The Battle of Öland was a naval battle between an allied Danish-Dutch fleet and the Swedish navy in the Baltic Sea on 1 June 1676. The battle was a part of the Scanian War fought for supremacy over the southern Baltic. Sweden was in urgent need of reinforcements for its north German possessions; Denmark sought to ferry an army to Scania.
About Battle of Öland in brief
The Battle of Öland was a naval battle between an allied Danish-Dutch fleet and the Swedish navy in the Baltic Sea on 1 June 1676. The battle was a part of the Scanian War fought for supremacy over the southern Baltic. Sweden was in urgent need of reinforcements for its north German possessions; Denmark sought to ferry an army to Scania in southern Sweden to open a front on Swedish soil. Just as the battle began, the Swedish flagship Kronan sank, taking with it almost the entire crew, including the Admiral of the Realm, Lorentz Creutz. The acting commander after Creutz’s sudden demise, Admiral Claes Uggla, was surrounded and his flagship Svärdet battered in a drawn-out artillery duel, then set ablaze by a fire ship. With the loss of a second supreme commander, the rest of the Swedish fleet fled in disorder, and the battle resulted in Danish naval supremacy, which was upheld throughout the war. The Danish King Christian V was able to ship troops over to the Swedish side of the Sound, and on 29 June a force of 14,500 men landed at Råå, just south of Helsingborg in southernmost Sweden. Scania became the main battleground of the war, culminating with the bloody battles of Lund, Halmstad and Landskrona. In the end, the renewed attack failed with interventions by the leading naval powers of England and the Dutch Republic. The Swedish failure at Öland also prompted King Charles XI to order a commission to investigate the fiasco, but in the end no one was found responsible.
Sweden’s relations with France had improved greatly and in 1672 it joined the Anglo-French coalition, pushing the Dutch into an attack on the Franco-Dutch Republic. In 1672, French King Louis XIV launched an attack against the DutchRepublic, igniting the Second Anglo-Dutch War. Denmark attempted to position itself in the alliances among the 17th century great powers. At the same time, Denmark sought itself of the generous tolls against Sweden in the wars over the Habsburg-dominated Holy Roman Empire and England and fought several wars over several wars. The war ended with the Battle of 1670, when France allied with England, souring its relations with England and forcing Sweden to ally with the French Republic against the French. The Treaty of Copenhagen returned Trøndelag and Bornholm were returned to Denmark in 1660 while Sweden was allowed to keep its recent conquests. The move was in part due to bold royal ambition, but also a result of Sweden’s being a highly militarized society geared for almost constant warfare, a fiscal-military state. There were some successes in foreign policy with the anti-French 1668 Triple Alliance of England, Sweden, and The Dutch Republic, and England. While the Swedish policy was to avoid war and to consolidate its gains, Danish policy after 1660 was to seek an opportunity to regain its losses. The treaty of Roskilde ceded Gotland and Ösel, all of its eastern territories on the Scandinavian Peninsula, and parts of Norway.
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This page is based on the article Battle of Öland published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
