THE QUEEN’S FOLLY.

1770.

Struensee, who was now sure of his position with the King and Queen, resolved to carry out his plans, and obtain the object of his ambition—political power. In order to gain this it was necessary that the ministers holding office should one by one be removed, and the back of the Russian party in Copenhagen be broken. The Queen was quite agreeable to every change that Struensee suggested; she only stipulated that her detested enemy, Holck, should go first, and his friends at court follow. Struensee agreed, but in these matters it was necessary to move with great caution, and await a favourable opportunity to strike. Quite unwittingly Holck played into his enemies’ hands; the great thing, as either party knew well, was to gain possession of the King, who would sign any paper laid before him. A page, named Warnstedt, who was always about the person of the King, was Struensee’s friend, and Holck therefore resolved to get rid of him and appoint a creature of his own. He thought he could best effect this by taking the King away from his present surroundings, and he therefore proposed to Christian that he should make another tour through the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. The King agreed, and Holck was jubilant, for he knew that if he could only get the King to himself the power of Struensee would be shaken. To his dismay, the Queen announced that she intended to accompany her husband. She was anxious, she said, to see the duchies, and had no intention of being left behind again. Notwithstanding the difficulties which Holck raised, the King offered no objection, and even expressed pleasure that his Queen would accompany him. The Queen’s going meant, of course, that her favourite would go too. Struensee hailed the prospect of the tour; he had long been wishing to get the King and Queen away from the capital in order that he might better effect the changes he had in contemplation.

The preparations for the tour were pushed on apace. The King and Queen were to be attended by a numerous suite. Holck, Struensee and Warnstedt were to be in attendance, and all the ladies of the Queen’s household. Of ministers only Bernstorff, the Prime Minister, was to accompany them, and the same council of three, Thott, Moltke and Rosenkrantz, who had managed public business at Copenhagen during the King’s former tour, were to conduct it again, but under limitations. They received express orders from the King not to have any transactions with foreign envoys during his absence, and if any matter of urgency occurred they were to communicate with him in writing before deciding on any plan of action. These instructions were, of course, dictated to the King by Struensee. Bernstorff was astonished and indignant when he heard of them, for he guessed the quarter whence they came. He began to fear that his position was threatened, and, too late, regretted that he had not taken the repeated advice of his friends and removed Struensee while there was time. He knew, though the English influence was on his side, that he had nothing to hope from the Queen; he had offended her past forgiveness by insisting on the dismissal of Madame de Plessen, and by wishing to exclude her from the regency. He started on the tour with great misgivings. But he had been in office so long that even now he could not imagine the government of the kingdom going on without him, forgetting that no man is indispensable.

On June 20, 1770, the royal party arrived at Gottorp Castle in Schleswig, an ancient and unpretending edifice on the edge of a lake, which was then occupied by Prince Charles of Hesse, whom the King had appointed Viceroy of the Duchies. The Viceroy and his wife, Princess Louise, drove out a league from Gottorp to meet the King and Queen, and their greetings were most cordial, especially those between Matilda and her sister-in-law. The King, too, was very friendly, though Prince Charles saw a great change in him. He seemed to rally his failing powers a little at Gottorp.

Prince Charles noticed with amazement how great a power Struensee had acquired; it was the first time he had seen the favourite, and he took a strong dislike to him, which, perhaps, coloured the description he gave of the visit. “After an hour’s conversation,” writes Prince Charles [on arriving at Gottorp], “in which we recalled past times, the Queen took me by the arm and said: ‘Now, escort me to Princess Louise’s apartments, but do not take me through the ante-chamber’—where the suite were assembled. We almost ran along the corridor to the side door by the staircase, and then we saw some of the suite coming downstairs. The Queen espied Struensee among them, and said hastily: ‘I must go back; do not keep me!’ I replied that I could not well leave her Majesty alone in the passage. ‘No! no!’ she cried, ‘go to the Princess,’ and she fled down the corridor.” [Struensee had probably forbidden the Queen to talk to the Princess alone.] “I was much astonished, but I obeyed her commands. She was always ill at ease with me when Struensee was present; at table he invariably seated himself opposite to her.”[125]

