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190 A History of Sweden
so intense that the Little Belt froze over. When the
sun arose on January 30, the Swedish army appeared
in battle array on the ice of Little Belt. On the shore
of the Isle of Fyen the Danes stood waiting. At the
weakest point of the ice the horsemen dismounted
and led their horses. The ice rose and fell under them,
but did not break. The regiments that first arrived
fell upon the Danes. Suddenly from over the ice came
a cry of distress. The sea had opened and two troops
of cavalry had disappeared in the deep. The other
forces coming up behind stopped. Would their fate be
the same? The king hurried back to the edge of the
break at the risk of his life and by his example calmed
his men, who in scattered bands happily got across.
The enemy was beaten and the island taken.
Crossing the Great Belt. But the most dangerous
part of the enterprise remained the crossing of the
Great Belt, for the goal was Copenhagen. The king
intrusted to his adjutant, the able and brave Eric
Dahlberg, the investigation of the ice. He had won
the king’s favor in a high degree by his courage and
ability as an engineer. He returned with the assurance
that the ice would carry. Then the king struck his
hands together with enthusiasm and exclaimed : "Now,
brother Frederick, we will converse together in good
Swedish."
The same night the army began the march toward
Langeland. "It was," says an accompanying French
ambassador, "something awful to travel by night over
this field of ice, where the tramp of the horses had
melted the snow so that water stood over nineteen
inches deep on the ice, and where one feared every
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