A chapter of the Napoleonic Wars hardly anyone knows about
Except, perhaps, a cultural official in Huéscar forty years ago and many Danish families
When I grew up in the small town of Nyborg on the eastern coast of the island of Fyn (Funen) in the centre of Denmark, there was something close to the coast called Horse Mound. We saw this every time we went to the beach, and I asked why it was called that and why people said the poppies there were more red than anywhere else. My father told me that when the Spanish soldiers were taken back to Spain by the British, they could not bring their horses so they were left behind — “It only takes one mare to make a whole bunch of stallions go mad, so most of those beautiful Andalusian stallions killed each other and were buried in that mound”. That was the first time I heard about Spanish troops in Denmark, and the first time I heard that the Spanish soldiers did not have the heart to shoot their beautiful stallions as ordered before boarding the British ships. One of the most enduring legacies is the long line of Knabstrup horses, descendants of Spanish horses left on the island of Sjælland (Zealand), many known from the army, others were circus horses, and anyone who has read Pippi Longstocking will recognise her horse as a Knabstrup.
But what were they doing in Denmark in 1808 — the country was not at war but was allied with France, so Napoleon decided to send La division del Norte up through France and Germany to Denmark — the country had, after all, been the victim of a couple of brutal attacks by the British fleet, in 1801 and 1807, when the whole Danish fleet was stolen. This, in spite of the country being part of the ‘League of Armed Neutrality’ together with Russia, Sweden, and Prussia. The League was instituted to ensure free shipping, also to France, but the British found a combined fleet of the ships of the four countries too much of a threat so sent their fleet under Admiral Hyde Parker and Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson in 1801– and they bombed a very large part of the Danish fleet to smithereens — that is why one of the lions on Nelson’s column has the name ‘Copenhagen’, even though he did not follow his admiral’s orders to retreat, just continued bombing what was already a smashed-up fleet.
The British returned in 1807 as the combined fleets of Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Schleswig-Holstein still seemed too big for British tastes and both a fleet and an army were sent, landing troops north of Copenhagen and bombing the city from the sea for four nights until the Danish King sued for peace. The fleet was towed away and Copenhagen left in ruins.
Little known aftermaths
- a modern edition of Beowulf, representing twenty years of work by esteemed scholar and national archivist Grímur Jónsson Thorkelín was lost in the flames of the bombardment but two manuscripts were eventually found and his work finally published in 1815;
– and a foal born in 1808 was called ‘Copenhagen’, sold to Arthur Wellesley, and became his favoured mount at the Battle of Waterloo.
Spanish troops in Denmark 1807–08
Following the British attacks on Denmark, Emperor Napoleon took the opportunity to send Spanish and French troops up through Germany to assist and defend Denmark, the “Division of the North”. This also provided him with the means to avoid a major uprising of military troops in defence of the Spanish king, Carlos IV and his heir Ferdinand. On 2 May 1808 a major uprising had taken place in Madrid in protest against the forced abdication of Carlos IV, memorably depicted in Goya’s two major paintings from 1814, El Dos de Mayo en Madrid 1808 and El Tres de Mayo 1808 en Madrid. The uprising was brutally cut down by the ‘Mamelukes’, a French cavalry regiment. Rebels were executed the next day, ‘El Terzo de Mayo’. In July 1808, Napoleon’s older brother was installed as the new king of Spain, and a number of Spanish nobles signed the Bayonne Constitution in July 1808, Spain’s first constitution, basically cementing the coup.
The “Division of the North” was mainly sent to launch a Franco-Danish invasion of Sweden, which had by then left the League of Armed Neutrality, and they formed part of the French imperial forces led by Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. Although originally loyal to the alliance with Imperial France, once the Spanish troops found out about the coup in 1808, the leader of one of the major division, the Marquis of La Romana Division established contact with British agents, requesting evacuation of his troops from Denmark. Their intention was to return to Spain via northern Spain or Portugal where they would join the Spanish, British and Portuguese troops fighting the French in Spain.
The negotiations led to a number of secret plans to be followed to ensure the evacuation — the Spanish troops were to assemble at Nyborg to be evacuated by the British fleet. However, the reinforcements promised did not arrive and some of the Spanish troops were sailed to the island of Langeland, south-east of the island of Funen, hoping that reinforcements would arrive.
One of the Spanish cavalry regiments did not manage to arrive along with two infantry regiments and they remained with the French troops in Denmark. The evacuated Spanish troops were transported to Göteborg (Gothenburg) in Sweden where reinforcements and the promised transports finally arrived, and they sailed under quite stormy conditions to Santander where they disembarked in early September. The infantry joined the 5th Division of the Army of Galicia, while cavalry troops continued southwards to Extremadura to collect horses to replace the ones, they were forced to leave behind in Nyborg.
The Spanish troops left in Denmark were imprisoned in Denmark to avoid them joining their colleagues in Spain, although some did manage to leave on foot. On 11 November 1809, the Spanish Cortes sent couriers throughout the Spanish territory with a message that all diplomatic relations with Denmark should end.
A Declaration of War
In the small town of Huéscar in the Granada region of Andalusia, however, the city council went a step further and declared war on Denmark on 11 November 1809 — a town with eight municipal guards. The amazing part of this is that the war declaration does not appear anywhere in the Danish archives. The Treaty of Paris in 1814 was signed by all combatants, and Ferdinand VII, the son of Carlos IV returned as king. Denmark lost Norway, quite apart from being bankrupt.
