QI: The English Armada

[danmand]

After watching the excellent Mads Mikkelsen/Alicia Vikander film A Royal Affair, I did some reading of the events, the Danes brought it on themselves.

The film glossed over some of the more gruesome aspects of the story. From what I read the Christian VII had Down Syndrome, his Queen and her consort Dr. Johan Struensee were attempting to bring Denmark into the Enlightenment but the nobility wouldn't accept it. They staged a counter- modernization coup, the brain addled King was locked up and Struensse, who banned torture, was hung drawn and quartered. His body parts were hung up as food for crows. They supported Napoleon but the French Navy wasn't strong enough in the North sea. Denmark lost it's remaining land holdings in Europe.

That is pretty accurate. Denmark was the only country on Napoleons side when he came back.
I don't think Christian VII had Down Syndrome. Christian VII was completely unsuitable as an absolute monarch. He probably suffered from schizophrenia and had intense mood-swings. In the first years of his reign he participated in nightly boozes at the brothels of Copenhagen in the company of a prostitute named Bootee-Katrine.

 

[Darts]

What always amazes me is the price the early seafarers were willing to pay . It was completely common for an ordinary transport to leave, say Hamburg, on a Baltic or the North Sea run and simply disappear, never to be seen again. Magellan left with 270 men and only 18 men made it back. The attrition rates for the trade with Far East was just horrible. It was common for the ships to lose 3/4 of the crew on a single voyage. Even the lower decks on the warships were suffering many fold greater casualties in peace than in combat. Life use to be much cheaper that's for sure.

"Scurvy was responsible for more deaths at sea than storms, shipwrecks, combat, and all other diseases combined. None of the potential fates awaiting sailors was pleasant, but scurvy exacted a particularly gruesome death. The earliest symptom—lethargy so intense that people once believed laziness was a cause of the disease—is debilitating."

 

[Darts]

The Danes were once Vikings.