(Vendue pour $182.0)

1801, Denmark, Christian VII.  Large Silver "Battle of Copenhagen" Medal.  XF!

Medallist: Loos Mint Year: 1801 Reference: Sommer A 81, Bergsoe 32. R! Denomination: Medal - Battle of Copenhagen Condition: Light edge-hits and numerous contact-marks if fields, some wear on high points, otherwise about XF with beautiful toning over mint-luster in protected areas! Weight: 18.75gm Diameter: 40mm Material: Silver

Obverse: Seated Justice, holding scales and handing sword over to a warrior in classical roman armor. Legend: GUD OG DEN RETFAERDIGE SAG Exergue: Loos

Reverse: Warrior with Danish shield, fighting Hydra (personification of the British fleet) at sea. Legend: FIENDENS OVERMAGT TILBAGEDREVEN Exergue: KIøBENHAVN D.2 APRIL 1801

The Battle of Copenhagen (Danish: slaget på Reden) was an engagement which saw a British fleet under the command of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker fight and strategically defeat a Danish-Norwegian fleet anchored just off Copenhagen on 2 April 1801. Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson led the main attack. He famously disobeyed Parker's order to withdraw, destroying many of the Dano-Norwegian ships before a truce was agreed. Copenhagen is often considered to be Nelson's hardest fought battle, surpassing even the heavy fighting at Trafalgar.

Even though a changed political scene after the death of Russian Tsar Paul reduced the political importance of the battle and material losses in the battle were of little importance to the fighting strength of either navy (the Danish side had taken great care to spare its first-class ships), the battle is nevertheless still remembered on the Danish side for the extraordinary valour of the Navy's personnel and the many Copenhagen volunteers who fought for hours against overwhelming odds.

Christian VII (29 January 1749 – 13 March 1808) was King of Denmark and Norway, and Duke of Schleswig and Holstein from 1766 until his death. He was the son of Danish King Frederick V and of his first consort Louisa, daughter of Britain's George II.

He became king on his father's death on 14 January 1766, weeks before his 17th birthday. All the earlier accounts agree that he had a winning personality and considerable talent, but he was badly educated, systematically terrorized by a brutal governor, Detlev Count Reventlow, and hopelessly debauched by corrupt pages, and while he seems to have been intelligent and certainly had periods of clarity, Christian suffered from severe mental problems, possibly schizophrenia.

After his marriage at Christiansborg Palace on 8 November 1766 to his cousin Princess Caroline Matilda (known in Denmark as Queen Caroline Mathilde), a sister of Great Britain's King George III, he abandoned himself to the worst excesses, especially debauchery. In 1767, he entered in to a relationship with the courtesan Støvlet-Cathrine‎. He publicly declared that he could not love Caroline Mathilde, because it was "unfashionable to love one's wife". He ultimately sank into a condition of mental stupor. Symptoms during this time included paranoia, self-mutilation and hallucinations. He became submissive to the progressive and radical thinker: his doctor Johann Friedrich Struensee, who rose steadily in power in the late 1760s. The neglected and lonely Caroline Mathilde drifted into an affair with Struensee.

In 1772, the king's marriage with Caroline Mathilde was dissolved by divorce. Struensee was, following a deluge of modernising and emancipating reforms, arrested and executed in that same year. Christian signed Struensee's arrest warrant with indifference, and under pressure from his stepmother, Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who had led the movement to have the marriage dissolved. Caroline Mathilde, retaining her title but not her children, eventually left Denmark in exile and passed her remaining days in at Celle Castle in her brother's German territory, the Electorate of Hanover. She died of scarlet fever there on 11 May 1775, at the age of 23.

The marriage had produced two children, the future Frederick VI and Princess Louise Auguste. However, it is widely believed that Louise was the daughter of Struensee - portrait comparisons have supported this.

Christian was only nominally king from 1772 onwards. From 1772 to 1784, Denmark was ruled by Christian's stepmother Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, his physically disabled half-brother Frederick and the Danish politician Ove Høegh-Guldberg. From 1784 onwards, his son Frederick VI ruled permanently as a prince regent. This regency was marked by liberal and agricultural reforms but also by the beginning disasters of the Napoleonic Wars.

Christian died in 1808 at Rendsburg, Schleswig — not of fright, as some have suggested, but from a brain aneurysm. He was 59 and was buried at Roskilde Cathedral.

In 1769 Christian VII of Denmark invited the Hungarian astronomer Miksa Hell (Maximilian Hell) to Vardø. He observed the transit of Venus, and his calculations gave the most precise calculation of the Earth-Sun distance so far (approx. 151 million kilometres). His companion János Sajnovics explored the affinity among the languages of the Sami, Finn and Hungarian peoples.