AT the death of Christian V., his oldest son ascended the throne under the title of Frederick IV. His education had been sadly neglected; but, by untiring industry and energy after his accession to the throne, he gained considerable practical knowledge of the affairs of the government. He gave especial attention to the finances of the country, and, by a careful reduction of all unnecessary expenses, he succeeded in almost obliterating the great public debt. To his discredit, however, it must be admitted that this result was obtained partly with the blood of his subjects, as he secured large sums for the treasury by hiring out to the emperor 8,000, and to England and Holland 12,000, of the soldiers of Denmark and Norway, for service in the Spanish war about the order of succession. These soldiers distinguished themselves and fought with honor in many battles.

From his father, King Frederick had inherited certain disputes with Duke Frederick of Holstein, which led to a war; but the duke received aid from his brother-in-law, the Swedish king, Charles XII., who invaded Zealand (SjÆlland) and marched against Copenhagen, and King Frederick was obliged to accept a hasty peace at Traventhal, Holstein, August 18, 1700, on unfavorable terms.

After the peace at Traventhal Charles XII. turned his forces against Russia and Poland, where he won victory after victory, until finally, on the 27th of June, 1709, he lost the battle of Pultowa. On account of the dangerous position in which this defeat placed the Swedish king, King Frederick thought the opportunity had come to recover the lost provinces. He renewed his old allegiance with Russia and Poland, and began the Great Northern War (1709-1720). With 16,000 men he invaded Scania and captured several towns; but the Swedish field-marshal, Magnus Stenbock, hastily gathered an army of undisciplined peasants and defeated the Danes at the battle of Helsingborg (1710). In this war also the Danish-Norwegian fleet rendered great service, fighting the Swedish fleet with success in the Baltic and especially in the North Sea. On October 4, 1710, it was attacked by the Swedish fleet in KjÖgebugt. The Norwegian, Ivar Hvitfeld (a son of Tonne Hvitfeld, who had distinguished himself at Frederickshald), commanded the ship “Dannebrog,” which took fire early in the fight. He might have saved himself by beaching the ship, but there was danger of thus spreading the fire to the rest of the Danish fleet and to the town. He therefore stayed where he was, drew closer to the enemy and fired volley after volley from the forward guns, until the fire reached the powder magazine. The ship was blown up, and he and his five hundred men perished.

In the latter part of 1715, Charles XII. returned to Sweden, after an absence of fifteen years, and succeeded in giving new courage to the Swedes, who were exhausted from the hardships of the long war. The winter was very severe, so that the Sound was frozen over, and, in January, 1716, Charles intended to lead his army of 20,000 men across the ice and invade the Danish islands; but, just as he was ready for this exploit, a thaw suddenly set in, so that he could not effect the crossing, and, not having sufficient transports, Charles decided to direct his attacks against Norway.

The defences of Norway were in a miserable condition. The trained regiments had been sent south to Denmark, so that the army consisted almost wholly of the National Guards, which were without training, poorly clothed, and without the necessary supplies. The fortresses were short of provisions, arms, and ammunition, and there was no money in the treasury. The commanding general, the old and feeble Barthold von LÜtzow, had to confine his operations to garrisoning the silver works at Kongsberg and the principal passes. The natural advantages of the country and the patriotism and perseverance of the inhabitants constituted the principal defence.

By three different routes the Swedes invaded Norway. Charles himself entered HÖland in March, 1716. At the Riser farm the Swedish advance guard was attacked by two hundred Norwegian dragoons under the brave Colonel Ulrich Christian Kruse, and, during the fight, the colonel himself killed fifteen men and wounded Charles’s brother-in-law, the prince of Hesse. After a desperate fight, and the fall of the brave Captain Michelet, Colonel Kruse, who was so severely wounded that he could not hold his sword, surrendered to King Charles with twenty men; sixty lay dead or wounded, and the remainder had escaped. The Swedes had one hundred and seventy killed and wounded. Charles highly praised his brave opponent, had his own surgeon attend to his wounds, gave him a sword, and asked him if his brother, King Frederick, had many such officers. Kruse answered: “Of them he has many, and I am far from being among the ablest.”

