W. H. Wilkins

“ The young Queen must have often felt friendless and depressed as she paced the terraces of Frederiksborg or looked down from the windows of her apartments into the green water which lapped the castle walls, or gazed out on the clear northern night, and watched the moonlight play on the towers and pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes of a morning she would wander forth to the beech woods beyond the gardens. ”

“ Though Rantzau was fifty-three years of age, he was still a very handsome man, a born courtier, an exquisite beau, and skilled in all the arts of pleasing women. Had he been ten years younger he might have tried to eclipse Struensee in the Queen’s favour, but he was a cynical and shrewd observer, and saw that any such attempt was foredoomed to failure, so he contented himself with offering the most flattering homage to the young Queen. ”

“ Honour, duty and gratitude were nothing to him provided he gained his desire. In his belief in his destiny, his great abilities, his soaring ambition and complete heedlessness of every one save himself, this extraordinary man was a type of the uebermensch.
Struensee’s treatment of the Queen was an example of his utter unscrupulousness. Her condition when he came to court would have moved any man to pity. Her youth, her beauty and her friendlessness appealed to every sentiment of chivalry. The conditions under which Struensee made her acquaintance were the most intimate and delicate. ”

“ Everything that came to Struensee in the next few years—honour, place and power—he owed to the Queen, and to her alone. Common gratitude, apart from any other consideration, should have led him to treat her honourably, but from the beginning he was false to her. He who came in the guise of a deliverer was really her evil genius. The young Queen was never anything to him but a means to an end. Adventurer and intriguer as he was, Struensee had marked Matilda down as his prey before he was admitted to her presence, and she fell an easy victim to his wiles. ”

“ Russia at this time meant Catherine the Great, for the imperious Empress gathered all the reins of government, both foreign and domestic, in her hands. She had come to regard the King of Denmark as almost her vassal, and her first instinct was to crush any signs of revolt against her influence. The Empress was minutely informed of the changes at the Danish court and the causes which had led to them. She knew all about the intrigue between Matilda and Struensee. But she had no sympathy with the young Queen of Denmark, whose career, in some respects, offered a curious parallel to her own. ”

“ Every cast-off minister, every discontented politician, sought the Prince of Wales, and found in him a ready weapon to harass the government and wound the King. The Prince had undoubted grievances, such as his restricted allowance and the postponement of his marriage to a suitable princess. For some years after Frederick’s arrival in England the King managed to evade the question of the marriage, but at last, owing chiefly to the clamour of the opposition, he reluctantly arranged a match between the Prince of Wales and Augusta, daughter of the reigning Duke of Saxe-Gotha. ”

“ If the doctor proved useful to them with the King, he would be rewarded with money, a higher place at court, a decoration, possibly a title. But that would be all. The reactionary party of Juliana Maria would not do so much; they might employ him in their intrigues, but the haughty Danish nobility, who formed its backbone, would never admit a German doctor of obscure birth to terms of equality. But Struensee’s soaring ambition knew no bounds. He determined to win both place and power, and to do this he realised that it was necessary to form a new party—that of the Queen. ”

“ Even if we make allowance for courtly flattery, the picture remains that of a woman of rare loveliness and indescribable charm.
Though her heart was untouched, Matilda was no doubt flattered by her husband’s attentions, and she honestly tried to meet his advances half way. Acting on the advice of her mother, her sister, and of all who wished her well, she strove to please him, and in her desire to hold his fickle favour, she even overlooked the fact that the hated Holck was still in the ascendant. Perhaps she thought, by fair words and guile, to undermine his ascendency. ”

“ Then came the Knights of the Order of the Elephant, wearing their robes and insignia; the Knights of the Order of the Dannebrog, also in their robes; the Royal Head Riding-Master, mounted on the “Dancing Horse” (whatever that may mean) , and a bevy of beautifully dressed ladies in coaches. The climax of all this magnificence was the lovely young Queen in robes of silver tissue and ermine, with a circlet of diamonds on her fair hair, seated in her coach drawn by eight white horses, and surrounded by royal lackeys in gorgeous liveries. ”

