Denmark's Attempted Acquisition of Hamburg in 1679?

Hi, has anybody ever heard of this? And does anybody know what it entailed? I came across a mention of it in a book I'm reading, but there wasn't much of an explanation.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Hi, has anybody ever heard of this? And does anybody know what it entailed? I came across a mention of it in a book I'm reading, but there wasn't much of an explanation.

It doesn't, but I can check it out tomorrow, through it seem weird, it's in the end of the Scanian War. If I should guess it could just be a occupation, Denmark tended to occupy minor German states as preempthy strikes in it wars* (through it's a little late for that), and the Bishopric of Bremen-Verden was Swedish at the time, so a occupation would make sense to cut Bremen off.

*A Danish army occcupied Mecklenburg when the Russian march on Denmark.
 
IIRC there was some fighting, but in the end the Danish plans just quietly came to naught. Hamburg traditionally ran a policy of carefully balancing between the counts of Hostein, the emperor, and the Danish king, occasionally claiming to be subject to either, but always striving to maintain as much freedom of independent action as possible. It was also a very heavbily fortified town with extensive landholdings at the time, so a siege could have become quite costly.

In this particular case, Hamburg had been laying claim to the status of imperial free city since the beginning of the century, a claim that the Danish kings did not recognise. It seems that a faction inside the city asked the Danish king to support them against a local rival, Celle, but the king's demands were such that the citizens came to support the other party, allied with Celle and closed the doors on him. There was an attack in 1686, but as I said, Hamburg was quite heavily fortified. No real siege was attempted, it seems.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
I can't find any information about a invasion in 1679, but like Carlton said Denmark invaded in 1686, but that was part as wide strategy to control all of Schleswig-Holstein, and was just a secondary theater to the conquest of Gottorp. Of course both Dukes (the Oldenburg/Danish and Gottorp one) of Holstein claimed that Hamburg was part of Holstein, and there had been a process in Regensburg since 1549 whether Hamburg was a free city or part of Holstein. Interesting enough both had been "crowned" in and by Hamburg in 1603, through the validity of it was made dependent on whether Regensburg recognised the Duchy of Holsteins claim.

Lawyers must love the HRE:p
 
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