Charles thereupon occupied Christiania and commenced to besiege the fortress of Akershus, but could not accomplish much for lack of heavy artillery. While he lay in camp there he sent out expeditions in different directions. The Swedish colonel, Axel LÖwen, was sent out with six hundred dragoons to destroy Kongsberg silver works. He was to proceed by way of Ringerike, because the road from Drammen was blocked by the Norwegians; and, on the evening of March 28, 1716, he arrived with his force at the Norderhov parsonage, Ringerike. The parson, the learned Jonas Ramus, was confined to his bed by sickness, but his wife, the intrepid Anna KolbjÖrnsdatter, received the soldiers well in order to avoid plundering. Having learned, by paying close attention to her guests, that it was their intention early the next morning to surprise a number of Norwegian dragoons, who lay encamped at the Steen farm and knew nothing of the arrival of the Swedes, she asked and obtained the permission of the colonel to send her servant-girl out to a neighboring farm for something that was needed for the table. Thus she was enabled to send warning to the Norwegians about the plans of the enemy. Under the leadership of Captain Sehested and Sergeant Thor Hovland the Norwegians set out at midnight, and, guided by the fires which Anna had started under pretext of warming the chilly soldiers, they surprised and overpowered the Swedish force. Colonel LÖwen was captured, together with one hundred and sixty men; thirty were killed, and the remainder escaped.

In April a Swedish force, under Colonel Falkenberg, was attacked and defeated at Moss by the Norwegians, under the command of Major-General Vincents Budde and Colonel Hvitfeld, who took four hundred prisoners and captured a large quantity of supplies. At the parsonage of Skieberg the Swedish general, Ascheberg, lay with 2,000 men and could hear the shooting at Moss; but the parson, Peter Rumohr, who had intercepted the correspondence between the Swedes at the parsonage and those at Moss, gave such exaggerated accounts of the defeat of the Swedes and of large reinforcements to the Norwegians, that General Ascheberg hastily broke camp and returned to Sweden. When King Charles, some time afterward, heard of this, he became so enraged at the minister that he caused him to be captured and brought to Sweden, where he died in prison.

As the roads were becoming very bad, and Charles feared that the Norwegians contemplated cutting off his retreat, he suddenly withdrew from Christiania and shortly afterward attacked the city of Frederickshald. Here the citizens had armed themselves under the brave brothers Peter and Hans KolbjÖrnson, nephews of Kield Stub, and half-brothers of Anna KolbjÖrnsdatter, and the Swedes had to buy every step with blood. Charles captured the city on the night between the 3d and 4th of July, 1716, and the Norwegians had to retire to the fortress, Frederickssteen. That the enemy might not find shelter behind the houses against the shots from the fortress, the citizens put fire to the town. Peter KolbjÖrnson commenced with his own house, and soon the whole city was in flames. Charles had to withdraw from Frederickssteen, with a loss of 1,500 men and three generals, to his headquarters at Torpum, intending to renew the siege as soon as he could get his heavy artillery from his transport ships at Dynekilen, near Svinesund. But in this hope he was disappointed, as the Norwegian naval hero, Peter Tordenskiold, by a daring attack shortly afterward, succeeded in capturing or destroying the whole transport fleet at Dynekilen.

Peter Wessel, afterward ennobled under the name of Tordenskiold, was born November 7, 1691, in Throndhjem, where his father, Jan Wessel, was a merchant. As he showed no disposition for college studies, he was placed with a tailor as apprentice; but he ran away from his master, came to Copenhagen, where he hired out as a sailor, and made journeys to the West Indies and to India. Afterward he became a naval cadet, made another trip to India, and on his return came to Bergen just as the Great Northern War had broken out. He immediately proceeded overland to Christiania, where the commanding general, Waldemar LÖvendahl, took a fancy to him and gave him the command of a ship of four guns, “Ormen” (the Serpent), with which he made cruises along the Swedish coast. He soon became renowned for his courage, and was given a better ship called “LÖvendahl’s galley,” a frigate of twenty guns. By his heroic deeds and brilliant bravery he rose, in the comparatively short time of ten years, from cadet to vice-admiral, and was ennobled by King Frederick IV. “For your rare courage and loyalty,” the king said to him, “we have raised you to our nobility. Your name shall hereafter be Tordenskiold (Thunder-shield).” “Well, then,” answered the young man, “I will so thunder in the ears of the Swedes that they will say you have not given me the name without reason.”

