one could tell. And there were the wife and children to take care of. The upshot of it all was that he stayed. Only, to be on the safe side, he got the Burgomaster and the Aldermen in his home town, Hasle, to set it down in writing that he could not have got back to his troop for all he might have tried. Kofoed, it will be seen, was a man with a head on his shoulders, which was well, for presently he had need of it.

There were no Danish soldiers in the island, only a peasant militia, ill-armed and untaught in the ways of war; so no one thought of resisting the change of masters. The people simply waited to see what would happen. Along in May a company of one hundred and twenty men with four guns landed, and took possession of Castle Hammershus, on the north shore, the only stronghold on the island, in the name of the Swedish king. Colonel Printzensköld, who had command, summoned the islanders to a meeting, and told them that he had come to be their governor. They were to obey him, and that was all. The people listened and said nothing.

Perhaps if the new rulers had been wise, things might have kept on so. The people would have tilled their farms, and paid their taxes, and Jens Kofoed, with all his hot hatred of the enemy he had fought, might never have been heard of outside his own island. But the Swedish soldiers had been through the Thirty Years’ War and plunder had become their profession. They rioted in the towns, doubled the taxes, put an embargo on trade and export, crushed the industries; worse, they took the young men and sent them away to Karl Gustav’s wars in foreign lands. They left only the old men and the boys, and these last they kept a watchful eye on for drafts in days to come. When the conscripts hid in the woods, so as not to be torn from their wives and sweethearts, they organized regular man-hunts as if the quarry were wild beasts, and, indeed, the poor fellows were not treated much better when caught.

All summer they did as they pleased; then came word that Karl Gustav had broken the peace he made, and of the siege of Copenhagen. The news made the people sit up and take notice. Their rightful sovereign had ceded the island to the Swedish king, that was one thing. But now that they were at war again, these strangers who persecuted them were the public enemy. It was time something were done. In Hasle there was a young parson with his heart in the right place, Poul Anker by name. Jens Kofoed sat in his church; he had been to the wars, and was fit to take command. Also, the two were friends. Presently a web of conspiracy spread quietly through the island, gripping priest and peasant, skipper and trader, alike. Its purpose was to rout out the Swedes. The Hasle trooper and parson were the leaders; but their secret was well kept. With the tidings that the Dutch fleet had forced its way through to Copenhagen with aid for the besieged, and had bottled the Swedish ships up in Landskrona, came a letter purporting to be from King Frederik himself, encouraging the people to rise. It was passed secretly from hand to hand by the underground route, and found the island ready for rebellion.

Governor Printzensköld had seen something brewing, but he was a fearless man, and despised the “peasant mob.” However, he sent to Sweden for a troop of horsemen, the better to patrol the island and watch the people. Early in December, 1658, just a year after Jens Kofoed, the trooper, had set out for his home on furlough, the governor went to Rönne, the chief city in the island, to start off a ship for the reënforcements. The conspirators sought to waylay him at Hasle, where he stopped to give warning that all who had not paid the heavy war-tax would be sold out forthwith; but they were too late. Master Poul and Jens Kofoed rode after him, expecting to meet a band of their fellows on the way, but missed them. The parson stayed behind then to lay the fuse to the mine, while Kofoed kept on to town. By the time he got there he had been joined by four others, Aage Svendsön, Klavs Nielsen, Jens Laurssön, and Niels Gummelöse. The last two were town officers. As soon as the report went around Rönne that they had come, Burgomaster Klaus Kam went to them openly.

The governor had ridden to the house of the other burgomaster, Per Larssön, who was not in the plot. His horse was tied outside and he just sitting down to supper when Jens Kofoed and his band crowded into the room, and took him prisoner. They would have killed him there, but his host pleaded for his life. However, when they took him out in the street, Printzensköld thought he saw a chance to escape in the crowd and the darkness, and sprang for his horse. But his great size made him an easy mark. He was shot through the head as he ran. The man who shot him had loaded his pistol with a silver button torn from his vest. That was sure death to any goblin on whom neither lead nor steel would bite, and it killed the governor all right. The place is marked to this day in the pavement of the main street as the spot where fell the only tyrant who ever ruled the island against the people’s will.

