In late fall 1709, an enormous Danish fleet gathered in Øresund, and on November 2 it arrived at Råå. The Danish invasion force was led by general Christian Ditlev Reventlow and consisted of 15,000 men divided into six cavalry regiments, four dragoon regiments, eight infantry regiments and six artillery companies. It was met with virtually no resistance from the Swedes. The Swedish army was in terrible shape after Poltava, when several regiments had been completely annihilated. The work on reconstructing and recruiting the regiments had begun immediately after Poltava, but by late summer 1709, general Magnus Stenbock only had one Scanian line regiment in battle-ready condition. The Swedish counterattack would have to wait and the army retreated into Småland. In the beginning of December, the Danes controlled almost all of central Scania except for Landskrona and Malmö. Their objective was to capture the naval base at Karlskrona in Blekinge, and the Danish army advanced quickly into Swedish territory. In January 1710, it defeated a smaller Swedish force in a skirmish outside Kristianstad.