“ Struensee remained at Altona for a few weeks after the King had left for Copenhagen to sell his house, pay his debts and wind up his affairs. He visited his parents at Schleswig to receive their congratulations and take leave of them. His father shook his head doubtfully over his godless son’s rapid rise in the world, and his mother warned him against the perils and temptations of the wicked court. But Struensee, flushed with his success, was in no mood to listen to their croakings. He believed in himself, and he believed in his destiny. “Everything is possible,” he said. ”

“ He had the preposterous coat of arms engraved on the seal which he affixed to cabinet orders; he built himself a magnificent coach, resplendent with crimson and gold, and blazoned it on the panels. He vested his servants and running footmen in gaudy liveries of scarlet and white, and decked them with diamond badges. When Struensee’s valet appeared for the first time in his new livery he fell down the palace stairs, and in his fall broke his badge and his nose, and the blood spoiled his finery. ”

“ Keith arrived at the Danish capital in June, 1771, shortly before the birth of the Princess Louise Augusta. He did not take up his new duties with any zest. “Climate, comfort and society are all against me,” he wrote to his father shortly after his arrival at Copenhagen. But he found the place “by far a finer city than I had figured to myself, or had a right to expect from the other Danish towns I had seen upon the road. The streets are broad, the openings and the squares spacious, and the palace, as well as several of the public buildings, magnificent.” ”

“ Struensee visited the gallery at Fontainebleau where Queen Christina of Sweden, after her abdication, had her secretary and favourite Monaldeschi murdered, or, as she regarded it, executed. Soon after he returned to Denmark Struensee told his brother that he had been induced to visit the gallery by a dream, in which there appeared before him the vision of an exalted lady whose name he hardly dared to mention. He meant, of course, Queen Matilda. His brother heard him in ominous silence, and Struensee, after waiting some time for an answer, quoted his favourite maxim: “Everything is possible”. ”

“ That the young and beautiful Queen should have a favourite was perhaps, under the circumstances, only to be expected; if he had been one of their own order, the weakness would have been excused. But that she should stoop to a man of bourgeois origin, a mere doctor, who was regarded by the haughty nobles as little above the level of a menial, was a thing which admitted of no palliation. [123] But the Queen, blinded by her passion, was indifferent to praise or blame, and Struensee took a delight in demonstrating his power over her under their very eyes. ”

“ The abolition of the Council of State, though it was so drastic a measure, was greeted with applause by the people—the burghers and the peasants—who had long groaned under the tyranny of the nobility, and had come to look upon them as the cause of all their ills. The royal decree of course called forth a tremendous uproar from the privileged classes, and if the nobles could have conferred together the situation might have become dangerous. But Struensee hit on a very ingenious plan for driving them out of Copenhagen. ”

“ The King and Queen of Denmark travelled from Lüneburg direct to Copenhagen. During the short stay of the court in the capital the Queen showed herself much in public, and sought in all ways to impress her personality upon the people. She drove every day about the streets in a state coach, attended by an escort of guards; the King was always by her side, and his presence was intended to give the lie to many sinister rumours. Apparently the royal couple were living together in the utmost harmony and the King had complete confidence in his Queen. ”

“ The Danish Queen’s all-absorbing passion for one man was regarded with contempt by the Empress Catherine. It is needless to say she did not condemn it from a moral point of view, for she was a very Messalina in her passions, but because she considered it a fatal weakness in a Queen who apparently aspired to reign over her husband’s kingdom and to inaugurate a new system of policy. So far from the similarity between the trials of Catherine’s early married life and the Queen of Denmark’s sorrows enlisting her sympathy, the Empress regarded Matilda with dislike, mingled with contempt. ”

“ Christian had left Matilda an unformed girl, he came back to find her a beautiful and self-possessed woman. His wayward fancy was pleased, and soon the mot ran round the palace that the King had actually fallen in love with his own wife. He might well have done so, for she was by far the most beautiful woman at his court. There is a portrait of Queen Matilda in the Rosenborg at Copenhagen, painted about this time, when she was in her eighteenth year. It represents her in the full bloom of her beauty. ”