The die was cast now, and there was need of haste. Under cover of the night the little band rode through the island with the news, ringing the church bells far and near to call the people to arms. Many were up and waiting; Master Poul had roused them already. At Hammershus the Swedish garrison heard the clamor, and wondered what it meant. They found out when at sunrise an army of half the population thundered on the castle gates summoning them to surrender. Burgomaster Kam sat among them on the governor’s horse, wearing his uniform, and shouted to the officers in command that unless they surrendered, he, the governor, would be killed, and his head sent in to his wife in the castle. The frightened woman’s tears decided the day. The garrison surrendered, only to discover that they had been tricked. Jens Kofoed took command in the castle. The Swedish soldiers were set to doing chores for the farmers they had so lately harassed. The ship that was to have fetched reënforcements from Sweden was sent to Denmark instead, with the heartening news. They needed that kind there just then.

But the ex-trooper, now Commandant, knew that a day of reckoning was coming, and kept a sharp lookout. When the hostile ship Spes was reported steering in from the sea, the flag of Sweden flew from the peak of Hammershus, and nothing on land betrayed that there had been a change. As soon as she anchored, a boat went out with an invitation from the governor to any officers who might be on board, to come ashore and arrange for the landing of the troops. The captain of the ship and the major in charge came, and were made prisoners as soon as they had them where they could not be seen from the ship. It blew up to a storm, and the Spes was obliged to put to sea, but as soon as she returned boats were sent out to land the soldiers. They sent only little skiffs that could hold not over three or four, and as fast as they were landed they were overpowered and bound. Half of the company had been thus disposed of when the lieutenant on board grew suspicious, and sent word that without the express orders of the major no more would come. But Jens Kofoed’s wit was equal to the emergency. The next boat brought an invitation to the lieutenant to come in and have breakfast with the officers, who would give him his orders there. He walked into the trap; but when he also failed to return, his men refused to follow. He had arranged to send them a sign, they said, that everything was all right. If it did not come, they would sail away to Sweden for help.

It took some little persuasion to make the lieutenant tell about the sign, but in the end Jens Kofoed got it. It turned out to be his pocket-knife. When they saw that, the rest came, and were put under lock and key with their fellows.

The ship was left. If that went back, all was lost. Happily both captain and mate were prisoners ashore. Four boat-loads of islanders, with arms carefully stowed under the seats, went out with the mate of the Spes, who was given to understand that if he as much as opened his mouth he would be a dead man. They boarded the ship, taking the crew by surprise. By night the last enemy was comfortably stowed, and the ship on her way to Rönne, where the prisoners were locked in the court-house cellar, with shotted guns guarding the door. Perhaps it was the cruelties practised by Swedish troops in Denmark that preyed upon the mind of Jens Kofoed when he sent the parson to prepare them for death then and there; but better counsel prevailed. They were allowed to live. The whole war cost only two lives, the governor’s and that of a sentinel at the castle, who refused to surrender. The mate of the Spes and two of her crew contrived to escape after they had been taken to Copenhagen, and from them Karl Gustav had the first tidings of how he lost the island.

The captured ship sailed down to Copenhagen with greeting to King Frederik that the people of Bornholm had chosen him and his heirs forever to rule over them, on condition that their island was never to be separated from the Danish Crown. The king in his delight presented them with a fine silver cup, and made Jens Kofoed captain of the island, beside giving him a handsome estate. He lived thirty-three years after that, the patriarch of his people, and raised a large family of children. Not a few of his descendants are to-day living in the United States. In the home of one of them in Brooklyn, New York, is treasured a silver drinking cup which King Frederik gave to the ex-trooper; but it is not the one he sent back with his deputation. That one is still in the island of Bornholm.

CARL LINNÉ, KING OF THE FLOWERS

Years ago there grew on the Jonsboda farm in Smaland, Sweden, a linden tree that was known far and wide for its great age and size. So beautiful and majestic was the tree, and so wide the reach of its spreading branches, that all the countryside called it sacred. Misfortune was sure to come if any one did it injury. So thought the people. It was not strange, then, that the farmer’s boys, when they grew to be learned men and chose a name, should call themselves after the linden. The peasant folk had no family names in those days. Sven Carlsson was Sven, the son of Carl; and his son, if his given name were John, would be John Svensson. So it had always been. But when a man could make a name for himself out of the big dictionary, that was his right. The daughter of the Jonsboda farmer married; and her son played in the shadow of the old tree, and grew so fond of it that when he went out to preach he also called himself after it. Nils Ingemarsson was the name he received in baptism, and to that he added Linnæus, never dreaming that in doing it he handed down the name and the fame of the friend of his play hours to all coming days. But it was so; for Parson Nils’ eldest son, Carl Linné, or Linnæus, became a great man who brought renown to his country and his people by telling them and all the world more than any one had ever known before about the trees and the flowers. The King knighted him for his services to science, and the people of every land united in acclaiming him the father of botany and the king of the flowers.