Prince Charles and his wife noted with great regret the change in the Queen; they remembered that she was only eighteen, they made allowance for her good heart and her lively spirits, but even so they grieved to see her forget her self-respect, and indulge in amusements which hurt her reputation. They ascribed this change to the pernicious influence of Struensee. She seemed frightened of him, and trembled, when he spoke to her, like a bird, ensnared. Frequently he so far forgot himself as to treat her with scant respect. For instance, Prince Charles writes: “The King’s dinner was dull. The Queen afterwards played at cards. I was placed on her right, Struensee on her left; Brandt, a new arrival, and Warnstedt, a chamberlain, completed the party. I hardly like to describe Struensee’s behaviour to the Queen, or repeat the remarks he dared address to her openly, while he leant his arm on the table close to her. ‘Well, why don’t you play?’ ‘Can’t you hear?’ and so forth. I confess my heart was grieved to see this Princess, endowed with so much sense and so many good qualities, fallen to such a point and into hands so bad.”[126]

While the King and Queen were at Gottorp Struensee carried out the first of his changes, and recalled Brandt to court. Brandt, it will be remembered, had been banished from Copenhagen, and even from the country, at the suggestion of Holck. He had sought to regain the King’s favour when he was in Paris, but again Holck intervened, and he failed. He was formerly a friend of the Queen, which was one of the reasons why Holck got rid of him, and he was also a friend of Struensee, who had often, in his obscure days, visited at the house of Brandt’s stepfather. Struensee had, moreover, helped him in Paris. Brandt had recently been so far restored to favour as to be given a small appointment in Oldenburg, but no one expected that he would be recalled to court, and Holck was astonished and dismayed when Brandt suddenly appeared at Gottorp and was nominated a chamberlain by the King. Brandt noticed his enemy’s dismay, and said: “Monsieur le Comte, you look as if you had seen a spectre. Are you afraid?” To which Holck bitterly replied: “Oh no, Monsieur le Chambellan, it is not the spectre I fear, but his return”.

Matilda was unwell during her stay at Gottorp, and her indisposition caused the court to remain there longer than had been intended. Struensee saw Prince Charles’s dislike of him, and was uneasy lest he should gain an influence over the King. The silent condemnation of the Viceroy made him impatient to be gone, and directly the Queen was sufficiently recovered to travel she and the King set out for Traventhal, a small royal castle in Holstein. This move furnished the opportunity of getting rid of Holck and his following. The excuse put forward was that Traventhal was not large enough to accommodate so numerous a suite, and therefore Count Holck and his wife, his sister, Madame von der LÜhe, and her husband, Councillor Holstein, Chamberlain Luttichau, Gustavus Holck, a page, FrÄulein von Eyben, and two more of the Queen’s maids of honour, were ordered to go back to Copenhagen. All these people were either related to Holck, or appointed through his influence, and on their return to the capital they learned that they were dismissed from office. Holck, perhaps in consideration of the fact that he had once befriended Struensee, was granted a pension of two thousand dollars, the others received nothing.

Bernstorff, who went with the King and Queen to Traventhal, as minister in attendance, was not consulted concerning these dismissals, or in anything about the court. Woodford, the English minister of Lower Saxony, then at Hamburg, writes: “Mr. Bernstorff and the ministers appear to be entirely ignorant of these little arrangements, the royal confidence running in quite another direction”.[127] And again: “With regard to the court’s movements at Traventhal, nothing is known, for everything is kept a secret from those who, by their employments, ought to be informed”.[128] The Prime Minister, Bernstorff, was rarely allowed to see the King, for Brandt, who had now stepped into Holck’s vacant place, was always with his master, and made it his business to guard him against any influence that might be hostile to Struensee’s plans. Holck’s sudden dismissal filled Bernstorff with apprehension, which was increased by an important move which Struensee took soon after the arrival of the court at Traventhal—a move destined to exercise great influence on the future of both the favourite and the Queen. This was the recall to court of the notorious anti-Russian, Count Rantzau Ascheberg.

