As to the reality of Napoleon's designs on Denmark, there can be no doubt. After his return to France, he wrote from St. Cloud, directing Talleyrand to express his displeasure that Denmark had not fulfilled her _promises_: "Whatever my desire to treat Denmark well, I cannot hinder her suffering from having allowed the Baltic to be violated [by the English expedition to Stralsund]; and, if England refuses Russia's mediation, Denmark must choose either to make war against England, or against me."[164] Whence it is clear that Denmark had given Napoleon grounds for hoping that she would declare the Baltic a _mare clausum_.
The British Government had so far fathomed these designs as to see the urgency of the danger. Accordingly it proposed to Denmark a secret defensive alliance, the chief terms of which were the handing over of the Danish fleet, to be kept as a "sacred pledge" by us till the peace, a subsidy of £100,000 paid to Denmark for that fleet, and the offer of armed assistance in case she should be attacked by France. This offer of defensive alliance was repulsed, and the Danish Prince Royal determined to resist even the mighty armada which was now nearing his shores. Towards the close of August, eighty-eight British ships were in the Sound and the Belt; and when the transports from Rügen and Stralsund joined those from Yarmouth, as many as 15,400 troops were at hand, under the command of Lord Cathcart. A landing was effected near Copenhagen, and offers of alliance were again made, including the deposit of the Danish fleet; "but if this offer is rejected now, it cannot be repeated. The captured property, public and private, must then belong to the captors: and the city, when taken, must share the fate of conquered places." The Danes stoutly repelled offers and threats alike: the English batteries thereupon bombarded the city until the gallant defenders capitulated (September 7th). The conditions hastily concluded by our commanders were that the British forces should occupy the citadel and dockyard for six weeks, should take possession of the ships and naval stores, and thereupon evacuate Zealand.
These terms were scrupulously carried out; and at the close of six weeks our forces sailed away with the Danish fleet, including fifteen sail of the line, fifteen frigates, and thirty-one small vessels. This end to the expedition was keenly regretted by Canning. In a lengthy Memorandum he left it on record that he desired, not merely Denmark's fleet, but her alliance. In his view nothing could save Europe but a firm Anglo-Scandinavian league, which would keep open the Baltic and set bounds to the designs of the two Emperors. Only by such an alliance could Sweden be saved from Russia and France. Indeed, foreseeing the danger to Sweden from a French army acting from Zealand as a base, Canning proposed to Gustavus that he should occupy that island, or, failing that, receive succour from a British force on his own shore of the Sound. But both offers were declined. The final efforts made to draw Denmark into our alliance were equally futile, and she kept up hostilities against us for nearly seven years. Thus Canning's scheme of alliance with the Scandinavian States failed. Britain gained, it is true, a further safeguard against invasion; but our statesman, while blaming the precipitate action of our commanders in insisting solely upon the surrender of the fleet, declared that that action, apart from an Anglo-Danish alliance, was "an act of great injustice."[165]