The Battle of Sehested was fought between Danish and Russian-Prussian-British troops at Sehested (in Holstein) on 10 December 1813 during the War of the Sixth Coalition. The Danish Auxiliary Corps, which fought on the side of the French defeated the coalition forces commanded by Major General Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn. The battle, however, would not ultimately change the course of the war, which ended in 1814 with Denmark’s defeat. Background The kingdom of Denmark-Norway found itself involved in the Napoleonic Wars following the events of the Battle of Copenhagen in 1807. To prevent the large Danish-Norwegian fleet from falling into the hands of Napoleon's French Empire, the United Kingdom attacked Copenhagen destroying ships at anchor. The Danish-Norwegians though had no intention of joining Napoleon. Moreover the decision to seize the Danish-Norwegian navy, before they fell into french hands, was done on the basis of a fallacious report send by a british army officer operating as a spy in Copenhagen. The report testified that the danish-norwegian navy was indeed mobilising, when in reality it was merely under maintenance. The army officer was unable to correctly identify the danish-norwegian navy's intention, due to his inexperience with maritime logistics. The kingdom, which until then had tried to maintain a precarious neutrality in the conflict between the French and the British, thereafter sided openly with France. While keeping faith with this alliance, the prudent King Frederick VI of Denmark tried to keep the country out of the frequent campaigns as much as possible, and the Danish troops did not go beyond a generic employment as occupation troops in the northern regions of Germany. Following the French defeat in the Russian Campaign, at the beginning of 1813, Denmark-Norway formally declared a state of neutrality. The country was bankrupt and more than ever needed a return to peace to restore its disastrous economy. The negotiations initiated by Frederick IV with the powers of the sixth anti-French coalition, however, were unsuccessful. The coalitions favored Sweden's claims for an annexation of Norway, and in March 1813, the king decided to renew his treaty of alliance with France; a Danish-Norwegian expeditionary force, 13,000 strong under the orders of Prince Frederik of Hesse (brother-in-law of the monarch) was then deployed in the Schleswig-Holstein region and supported the forces of Marshal Louis Nicolas Davout in his campaigns in the Hamburg area against the multinational troops of the Russian general Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn.