Battle of Helsingborg (1710)

Battle of Helsingborg

"Stenbocks getapojkar vid Hälsingborg 1710" by Henric Ankarcrona.

Date	February 27, 1710 (O.S.) February 28, 1710 (Swedish calendar) March 10, 1710 (N.S.)
Location	Helsingborg, Sweden
Result	Decisive Swedish victory

Belligerents

Swedish empire

Denmark–Norway

Commanders and leaders

Magnus Stenbock

Jørgen Rantzau

Strength

14,000:

8,400 infantry
5,500 cavalry
32 cannon

14,000:

10,000 infantry
4,000 cavalry
29 cannon

Casualties and losses

3,000:

897 killed
2,098 wounded

7,500:

1,500 killed
3,500 wounded
2,677 captured

14,000:

3,000:

7,500:

The Battle of Helsingborg (February 28, 1710) was Denmark's failed and final attempt to regain the Scanian lands, lost to Sweden in 1658.

On the Ringstorp heights northeast of Helsingborg, 14,000 Danish invaders under Jørgen Rantzau were decisively defeated by an equally large Swedish army under Magnus Stenbock.

Denmark had been forced out of the Great Northern War by the treaty of Traventhal in 1700, but had long planned on reopening hostilities with the goal of reconquering the lost provinces Scania, Halland and Blekinge. After the Swedish defeat at Poltava in 1709, the Danes saw an opportunity and declared war on Sweden the same year. The declaration of war arrived at the Swedish state council on October 18, 1709. The pretext given were that Sweden had been cheating with the Sound Dues, and that the population of Scania, Halland, Blekinge and Bohuslän had been mistreated.

In late fall 1709, an enormous Danish fleet gathered in Øresund, and on November 2 the a landing was made off Råå. The Danish invasion army was led by general Christian Ditlev Reventlow and consisted of 15,000 men divided into six cavalry regiments, four dragoon regiments, eight infantry regiments and six artillery companies. It was met with virtually no resistance from the Swedes. The Swedish army was in terrible shape after Poltava, when several regiments had been completely annihilated. The work on reconstructing and recruiting the regiments had begun immediately after Poltava, but by late summer 1709, Magnus Stenbock only had one Scanian regiment in battle-fit condition. The Swedish counterattack would have to wait and the army retreated into Småland. In the beginning of December, the Danes controlled almost all of central Scania except for Landskrona and Malmö. Their objective was to take the naval base at Karlskrona in Blekinge, and the Danish army worked its way quickly into Sweden. In January 1710, it defeated a smaller Swedish force outside Kristianstad.

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