"One Ray of Sunshine in the Icy Winter of 1658"
During Denmark's militarily disastrous winter of 1658, in the course of Denmark's equally catastrophic war with Sweden of 1657-1658, and amidst a widespread, pervasive and continuing tide of Danish reverses and the spreading despair of defeat, a minor but heartening episode occurred involving a small detachment of Danish warships under the command of Captain Peder Jensen Bredal, who was wintering with his ships in Nyborg Fjord.

Here at Nyborg, with his ships frozen fast in the ice, trapped and isolated, without any hope of either support or relief and disdaining the odds against him, a steadfast Peder Bredal rallied his men and resolutely made a solitary and successful stand against the enemy - an episode which one Danish naval historian called "One ray of sunshine in the icy winter of 1658." (1)

The Latent Swedish Threat
The second (1643-1645) of the five 17th Century wars between Denmark and Sweden had been very costly to Denmark in terms of national territory which Denmark was forced to cede to Sweden. Following the conclusion of the 1643-1645 war, new rulers ascended to the thrones of both Denmark and Sweden. King Karl Gustav came to the Swedish throne in 1654, was a professional soldier, and had great territorial ambitions for Sweden. In pursuit of these ambitions of power and territorial aggrandizement, Karl Gustav attacked Poland in 1655, while making no secret of the fact that Denmark and her national territory was also one of his ultimate targets.

Frederick III's Preemptive Attack
In view of the latent Swedish threat posed by Karl Gustav in particular and increasing Swedish power in general, King Frederick III of Denmark decided that the embroilment of Karl Gustav's military forces in Poland offered an opportune moment for Denmark to launch a preemptive war against Sweden. However, Frederick III unfortunately launched his preemptive strike prematurely, before Denmark was fully prepared, apparently timing his strike to take advantage of the summer campaign season rather than the practical realities of Denmark's relative strength.

Once Frederick III precipitated war in 1657, the Swedish army promptly reacted by plunging straight through Germany from Poland, thrusting right up through Holstein, Slesvig, and then Jutland, sweeping the Danish army before it. Frederick III's gambit had therefore been strategically outmaneuvered, by a Swedish counter-thrust at an obvious location which Denmark should have anticipated, and the very heart of Denmark was in peril.

The Winter Debacle
Upon subjugating Jutland, the Swedish army stood helplessly on the shore of the Little Belt which, together with cover provided by Danish warships, acted as a defended moat to prevent the Swedish army's passage to Denmark's major islands, all that then remained of Denmark's national territory. However, at this juncture an extremely uncommon freak of nature occurred which afforded the Swedish army a rare opportunity to subjugate the rest of the Danish islands, i.e., an exceptionally severe winter so thoroughly froze the waters between Denmark's islands as to create ice thick enough to support the weight of the Swedish army's passage on foot across the ice.

King Karl Gustav boldly seized the incredibly unique opportunity nature had so timely offered him, whereupon he marched the Swedish army across the ice to conquer first the island of Funen, then Lolland, Falster, and finally Sjælland, where the Danish capital of Copenhagen was situated. The Swedish army thus surrounded and lay siege to Copenhagen, while all remaining Danish national territory was under the heel of Swedish occupation.

Peder Bredal's Stand at Nyborg Fjord
To retrace our steps, on November 8, 1657, after the Swedish army had overrun Jutland, the Danish Admiral Bjelke dispatched Captain Peder Bredal of the Danish navy with a squadron of warships to patrol the Little Belt, the body of water which separates the Jutland peninsula from the island of Funen. Bredal's mission was to prevent the Swedish army from being embarked on ships and transported to either Funen, the nearest and most likely target, or to any of the other Danish islands.

However, November was already late in the sailing season, and Bredal together with four of his ships were soon ordered to winter at the town of Nyborg on the Great Belt, lying on the east coast of Funen at the shortest point between Funen and the island of Sjælland. The main portion of the Danish fleet wintered at the Danish fleet base in Copenhagen, which itself was anticipating attack.

Bredal's squadron of ships wintering at Nyborg Fjord consisted of the Samson (40), Svenske Løve (36), Svenske Lam (34), and Emanuel (20-26).

As the tide of the Swedish army's advance engulfed and occupied Funen, Karl Gustav's troops took the town of Nyborg together with its bastion, Nyborg castle. In Nyborg Fjord lay Peder Bredal's icebound ships, which were soon subjected to Swedish cannon fire from the shore and to several Swedish assaults. However, Bredal managed to cut his ships free of the ice while under Swedish fire, and move them to the middle of Nyborg harbor, where his ships withstood all Swedish attacks from the 2nd to the 5th of February.

Failing in their attempts to take or destroy Bredal's ships, the Swedes finally decamped from Nyborg to continue their march on Copenhagen. Bredal's ships were ultimately able to reach open water, and thereby escaped the Swedish forces which surrounded Bredal's small force by sailing to Copenhagen, where Bredal's squadron arrived on the 29th of April.

In recognition of Peder Bredal's leadership, his intrepid defense, and his ship's inspirational exploit in resisting the Swedes at Nyborg Fjord, thereby affording Denmark an example to be followed by all, an appreciative King Frederick III promoted Peder Bredal to the rank of Vice Admiral.

Defense Ships" (Defensionsskibe): Armed Merchantmen
To give an idea of the nature of the force available in Peder Bredal's squadron, when Bredal made his stand in Nyborg Fjord, the ships under his command were not the cream of the Danish fleet. In fact, at least three of Bredal's four ships were ex-merchantman, converted under the exigencies of war to serve as warships with the Danish fleet, a practice which was relatively common among all navies during the seventeenth century.

