The fires of 1808

Denmark had tried to stay out of the great European showdown, the Napoleonic Wars, but in 1807 the English attacked Copenhagen and kidnapped the Danish fleet. The Danish government sought an alliance with France, whose Emperor Napoleon I sent an army unit of 30,000 French and Spanish soldiers to Denmark under the command of Marshal Jean Baptiste Bernadotte, later King Charles 14. Johan of Sweden. The purpose was partly to keep Denmark in the alliance and partly to assist with a campaign against Sweden to regain the lost eastern Danish provinces of Scania, Halland and Blekinge for Denmark. The campaign failed. The Spanish soldiers got no further than Jutland and Funen, from where, after a coup in August, they sailed home to Spain on English ships to participate in a rebellion against the French occupation of Spain.

On 29 March, while Marshal Bernadotte was staying at the castle, a fire broke out in the chimney of the guardroom's fireplace, and before the seriousness of the situation was fully realized, the fire was so well established that it could not be fought successfully. They limited themselves to saving as much of the castle's contents as possible. No lives were lost in the catastrophic fire. On the second day of the fire, part of the Giant Tower collapsed and crushed the castle church underneath. Koldinghus was left as a soot-blackened ruin.

In the spring of 1808, Denmark was still at war. Copenhagen had been bombarded and the country's economy was in a miserable state. At the peace treaty in 1814, Norway had to be ceded to Sweden.

No one was seriously thinking of rebuilding Koldinghus. There was no need for the castle as the county governor had already moved from Kolding years ago. Only the local population used the castle - as a quarry.