Copenhagen The Swedish king was not content with his stunning victory. At the
Swedish Council held at
Gottorp on 7 July, Charles X Gustav resolved to wipe his inconvenient rival from the map of
Europe. Without any warning, in defiance of international treaty, he ordered his troops to attack
Denmark–Norway a second time. There followed
an attack on the capital Copenhagen. Residents successfully defended themselves with help from the
Dutch, who honored their 1649 treaty to defend Denmark against unprovoked invasion by sending an expeditionary fleet and army, defeating the Swedish fleet in the
Battle of the Sound and relieving the capital. His army partly trapped at
Landskrona and partly isolated on the Danish islands by superior Danish and Dutch forces under Vice-Admiral
Michiel de Ruyter, Charles was forced to withdraw in 1659. Meanwhile, Norwegian forces succeeded in expelling the Swedish occupiers from
Trøndelag. Eventually, the resulting
Treaty of Copenhagen in 1660 restored Trøndelag to Norway, and the island of
Bornholm to Denmark. The relinquishment of
Trøndelag by the Treaty of Copenhagen reflects strong local resistance to the Swedish occupation. Although the Swedish invasion had been welcomed, or at least not resisted, the Swedes issued
conscription orders in Trøndelag and forced 2,000 men and boys down to 15 years of age to join the Swedish armies fighting in Poland and Brandenburg. King
Carl X Gustav was afraid that the
Trønders would rise against their Swedish occupiers, and thought it wise to keep a large part of the men away. Only about one third of the men ever returned to their homes. Some of them were forced to settle in the Swedish province of
Estonia, as the Swedes thought it would be easier to rule the Trønders there. Many of Trøndelag's men were already in the Dano-Norwegian army and navy, so the Swedish-forced conscription nearly emptied Trøndelag of males. The result was devastating, as the farms were left without enough hands to harvest the fields, and famine struck the region. Some local historians of Trøndelag have termed this the
genocide of the Trønders. The few months of experience with Swedish taxation and conscription left such bitter sentiments, that it served to strengthen Dano-Norwegian unity and patriotism, making resistance to Swedish invasions of Denmark–Norway stronger over the next 80 years. The nobility was soon amalgamated with the
Swedish nobility and introduced into the
Swedish House of Lords with the same rights and privileges as the original Swedish noble families. In 1676,
Denmark attacked and conquered most of Scania in an attempt to take back the province, but Sweden reconquered it. The provincial
Scanian Law was replaced by the national Swedish law in 1683. In the same year the national Danish law came into force in Denmark, also replacing
provincial laws there. The Swedish
Church Ordinance was introduced in 1686. ==See also==