Sweden was a member of the Hanseatic League. The League had originally been founded to suppress pirates, combat privateering, and abolish unreasonable transit taxes. Later, it evolved from a purely economic alliance into an economic, political, and military one. Many cities joined it for commercial benefits or security guarantees.
To gain Britain's support, the Bourbon royal family gave all its overseas colonies to Britain. Through the Treaty of Amiens, Britain then returned all those colonies to France, including Guadeloupe. Napoleon had always fought over every inch of land, so it was possible that he would demand Saint Barthélemy back from Sweden.
So-called neutral countries were often not absolutely neutral. The Royal Navy believed Denmark was secretly supporting Napoleon, so it bombarded Copenhagen. Copenhagen lay on the Øresund Strait, the crucial throat of the Baltic Sea.
Whether during the Seven Years' War, the Anglo-French wars, or the early years of the French Revolution, Denmark had indeed remained neutral.
Denmark had not only Andersen's Fairy Tales, but also the Danish royal family. Marrying into royalty was not as "fairy-tale-like" as outsiders imagined. Caroline Matilda, the youngest sister of Britain's King George III, only learned after marrying Christian VII that he suffered from mental illness. Her marriage was unhappy. The king spent his days in Copenhagen's pleasure houses, leading his attendants through the streets to beat citizens without restraint, smash windows, and wreck furniture for amusement. He even publicly declared that he could not love the queen. In the end, he fell into a state of mental stupor, displaying symptoms of paranoia, self-harm, and hallucinations.
Sometimes dreams could be confused with the hallucinations of mental illness. Napoleon might once have thought he was mad, believing Georgiana was a person he had imagined after developing schizophrenia.
Many geniuses had such problems. John Nash, the