In Huéscar, the declaration of war remained in their archives and was never rescinded. There it remained for 172 years until Vincente González Barberán, a cultural officer of the regional government of Granada, found the document. “Lord Mayor”, he called out to the mayor of Huéscar, “We are at war with Denmark”. Furthermore, by then, Huéscar was not just at war with Denmark as Denmark was now a NATO member. But on 11 November 1981, representatives from Huéscar and Denmark, led by the Danish ambassador to Spain, met to officially end the war by signing a declaration of peace.
There is an excellent trailer, “La Guerra más larga” (‘The Longest War’) to a much longer documentary by Jorge Rivera, a Spanish documentalist living in Denmark — unfortunately, I have not been able to track down the documentary, but the trailer gives a good impression: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRiSN8JnYgg (in Spanish and Danish, with English subtitles). This was a most incredible occasion, signing a peace declaration after 172 years, on the very date the declaration of war had been issued almost two centuries earlier.
What remains 172 years later
Apart from my childhood memories of ‘Horse Mound’ at the coast at Nyborg where the reddest poppies grow, I remember seeing the ruins of Koldinghus before the restoration (1973–93), which thankfully did not rebuild the castle in a mock Renaissance ‘style’ but secured the building to show the damage. Koldinghus was an old royal residence from 1268, an important fortification close to the border to the duchies to the south, Schleswig and Holstein, originally called Eagle Castle. From the mid-16th century, it was turned into a renaissance castle. I should add that the Spanish soldiers were not at fault and they did not intend to burn down the castle — it went up in flames because of faulty chimneys — it had not been looked after for many decades and probably had several birds’ nests in every chimney. Marshal Bernadotte was at the castle at the time and left with the troops after the disaster towards Fyn.
Other legacies are the cigarillos the Spanish troops brought with them and I have already mentioned the Knabstrup horses. My school days were spent in Fredericia, in eastern Jutland right across from Fyn, an ‘open city’ since its founding in 1666. Among the many who sought refuge were French Huguenots who brought the cultivation of tobacco with them, and salad and tomatoes — I am certain the Spanish soldiers filled their pouches with fresh tobacco on their way from Kolding to the island of Fyn.
I lived for the first seven years of my life in Nyborg where there were many stories of Spanish forefathers, certainly many more stories than actual descendants, but it is still said that the women from the island of Fyn insist that “the night is our own”. Some soldiers did stay after the war, and there are names like Panduro and Augustín (Augustinus), others were quoted as fathers of children born out of wedlock, and a couple of boys found walking on the highway were taken in by Danish families and given Danish names. There is, however, a lack of archive material to substantiate most claims of Spanish origin, regardless of black hair, dark skin, and brown eyes. My uncle, my mother’s younger brother, looked exactly like any farmer I have seen in northern Spain, and although my mother’s family were farmers in central Fyn where there was a substantial part of the Spanish troops, there are no church records or other ‘proof’ — as in the majority of ‘cases’.
The cultural and literary legacy is mainly represented by H. C. Andersen, himself of Fyn origin, who wrote three so-called Spanish dramas, one of them “When the Spaniards Were Here” in 1865 (the illustration above is from its publication), the two others were earlier (1836 and 1840). He also wrote about his experiences in the first chapter of Mit Livs Eventyr (‘The Fairy Tale of My Life’) in 1855. He was just three years old but remembered Marshal Bernadotte coming to Odense after the Koldinghus fire with his troops and his wife Désirée and son Oscar. He calls the French troops haughty, the Spanish kind and good, and remember being carried by a Spanish soldier, his mother a little worried but thought the man would surely have children of his own the way he treated little Hans Christian.
The next chapter would be the Peninsula War — I just wonder if the 1st Duke of Wellington brought his horse Copenhagen to Portugal and Spain, where over five long years he learned that Napoleon could be beaten?
In the north, after Sweden left the League of Armed Neutrality when it collapsed, there was a long and little-known war but no less fierce between Norway and Sweden on their borders, the Dano-Swedish War (1808–1809), spiced up with a number of court intrigues, coups, and regicide in Sweden. With the Treaty of Paris in 1814, Norway was lost to Denmark and given to Sweden — and when Sweden had elected Marshall Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte as their new Crown Prince (1810), the three people H. C. Andersen saw as a small boy in Odense in 1808, would now be King Karl XIV Johan of Sweden and Norway, Queen Désirée, and little Oscar the heir to the throne.
Bernadotte was kindly received as the head of the French troops in Denmark 1808–1809, and he is one of very few French dignitaries to be awarded the Danish Order of the Elephant.
At least, the Danish king introduced compulsory education in 1814, one good thing that came from defeat, loss of Norway, loss of the fleet, bankruptcy, and a capital in ruins.
And all this, just because I remembered the Horse Mound I saw as a little girl …
Note:
Vicente Gonzáles Barberán: https://www.granadahoy.com/granada/Muere-Vicente-Gonzalez-Barberan-descubrio-guerra-Dinamarca_0_1775823245.html — in Spanish, written on the death of Gonzáles Barberán in 2023, telling the story of his role in finding the Huéscar war declaration.
