While surfing for something else, I came across a reference to a battle I’d never heard of. Did you know that the English Navy bombarded Copenhagen just over two centuries ago for, as far as I can tell, no bloody reason whatsoever? Details here.
Thomas Erskine’s quoted line “if hell did not exist before, Providence would create it now to punish ministers for that damnable measure” pretty much sums it up. (Erskine seems to have been a good guy in other respects as well.)
I’d have thought the wikipedia article made the reason for that pretty clear – it was much the same as that for the later and similarly successful sinking of the French Fleet in the Second World War.
P.S., there hadn’t been an English Navy for a century by then.