Copenhagen

The crown wanted that trade for itself. After the Hanseatic League stormed the town in 1368, Eric of Pomerania at last took Copenhagen from the Church for good in 1419; it became the kingdom's naval station in 1430 and Christopher of Bavaria's royal residence in 1443, and with the founding of the university in 1479 it was plainly the first town of Denmark, though still home to fewer than 5,000 people.

Christian IV left the deepest mark, widening the ramparts and laying out Christianshavn across the harbour. In the war of 1658–60 Copenhagen was the last place in the kingdom still in Danish hands: in February 1659 soldiers and burghers together beat back a Swedish assault on the walls, and the siege dragged on until May 1660. Absolute monarchy, introduced that year, made the city the seat of an ever more centralised state. Plague killed some 22,000 of about 60,000 inhabitants in 1711–12 and fire burned a quarter of the town in 1728, yet by the end of the century Copenhagen was growing rich on neutral trade, until the British bombardment of 1807 set whole districts ablaze with rockets.