five gun-boats, with the stores in the arsenal, were to be delivered up. This great object was attained with very trifling loss on the part of the British. During the whole of the siege the number of killed, wounded, and missing, of both services, did not exceed 259 men.
Admiral Gambier immediately began fitting out the ships that filled the spacious basins where they were laid up in ordinary, and at the expiration of the term limited in the capitulation, they were all, together with the stores, timber, and every article of naval equipment found in the arsenal and storehouses, conveyed to England, where, with the exception of one line-of-battle ship, that grounded on the isle of Huen, and was destroyed, they arrived safely in the latter end of the month of October.
The intended hostility of Denmark against this country, is beyond a doubt; consequently, though the sacrifice of human blood which occurred is to be lamented, not the slightest sentiment of commiseration for the Danish government can be entertained. So cordial was the friendship of the Crown Prince towards Buonaparte, and so anxiously did he anticipate his wishes, that he actually issued orders for the destruction of the Danish fleet, rather than it should fall into the hands of the English. Fortunately, however, those orders were intercepted. Nothing could more strikingly evince the chagrin and disappointment which Buonaparte sustained by this measure, than the strictures of the Moniteur, and of other continental papers under the influence of France.
For the able manner in which Admiral Gambier had conducted the above expedition, the dignity of a Baron of the United Kingdom was conferred upon him soon after his return[1]; and in the spring of 1808, he was appointed to the command of the Channel Fleet, on which occasion he vacated his seat at the Admiralty.
- ↑ On the 28th Jan. 1808, the thanks of both Houses of Parliament were voted to the naval and military commanders, officers, seamen, &c. employed in the late expedition, to the Baltic. Lord Hawkesbury proposed the resolutions to this effect in the House of Lords, and Lord Castlereagh in the Commons. The motion was opposed in both houses, simply on the ground, that the enterprise was not of such a nature as to merit
