Attempts to relieve the southern Baltic provinces had failed and the Danish fleet had inflicted a stunning blow to the Swedish navy at the Battle of Öland in June 1676.

Denmark was able to prevent Sweden from reinforcing its German possessions, and at the same time was able to land a large army in Skåne to take the war to Swedish soil.

The Swedish leadership under Charles XI managed to get the upper hand in the land war through the victories at Halmstad on 17 August and Lund on 4 December 1676.

Both sides needed to take control of the Baltic shipping lanes; the Danes to bolster their forces in Skåne and Sweden to relieve their possessions in northern Germany.

Charles hoped that the success on land was followed up with a victory at sea, which would cut off supplies from the Danish army in Skåne and prevent it from evacuating back to Denmark.

Horn was quickly informed that Dutch reinforcements under Willem Bastiaensz Schepers were heading for the Baltic, and on 21 April he received orders from King Charles to join the main body of the Swedish fleet with a minor squadron anchored off Gothenburg under the command of Erik Sjöblad.

[5] At the battle of Møn, a superior Danish force won a decisive victory, sinking or capturing more than half of the Swedish vessels and taking Sjöblad prisoner.

The original order was to engage the Swedish force directly, but the weather delay made Danish military leadership hesitant, especially Grand Chancellor Frederik Ahlefelt.

[8] The Swedish main fleet had left its base on Dalarö, near Stockholm, on 9 June and two days later was joined off Öland by two ships from its Gothenburg squadron and the newly built 60-gun Kalmar.

At Stevns Klint, the Swedish 66-gun Draken ran aground and was forced to surrender after facing heavy gun fire from several Danish ships, including Juel's own 58-gun flagship Christianus V. The flagship was so badly damaged during the battle that Juel had to move his flag to the 64-gun Fridericus III in Marquor Rodsten's squadron and when this ship also suffered damage, moved on to the 64-gun Charlotta Amalia.

[9] Around midday, off the village of Højerup on Stevns Klint, Wachtmeister in the Swedish lead squadron sighted a force of eight large warships and relayed this to Horn.

Horn let Wachtmeister continue north to attack what he believed were Dutch reinforcements while the rest of the Swedish force turned east-southeast, the position where he thought Rodsten's squadron was located.

Juel's at first joined battled with Wachtmeister, men then set course for the main Swedish force together with Rodsten's third squadron when he noticed that Horn was heading eastwards.

The combined Dano-Dutch fleet, now under Tromp, was ordered to "burn and defile, plunder, kill or abduct the people",[13] with the intention of luring Swedish troops away from Scania and thus relieve the land-bound operations.

In their opinion, Juel had innovated the concept of "breaking the line" a century before it was used by Admiral George Rodney is his decisive victory against a French fleet in the Battle of the Saintes in 1782, during the American Revolutionary War.

More recent historians have questioned previous conclusions of Juel's maneuvers and pointed to the fact that contemporary sea officers were well aware of the advantages of breaking an opponent's line, but had still not developed the degree of discipline, cohesion and organization required to allow the tactic to be applied consistently and reliably.