Frederick VI of Denmark - King of Denmark

King of Denmark

Frederic was crowned King of Denmark on 13 March 1808. When the throne of Sweden showed signs of becoming unoccupied in 1809, Frederick was interested in becoming elected there, too. Frederick actually was the first monarch of Denmark and Norway to descend from Gustav I of Sweden, who had secured Sweden's independence in 1520s after a period of union with other Scandinavian countries. However, Frederick's brother-in-law, the Prince Christian Augustus of Augustenborg, was first elected to the throne of Sweden, then the French Marshal Bernadotte.

After his defeat in the Napoleonic Wars in 1814 and the loss of Norway, Frederick VI carried through an authoritarian and reactionary course, giving up the liberal ideas of his years as a prince regent. Censorship and suppression of all opposition together with bad economic terms of the country made this period of his reign somewhat gloomy, though the king himself in general maintained his position of a "patriarch" and a well-meaning autocrat. From the 1830s the economic depression was eased a bit and from 1834 the king reluctantly accepted a small democratic innovation by the creation of the Assemblies of the Estate (purely consultative regional assemblies).