Only by such an alliance could Sweden be saved from Russia and France.

Indeed, foreseeing the danger to Sweden from a French army acting from Zealand as a base, Canning proposed to Gustavus that he should occupy that island, or, failing that, receive succour from a British force on his own shore of the Sound.

But both offers were declined.

The final efforts made to draw Denmark into our alliance were equally futile, and she kept up hostilities against us for nearly seven years.

Thus Canning's scheme of alliance with the Scandinavian States failed.
Britain gained, it is true, a further safeguard against invasion; but our statesman, while blaming the precipitate action of our commanders in insisting solely upon the surrender of the fleet, declared that that action, apart from an Anglo-Danish alliance, was "an act of great injustice."[165] And as such it has been generally regarded, that is, by those who did not, and could not, know the real state of the case.