Frederick VI of Denmark

1768–1839

Frederick VI was regent of Denmark from 1784 and king of Denmark and Norway from 1808 to 1814, continuing as king of Denmark until 1839. His early government introduced agricultural and social reforms, including measures against the transatlantic slave trade. During the Napoleonic Wars, British attacks on Copenhagen and seizure of the Danish fleet pushed Denmark into alliance with France. Defeat ultimately cost the monarchy Norway, which entered union with Sweden.

Frederick and the Danish court form part of the historical setting of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Prey, which dramatises the British expedition against Copenhagen in 1807. Napoleonic fiction often treats Denmark as a small state trapped between great powers rather than as a simple French ally. Frederick’s long regency and kingship allow novelists to contrast reforming intentions with the catastrophic strategic choices imposed by maritime war.

Julian Stockwin’s Inferno places Frederick VI of Denmark within a narrative shaped by military command and battlefield decision-making, political ambition and government, and exploration, travel and cultural encounter.

Series

Series featuring Frederick VI of Denmark (1 series)

Thomas Kydd in Order

by Julian Stockwin 27 books 4.2

The Thomas Kydd series follows a Guildford wig-maker pressed into the Royal Navy in 1793 and traces his rise from inexperienced landsman to admiral. Across twenty-seven novels, Kydd learns the work of the lower deck, crosses to the quarterdeck and commands increasingly important ships during the French Revolutionary…

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