771 



STRUENSEE AND BRANDT. 



STRUENSEE, CARL AUGUST VON. 



772 



friends, and slighted by her enemies. The triumph of Queen Caroline 

 was complete ; the king behaved to her with deference, and Struensee 

 was now constituted first minister with almost unlimited power. Thus 

 matters stood at the end of 1776, when of the two parties striving for 

 the power which the king had almost resigned, that of the young 



?ueen under the guidance of Struensee obtained a decisive victory, 

 n order to be in perfect security, Struensee assigned to Brandt the 

 special office of amusing the king and preventing him from having 

 any conference with his ministers. 



It WHS about this time that the king, urged by Struensee, dissolved 

 the council of state, and instituted in its place a commission of con- 

 ference (' Commission conferenz ') which consisted of the presidents 

 of the several branches of public administration. This measure 

 brought all the power into the hands of the prime minister, by whom 

 the members of this new council had been appointed. It changed at 

 the same time the whole Danish constitution by depriving the nobility 

 of their hereditary influence in the affairs of the government, created 

 a universal feeling of disapprobation, and brought much popular 

 odium on Struensee. So limited were the powers of this new chamber 

 that it could assemble only at certain times, and might be dismissed 

 by the minister ; in fact, its members had neither rank, power, nor 

 influence. The imprudence with which this measure was carried 

 into effect could not but prejudice the queen's cause. Among the 

 many enemies which it created, few were so exasperated as Count 

 Rantzau, who, with his seat in the council of state, lost all his power 

 and authority. In order to revenge himself he joined the queen 

 dowager at Friedensburg. This sudden change in the administration 

 had however the desired effect. Struensee's authority became para- 

 mount, and no one ventured to oppose him. The ministers were 

 removed one after the other. All affairs were carried on under the 

 immediate direction of Struensee, and all papers passed through his 

 hands before their ratification by the king. He soon found however 

 that notwithstanding his qualifications for managing the foreign 

 affairs of the kingdom, he had no present means of restoring the 

 exchequer and regulating the home department, both of which had 

 long been declining under the administration of persons utterly 

 devoid of prudence and unacquainted with the resources of the 

 country. His brother C. A. tstruensee, member of the college of 

 finance, assisted him in his intended improvements ; but the taxes 

 which he imposed produced great destitution among the lower 

 classes, a circumstance which, joined to the despotism exercised over 

 them by a foreigner, increased the number of malcontents and the 

 dissatisfaction of the people. All this time the king was surrounded 

 by libertines, by whom the court was plunged into a profligacy which 

 offended the nation. Meanwhile the attachment of the queen to 

 Strueneee exceeded, in appearance at least, the bounds of moderation. 

 In July 1771 she was delivered of a princess, and her fears of the 

 infamous reports which were likely to spread from the court of the 

 queen dowager at Friedensburg tended only to place her after tbis 

 event still more in Struev.si e's power. This power he shamefully 

 abused. He was raised to the dignity of a count, together with his 

 friend Brandt, and there is reason to believe that much of the 

 enormous wealth of which he died possessed was wrung from the 

 queen's weakness. But though the queen's fears made her silent, it 

 was not so with the press. Its comments on Struensee's proceedings 

 could not be silenced, except by revoking the freedom which he had 

 granted only two years before with the hope of obtaining popularity. 

 This proceeding, as well as the many slights he offered to his former 

 friends, raised the indignation of the people to the highest pitch, and 

 even those who were most attached to him treated him with reserve 

 and coldness. At this cri>is too his mental powers began to fail ; the 

 daring which had founded his administration, and the quickness in 

 planning and boldness in executing which sustained it, gave place to 

 a weak and vacillating fear of his daily increasing difficulties. An 

 unimportant mutiny of 300 sailors who had not received their pay had 

 already shaken Struensee's firmness, and was followed by a revolt of 

 the IMe-nuards, whom he had dismissed without any cause. 



On this occasion Struensee acted in a manner unworthy of a man 

 in power ; he acceded to all the demands of the revolted soldiers, and 

 sought to conciliate them, by various means. This disclosure of his 

 weakness of character, to which succeeded measures evidently calcu- 

 lated to secure his personal safety, led the English ambassador to warn 

 the queen of the approaching dowufal of the favourite. The regard he 

 felt for her made hitu even go farther, and request that she would 

 remove Struensee from the court, iu order to prevent the catastrophe 

 which he foresaw. But all his entreaties were in vain. The queen 

 trusted too much to Strueusee's prudence, who now made some 

 changes in the department of police, with the view of securing himself 

 against any danger. But the purport of those measures was too 

 manifest. The people naturally enough concluded that Struensee 

 was conscious of having slighted the nation, and they began to see 

 that the prime minis'er was only a fortunate adventurer, whose 

 car- er was drawing to a close. The partisans of Juliana Maria and 

 her son Prince Frederic regarded this as an opportunity for a coup 

 d<$tat too favourable to be neglected. They planned a conspiracy 

 with so much secresy that nothing whatever transpired which could 

 have put Struensee on his guard. Early in the morning of the 17th 

 January 1772, Queen Matilda, Strueusee and his brother, Brandt, and 



all their friends and adherents, were arrested. The evening before a 

 ball had been given in the royal palace. Struensee, conscious of his 

 own unpopularity, had, according to his custom, surrounded the 

 palace with guards on whose fidelity he thought he could rely. 