Indeed, at this early date, Denmark had already adopted a deliberate state policy of encouraging Danish merchants to construct large armed merchant ships which could be incorporated into Denmark's fleet on an emergency basis - these ships were what Denmark officially referred to as "defensionsskib" or defense ships (2). To encourage the construction of such "defense ships," the Danish kingdom accorded these ships economic incentives in the form of lower tax and custom rates.

The Svenske Løve (36) and Svenske Lam (34) in Bredal's squadron were both ex-Swedish merchant ships, which the Danes either seized immediately before Frederick III launched his preemptive war, or captured at its inception. Svenske Løve and Svenske Lam are each characterized on one surviving Danish navy ship list as being a "kompagniskib," (3) ("company ship") indicating that these former merchant ships belonged to one of Sweden's major trading companies, such as a company trading with the East Indies, before these ships were forcibly incorporated into the Danish navy.

In this regard, it should be noted that during the Karl Gustav wars the Swedish navy also incorporated a number of Swedish merchantmen into Swedish naval service. In terms of size, Svenske Løve measured 1,000 tons and the Svenske Lam was 900 tons, making them two of the largest ships in the Danish fleet, although being designed and built as merchant ships they were unable to carry as many cannon as a warship.

The same Danish navy ship list which characterizes the two ex-Swedish merchant ships as "kompagniskib" describes the Samson (40) of Bredal's squadron as a "defensionsskib," or defense ship. The Samson is not included in a Danish Navy List dated 1656/1657 (4) which lists the Danish warships on the Danish navy's strength at the beginning of hostilities; Samson's absence from this Navy List, like its "defensionsskib" characterization, indicates that Sampson was originally a Danish merchantman that the Danish navy temporarily appropriated to use as a warship during the war.

The final ship, Emmanuel or Emanuel, in Bredal's squadron at Nyborg Fjord is not included in the Danish Navy List dated 1656/1657 (5) which indicates the Danish navy's composition at the beginning of the 1657-1658 war. However, another source (6) lists a Danish warship named the Emanuel (20-26) as being purchased by the Danish navy in 1644, and which was burnt in action in 1659. Therefore, this Emanuel is presumably the Emanuel in Peder Bredal's squadron at Nyborg and, if so, was the only ship in Bredal's squadron which was not a merchantman that had been converted to serve as a warship. However, the Emanuel's number of guns indicates she was also the smallest ship in Bredal's squadron, with the least amount of firepower.

The Svenske Løve and Svenske Lam, together with a third Swedish merchantman (apparently, the Svenske Grib) seized by the Danes at the beginning of the war, were returned to Sweden following the conclusion of hostilities. The Samson was also presumably returned to her employment in the Danish merchant service at the conclusion of the war.

The Peace of Roskilde
The 1657-1658 war was concluded by the Peace of Roskilde, which was signed on February 26, 1658, resulting in the most ruinous territorial concessions Denmark was ever forced to make in the entire course of Danish history.

The Death of Peder Bredal
The "Peace" of Roskilde lasted only a bare few months, as an unsatiated Swedish King Karl Gustav soon regretted the bountiful terms Sweden received in the Roskilde Peace settlement, decided he wanted more and, therefore, sought to exploit Denmark's highly vulnerable situation by attacking Denmark to further his and Sweden's aggrandizement.

Karl Gustav's first aggressive acts against Denmark was to transport troops from Germany to Sjælland to lay siege to Copenhagen, and to have the Swedish fleet blockade Copenhagen. It is here at Copenhagen that we hear of Peder Bredal again, for on the night of August 23-24, 1658, Bredal led a boat attack against the blockading Swedish ships and succeeded in burning two of them, the Wrangles Jacht (10) and another vessel of four guns.

By this exploit, Bredal once again demonstrated that he was an enterprising and effective officer whose talents held future promise. Unfortunately, this promise was never fulfilled. On December 4, 1658, Bredal was mortally wounded while cooperating in an attack by allied Brandenburg forces against the fortress of Sønderborg on the island of Als.

Conclusion
The purpose of this article is not to provide a comprehensive discussion of Danish naval operations in their entirety during the wars of 1657-1658 and of 1658-1659, but only to place Peder Bredal's resolute and inspirational stand at Nyborg Fjord in its proper historical context and, thereby, to underscore the important moral effect of Bredal's solitary and exemplary stand on a Danish nation which was otherwise experiencing wholesale military calamity.

As a postscript, this article also notes the unfortunate fate of this capable and promising officer, while participating in what appears to have been a subsidiary and utterly inconsequential military action at Sønderborg. Had Bredal lived, and had he been employed in operations of much greater naval significance, Peder Bredal may have added further luster to Danish arms in an otherwise dismal period in the history of Danish naval operations.

When the artist Carl Neumann was commissioned to produce paintings, for the halls of the reconstructed Frederiksborg palace, which were to depict events in Denmark's wars against Sweden, one of the topics Neumann selected to portray was Peder Bredal's inspirational stand at Nyborg Fjord - Neuman's 1833 painting of this event is monumental, majestic and woderfully evocative, showing Bredal's men at work in cutting Bredal's Dutch-hulled warships out of the harbor ice while being cannonaded by the Swedes.

There is no "ray of sunshine" in this painting in visual terms, but only dark clouds in an ominous and foreboding sky over an occupied Nyborg - or, indeed, over an occupied Denmark - and over Bredal's threatened Danish warships; what "ray of sunshine" that exists in the painting is subjective and lies in the activities of the Danish crews to free their ships from the ice and, thereby, from the prospect of their capture or destruction by the Swedes.