They were the first things he learned to love in his baby world. If he was cross, they had but to lay him on the grass in the garden and put a daisy in his hand, and he would croon happily over it for hours. He was four years old when his father took him to a wedding in the neighborhood. The men guests took a tramp over the farm, and in the twilight they sat and rested in the meadow, where the spring flowers grew. The minister began telling them stories about them; how they all had their own names and what powers for good or ill the apothecary found in the leaves and root of some of them. Carl’s father, though barely out of college, was a bright and gifted man. One of his parishioners said once that they couldn’t afford a whole parson, and so they took a young one; but if that was the way of it, the men of Stenbrohult made a better bargain than they knew. They sat about listening to his talk, but no one listened more closely than little Carl. After that he had thought for nothing else. In the corner of the garden he had a small plot of his own, and into it he planted all the wild flowers from the fields, and he asked many more questions about them than his father could answer. One day he came back with one whose name he had forgotten. The minister was busy with his sermon.

“If you don’t remember,” he said impatiently, “I will never tell you the name of another flower.” The boy went away, his eyes wide with terror at the threat; but after that he did not forget a single name.

When he was big enough, they sent him to the Latin school at Wexiö, where the other boys nicknamed him “the little botanist.” His thoughts were outdoors when they should have been in the dry books, and his teachers set him down as a dunce. They did not know that his real study days were when, in vacation, he tramped the thirty miles to his home. Every flower and every tree along the way was an old friend, and he was glad to see them again. Once in a while he found a book that told of plants, and then he was anything but a dunce. But when his father, after Carl had been eight years in the school, asked his teachers what they thought of him, they told him flatly that he might make a good tailor or shoemaker, but a minister—never; he was too stupid.

That was a blow, for the parson of Stenbrohult and his wife had set their hearts on making a minister of Carl, and small wonder. His mother was born in the parsonage, and her father and grandfather had been shepherds of the parish all their lives. There were tears in the good minister’s eyes as he told Carl to pack up and get ready to go back home; he had an errand at Dr. Rothman’s, but would return presently. The good doctor saw that his patient was heavy of heart and asked him what was wrong. When he heard what Carl’s teachers had said, he flashed out:

“What! he not amount to anything? There is not one in the whole lot who will go as far as he. A minister he won’t be, that I’ll allow, but I shall make a doctor of him such as none of them ever saw. You leave him here with me.” And the parson did, comforted in spite of himself. But Carl’s mother could not get over it. It was that garden, she declared, and when his younger brother as much as squinted that way, she flew at him with a “You dare to touch it!” and shook him.

When Dr. Rothman thought his pupil ready for the university, he sent him up to Lund, and the head-master of the Latin School gave him the letter he must bring, to be admitted. “Boys at school,” he wrote in it, “may be likened to young trees in orchard nurseries, where it sometimes happens that here and there among the saplings there are some that make little growth, or even appear as wild seedlings, giving no promise; but when afterwards transplanted to the orchard, make a start, branch out freely, and at last yield satisfactory fruit.” By good luck, though, Carl ran across an old teacher from Wexiö, one of the few who had believed in him and was glad to see him. He took him to the Rector and introduced him with warm words of commendation, and also found him lodgings under the roof of Dr. Kilian Stobæus.

Dr. Stobæus was a physician of renown, but not good company. He was one-eyed, sickly, lame in one foot, and a gloomy hypochondriac to boot. Being unable to get around to his patients, he always had one or two students to do the running for him and to learn as best they might, in doing it. Carl found a young German installed there as the doctor’s right hand. He also found a library full of books on botany, a veritable heaven for him. But the gate was shut against him; the doctor had the key, and he saw nothing in the country lad but a needy student of no account. Perhaps the Rector had passed the head-master’s letter along. However, love laughs at locksmiths, and Carl Linnæus was hopelessly in love with his flowers. He got on the right side of the German by helping him over some hard stiles in the materia medica. In return, his fellow student brought him books out of the library when the doctor had gone to bed, and Carl sat up studying the big tomes till early cockcrow. Before the house stirred, the books were back on their shelves, the door locked, and no one was the wiser.