The immediate result was a total cessation of hostilities, and a most complete victory to the English. When the contest was over, the wounded were gradually collected and removed to the hospitals and private houses of the city—to the latter when their personal friends claimed them. Many of the Danish soldiers and sailors engaged were natives of Copenhagen, or had relatives and dear friends therein, and the scenes that ensued during the afternoon, evening, and night, were heart-rending in the extreme. Parents, wives, brothers, sisters, and sweethearts, franticly ran from place to place, alike hoping and dreading to learn certain tidings of the fate of those so dear to them. All Copenhagen was a city of wo and wailing. Everybody had sustained a loss. Mothers and fathers wept for their brave sons killed, wounded, or prisoners; sisters for their brothers; girls for their lovers; the patriot for his poor conquered country and his slaughtered countrymen. Tremendous, in our estimation, was the moral responsibility of the English ministry for 'letting slip the dogs of war' for a slight cause—nay, strictly speaking, for no valid cause whatever. Our firm conviction is, that had England left Denmark to her own honourable instincts, the latter nation would never have given real occasion for an appeal to arms. Even yet more cruel and criminal was the bombardment of the city of Copenhagen itself, only six years subsequently to Nelson's raid—for it was nothing better. But they managed matters fifty years ago in a different manner from what the enlightened spirit of the age would now tolerate. No British ministry of the present day would dare or wish to act as did the ruling sachems in the early part of this century.
Anton Lundt—as true a hero as Nelson himself, although incomparably a humbler one—was, as already related, conveyed to the rear of the battery, and his wounds were attended to as well as circumstances would admit. Later in the evening, his father, an old invalid man-o'-war's-man, found him, and had him removed to his own humble home. The poor fellow had never recovered consciousness, and for many long hours he lay moaning, and occasionally struggling convulsively, under his natal roof, and in the same little room where he was born. His aged parents and a few friends wept around him; but there was one other watcher by his side, whose grief, although silent, surpassed theirs. It was his betrothed Pige, or sweetheart, Rosine Bœrentzen—she whose image had excited his heroism, she whose name was coupled with Denmark as his battle-cry. She shed not a tear—her anguish was too deep for that—but sat by his lowly pallet, supporting his head on her bosom, and wiping away the light foam from his bubbling lips. Ever and anon the dying sailor—for, alas! dying he was—would utter sea-phrases, or affecting words of friendship or of love, yet not even the voice of Rosine, continually murmuring in his ear, could recall him to sensibility.
The midnight hour approached: a medical man had just been in, and departed with the brief but decided assurance that the patient could not possibly survive many minutes. A worthy clergyman was kneeling with the family around the couch, praying to God to receive the parting spirit. In the midst of their supplications, the countenance of Anton Lundt was illumined with a gleam of unearthly triumph, and springing half-upright, he tossed his left arm aloft, and in soul-thrilling tones pealed forth his battle-cry of 'Rosine og gamle Danmark—hurrah!' He then instantly fell back a corpse on the bosom of his betrothed.
In the suburb of Oesterbrö, at Copenhagen, is a naval cemetery, and it generally attracts the eye of the stranger, as it most forcibly did our own, by a number of rough, picturesque fragments of unhewn granite, strewn over the mortal remains of the brave men who fell fighting for old Denmark against Nelson. The simple words, 'Anton Lundt, död 2 April 1801,' may be seen on one of them.
Rosine Bœrentzen never smiled again. On the first anniversary of the battle, she returned home from the cemetery, where she had been to place a wreath of immortelles on the grave of her betrothed, after the fashion of her country, and ere morning dawned, her soul had fled to rejoin her hero in heaven. Peace to the souls of the brave, and of all who loved and were loved of the brave who fell at the Battle of the Baltic!
FOOTNOTES:
[1] One of the grand basso-relievos recently placed on the base of Nelson's Monument, in Trafalgar Square, London, represents Nelson in the act of delivering the letter to the young captain who acted as his aid-de-camp on the occasion. The subjects of the three other relievos are St Vincent, The Nile, and Trafalgar.