“ On the other hand it stands to Frederick’s credit that he chose as his personal friends some of the ablest men of the day, and found delight and recreation in their society. Between him and Bolingbroke there existed the warmest sympathy. When Bolingbroke came back to England after Walpole’s fall, he renewed his friendship with Frederick, and often paced with him and the Princess through the gardens and shrubberies of their favourite Kew, while he waxed eloquent over the tyranny of the Whig oligarchy, which kept the King in thrall, and held up before them his ideal of a patriot king. ”

“ It was now realised that from the beginning Struensee had aimed at absolute power. He first persuaded the King to abolish the Council of State and proclaim himself an absolute monarch, and then forced him to delegate the whole power to him as Privy Cabinet Minister. The Danish [Pg 334] nation were, in fact, no longer ruled by their hereditary monarch but by a foreign adventurer, who had usurped the kingly functions, and, having abolished all ministers and councils, gathered up into himself every branch of power and prerogative. The unscrupulousness of the man was only equalled by his audacity. ”

“ One of the “inveterate enemies” was the austere and haughty Madame de Plessen, who hedged the Queen round with iron etiquette, and permitted none to enter her presence without her permission. Especially did she throw difficulties in the way of the English envoy having frequent access of her Majesty, on the ground that his visits would be sure to cause jealousy and ill-will. The Queen, she urged, must overcome her natural preferences, she must forget that she was a Princess of Great Britain, and remember only that she was Queen of Denmark and Norway. ”

“ To be Danish was bourgeois, to be virtuous even more so.
The cheap cynicism which mocks at marriage, and all its privileges and duties, was much in vogue among the fashionable or “young party” at the Danish court. Christian VII. had heard too much of these views from the young rake-hells whom he chose for his companions not to be entirely at one with them, and he looked on marriage as the greatest burden. He had been extremely reluctant to take it upon himself and had only done so at the strongest representations of his ministers. ”

“ As the royal procession returned to the palace, a salute from the ramparts was fired, and the heralds on the gate blew a loud blast on their silver trumpets. The King and Queen received the congratulations of their court, and then the coronation banquet took place. During the banquet a chorale was sung by the choir, of which a verse may be roughly translated as follows:—
And long shall it be before the sons of the North weep,
For while Christian lives, and Matilda,
There shall be nothing but joy,
And every man shall dwell in his tent in peace. ”

“ Badly educated, disliked by his parents, to whom he grew up almost a stranger, and surrounded from the day of his arrival in England by malcontents, parasites and flatterers, it would have needed a much stronger man than Frederick to resist the evil influences around him. His public utterances, and there is no real ground for doubting their sincerity, go to show that he was a prince of liberal and enlightened views, a friend of peace and a lover of England. It is probable that, had he been spared to ascend the throne, he would have made a better king than either his father or grandfather. ”

“ Few monarchs ever began their reign with more ardent prayers of their people, or inspired brighter hopes, than “Christian VII., by the grace of God King of Denmark, Norway, of the Goths and Wends, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, Stormarn and the Dittmarsches, Count of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst”—to quote his full style and titles. The young King was regarded as the probable regenerator of Denmark. “The eminent virtues and truly royal disposition of the new Sovereign afford a very agreeable prospect of his future reign,” writes Titley. ”

“ Louisa Anne, and she loved the land of her birth. She forced a smile in response to those who came to offer their congratulations, but she took no interest in the preparations for her marriage. She seemed to have a foreboding of evil, and it was evident to all that she was a most unwilling bride, sacrificed upon the altar of political expediency.
Not much time was allowed the young Princess for reflection, for soon after the message was received from the Danish court her marriage and departure were pushed on with all speed. ”

“ All things that made for purity of life, nobility of purpose, or singleness of heart, were mocked at and derided. Truth, honour and virtue were by-words. During the later years of Frederick V.’s reign the influence of the French court (at its worst) had not been confined in Denmark to politics alone, but extended to manners and morals as well. This influence became far more visible at the court of Christian VII. than at that of his father. ”

“ Rumours of the amazing state of affairs at the Danish court reached England in the spring of 1770, and before long George III. and the Princess-Dowager of Wales were acquainted with the sudden rise of Struensee, and the extraordinary favour shown to him by the Queen. They also heard of the check which Russia had received at Copenhagen, and the probability of Bernstorff (who was regarded as the friend of England) being hurled from power to make room for the ambitious adventurer. ”