 General Eichstadt, who had been gained over by the opposite party, 

 changed the soldiers, substituting his own dragoons in their place. 

 That evening the young queen danced much, and closed the ball with 

 the treacherous Prince Frederic, about one o'clock. At three in the 

 morning, Colonel Kiiller, an old enemy of Strueusee, sent his officers 

 into the palace, telling them that he had orders from the king to 

 arrest the queen. At the same time the conspirators the Queen 

 Dowager, Prince Frederic, Rauteau, Koller, Giildberg, and Eichstadt 

 went into the wretched king's bedchamber, and forced him to sign 

 the order for tho seizure of Struensee and his partisans. The unfor- 

 tunate queeu was carried to Kronenburg, 'where she was confined 

 until the end of May 1772, when she was set at liberty through the 

 resolute influence of the English government, and was removed to 

 Zelle, where, after three years of exile, and at the early age of twenty- 

 four, she died of a broken heart. With her last breath she solemnly 

 asserted her innocence, and however imprudently she may have acted, 

 there is little, if any doubt, that she was free from the crime impute 1 

 to her by her enemies, the queen dowager and her partisans, who 

 appear to have been devoid of the least particle of truth, mercy, or 

 generosity. 



A special commission was formed, in order to try Struensee. The 

 charge, consisting of nine heads, was given to the fiscal-general on the 

 22nd April 1772. He was, of course the entire power being now in 

 the hands of his bitterest enemies, and the king being in fact a prisoner 

 in their hands found guilty. By the sentence, which was pronounced 

 on the 25th of April 1772, Struensee was to be deprived of all his 

 dignities and beheaded. His right hand was to be cut oft', his body 

 quartered and broken on the wheel, nnd his head and hand were to 

 be stuck up on a pole. This sentence the king was forced to go 

 through the mockery of confirming ; and on the 28th of April 

 Struensee was decapitated, after witnessing the death of his friend 

 Brandt. During Struensee's imprisonment, Dr. Miinter succeeded iu 

 converting him from scepticism to Christianity : the narrative of his 

 conversion was published, first at Copenhagen, in 1788, and trans- 

 lated into English by the Rev. Mr. Wendeborn, and republished in 

 1826 by Thomas Rennell. Struensee was undoubtedly a man of great 

 abilities, capable of great application to business, rapid and decisive 

 in his resolutions, as well as enlarged aud patriotic in his views ; but 

 he neither possessed the profound policy, the active vigilance, nor 

 the superior judgment requisite for maintaining him in his sudden 

 elevation. Towards the close of his ministry he acted without fore- 

 sight or address, as if, with the difficulties which augmented around 

 him, he lost his presence of mind and strength of understanding. 

 Voluptuousness was the source of his misfortunes ; ambition only con- 

 tributed to hasten and complete them. His ignorance of the laiiL-uiic 

 of the country which he for some time ruled made him commit many 

 mistakes which otherwise he would have avoided. Nevertheless the 

 charges brought against him are heavy, especially that of peculation ; 

 he had ou various occasions used the public money for the purposes 

 of himself and his friends, and on one occasion he took 60,000 dollars 

 to remunerate himself for his services, and gave an equal sum to 

 Brandt. His friend Brandt was formerly chamberlain to Christian VII.; 

 but having calumniated Count Hoik, the then favourite of the king, 

 he was banished from court. Struensee, as above stated, recalled him 

 in 1770, and from that period his life was but a copy of that of the 

 prime-minister. 



(Jens Kragh Host, Der geheime Cobindsniinister Graf Strucnsee und 

 desscn Mmistei-ium, which is the best book ou the subject; An Authen- 

 tic Elucidation of the History of Counts Slruensee and Brandt, 1788, a 

 book containing many unfounded and incorrect assertions; Falken 

 Skiold, M^moires, Paris, 1826; A Narrative of the Conversion and 

 Death of Count Struensee, by Dr. Miinter, London, IS'26, containing 

 also Struensee's famous confession ; and Mahon, Enyland, vol. v.) 



STRUENSEE, CARL AUGUST VON, brother of the foregoing, 

 was born at Halle on the 18th of August 1735, and entered the school 

 of the orphan-house and the university of that town. The wish of his 

 father was that he should study theology ; but although he was 

 matriculated iu the theological faculty, young Struensee chiefly applied 

 his mind to mathematics and philosophy. Iu 1756 he was appointed 

 a lecturer at the university of Halle ; his lectures on mathematics 

 and Hebrew were well attended, and procured for him some reputation. 

 As "early as 1757 he obtained a professorship at the military academy 

 of Liej-'nitz. The scantiness of pupils which the war had occasioue.l, 

 gave him leisure to study the application of mathematics to the science 

 of war, and in 1760 he published his ' Rudiments of Artillery ' (3rd 

 edition, Leipzig, 1788). This work procured him the favour of 

 Frederic II., who sent him a great number of young officers whom he 

 was to form for the service. In 1771 appeared his 'Rudiments of 

 Military Architecture,' the third volume of which appeared in 1774 ; 

 they were republifhtd at Leipzig in 1786. This wus the first good 

 book on the subject published in Germany. Meanwhile his brother, 

 who had lately made his appearance at the court of Copenhagen, 

 invited him to that city in 1769. Here he was raised to the dignity of 

 counsellor of justice, and such was his application in the performance 



