The King of Sweden, Charles X., lay with his army before Copenhagen. His generals, the young Prince of Sulzbach and Count Steenbock, besieged the city, and his troops showed themselves worthy sons of the famous Thirty Years' War. The system of cruelty and extortion that had characterised their Polish and German campaigns was renewed in Denmark, and with the greater fierceness that national antipathy served at once as pretext and stimulus to the soldier's lust of blood and plunder. And thus was it that upon the island of Funen scenes were enacted, whose frightful record, handed down by history, now appears scarcely credible. Men and women, priests and laymen, old and young, the humble and the illustrious, were subjected to the grossest ill-treatment, either to extort money, or as punishment for not possessing it. Amongst the Danes themselves mutual fear and mistrust existed; for individuals were not wanting who, through fear, or in hope of profit, played openly or secretly into the hands of the enemy. And, to add to the desolation the Swedes brought with them, the inhabitants had scarcely yet recovered the ravages of a pestilence, which had disappeared from their shores but a few years previously. Whether it was the king's absence from the island, or a notion in the Swedes' mind that they would soon have to leave the country, which rendered the soldiery so unbridled in their excesses, certain it is, that the scourge of war made itself more severely felt than ever towards the end of the year 1659. The doubtful sort of succour afforded by the Dutch fleet was chiefly confined to Zealand, and it was small consolation to the people of Funen to see the proud ships of the rich republic cruising in the Belt and Cattegat. The scanty intelligence from the capital, which in summer some bold boatman occasionally brought over, was not always to be relied upon, seldom or never satisfactory, and ceased altogether when winter came, and dark and stormy nights rendered the navigation between the islands impracticable for small craft.