The entrance to the harbor of Dynekilen is at most places only four hundred to four hundred and fifty feet wide. On a little peninsula in the inlet the Swedes had erected a battery of six twelve-pounders, and on each side of the narrow inlet 4,000 infantry were stationed. On the evening of July 7th, when Tordenskiold lay with two frigates, three galleys and two other vessels outside of Stromstad, he learned from some Swedish fishermen, who were brought aboard as prisoners, where the Swedish fleet lay, and also that a number of the officers had been invited to a wedding, while the admiral was to have a banquet on board for the others. He concluded that the officers, therefore, would be in poor condition for fighting, and at daybreak he weighed anchor, and cried over to the brave Lieutenant Peter Grib, who was commanding the other frigate: “I am informed that the Swedish admiral is going to have a carousal on his fleet to-day. Would it not be advisable if we went in with our ships and became his unbidden guests? The pilot says we have favorable wind.” Peter Grib was ready, and Tordenskiold at once steered into the harbor. Without firing a shot he ran his ship in through a heavy fire from all sides. It was not till he came so near that his six-pounders could be of effect, and when he had reached the widest part of the inlet where he could arrange his ships with the broadsides toward the enemy, that he commenced to fire. After three hours of uninterrupted cannonading the Swedish fire began to slacken, and at one o’clock (July 8, 1716) the Swedish flag was lowered. The Swedes had then beached as many of their ships as possible, and soldiers and sailors were trying to save themselves by flight. Tordenskiold’s victory was complete; forty-four ships, carrying sixty guns, were either burned or sunk. Not a single ship was saved, and the next day King Charles was on his retreat to Sweden.

In September, 1718, King Charles again attacked Norway. He sent General Armfeldt with 14,000 men into Throndhjem Stift, where the commanding general, W. Budde, had to confine himself to the defence of the city of Throndhjem. King Charles himself moved against Frederickssteen with 20,000 men and began a vigorous siege. The outer redoubt was stormed and taken after a brave resistance, and the Swedish trenches were only two hundred and fifty paces from the fortress when King Charles was killed in one of the trenches by a bullet from the fortress, December 11, 1718. A few days later the Swedish army withdrew and returned to Sweden. General Armfeldt, on receiving this intelligence, retreated from Throndhjem and started to return to the frontier across the Tydal Mountains. On the mountain his army was overtaken by a fearful snowstorm; many hundreds froze to death, and many of those who escaped became cripples for life.

Frederick IV. now proceeded to Norway himself, and invaded Sweden with 15,000 men and occupied Stromstad, while Tordenskiold, by daring strategy, took possession of Marstrand and captured the fortress Carlsten. The war, which had lasted eleven years, was ended by a peace, which Charles’s sister, Ulrika Eleonora, concluded at Fredericksborg Castle, 1720. By this peace Sweden was compelled to agree never to help the Duke of Holstein to recover Schleswig, to pay 600,000 Rigsdalers, and to relinquish its right to exemption from tolls in the Oere Sound, a right which Sweden had had since 1645.

Peter Tordenskiold lived only a few months after peace had been concluded. He was allowed to make a journey abroad, and at Hanover he thrashed a gambler, Colonel Stahl, who had cheated one of his friends. For this he was challenged to a duel with the colonel, and in their encounter he was killed, November 12, 1720, being then a little over twenty-nine years of age.

The interests of Norway were often neglected during the reign of Frederick IV. In order to raise money the government sold all the Norwegian churches, and the lands belonging to them, to private parties, because the people, who from time immemorial had owned the churches, could not produce deeds or other documents showing title. The northern districts of Norway were especially neglected. The trade with Finmarken had, to the great detriment of that part of the country, for a long time been leased to the citizens of Bergen; in 1720 it was sold to three citizens of Copenhagen, and the result was greatly increased distress among the people.

During the reign of Frederick IV., two Norwegians distinguished themselves by missionary work. One of them was Thomas von Westen from Throndhjem, who worked with great zeal for the cause of Christianity in Finmarken. The other was Hans Egede, a clergyman from Vaagen in Nordland, who proceeded to Greenland, where, for years, he indefatigably devoted himself to the work of promoting the spiritual and material welfare of the inhabitants.

Frederick IV. died in 1730, fifty-nine years old.