Schack Karl, Count zu Rantzau Ascheberg, whom for short we shall call Count Rantzau, had succeeded (on his father’s death in 1769) to vast estates in Holstein. Gunning, the English envoy, thus wrote of him:—

“Count Rantzau is a son of the minister of that name who formerly spent some years at our court. He received some part of his education at Westminster School. His family is the first in Denmark. He is a man of ruined fortunes. It would be difficult to exhibit a character more profligate and abandoned. There are said to be few enormities of which he has not been guilty, and scarcely any place where he has not acted a vicious part. Rashness and revenge form very striking features in his character. With these qualities he possesses great imagination, vivacity and wit. He is most abundantly fertile in schemes and projects, which he forms one day and either forgets or ridicules the next. He would be a very dangerous man did not his great indiscretion put it into the power of his enemies to render many of his most mischievous designs abortive.”[129]

Rantzau had led an adventurous and dishonourable career. In his youth he had been a chamberlain at the Danish court, and had served in the army, eventually rising to the rank of major-general. In consequence of a court plot, he was banished from Copenhagen in 1752. He then entered the French army, but in Paris he became enamoured of an opera singer and resigned his commission to follow her about Europe. This part of his career, which occupied nearly ten years, was shrouded in mystery, but it was known that during it Rantzau had many scandalous adventures. Sometimes he travelled with all the luxury befitting his rank and station, at others he was at his wits’ end for money. At one time he lived at Rome, habited as a monk, and at another he travelled incognito with a troupe of actors. He had absolutely no scruples, and seemed to be a criminal by nature. He was tried in Sicily for swindling, and only escaped imprisonment through the influence brought to bear on his judges. At Naples there was an ugly scandal of another nature, but the French envoy intervened, and saved him from punishment, in consideration of his birth and rank. In Genoa he got into trouble through drawing a bill on his father, whom he falsely described as the “Viceroy of Norway,” but his father repudiated the bill, as he had already repudiated his son, and again Rantzau narrowly escaped gaol. With such a record Keith was certainly justified in saying of him: “Count Rantzau would, ... if he had lived within reach of Justice Fielding, have furnished matter for an Old Bailey trial any one year of the last twenty of his life”.[130]

In 1761, after the death of the Empress Elizabeth, when a war seemed imminent between Russia and Denmark, Rantzau, who wished to be on the stronger side, went to St. Petersburg and offered his services to Peter III., as a Holstein nobleman who owed allegiance to Russia rather than to Denmark. But even the sottish Tsar knew what manner of man the Holsteiner was, and rejected his offer with contumely. In revenge, Rantzau went over to Catherine and the Orloffs, and was involved in the conspiracy which resulted in the deposition and assassination of Peter III. When Catherine the Great was firmly seated upon the Russian throne she had no further need of Rantzau, and instead of rewarding him, ignored him. Rantzau therefore left St. Petersburg and returned to Holstein, a sworn foe of the Empress and eager for revenge on her. It was during this sojourn in Holstein that his acquaintance with Struensee began, and, as at this time Rantzau could get no help from his father, Struensee is said to have lent him money to go to Copenhagen, whither he went to regain his lost favour at the Danish court. In this he was foiled by the influence of the Russian envoy Filosofow, who was then all-powerful, and Rantzau was forced to return again to Holstein, where he remained until his father’s death in 1769—the year before the King and Queen came to Holstein on their tour.

Rantzau should now have been a rich man, for in addition to the property he inherited from his father, he had married an heiress, the daughter of his uncle, Count Rantzau Oppendorft, by which marriage the estates of the two branches of the family were united. But Rantzau was crippled with debt, and on succeeding to his inheritance he continued to live a reckless, dissipated life, and indulged in great extravagance. On the other hand, he was a good landlord to his people, and they did whatever he wished. On account of his ancient name, vast estates and the devotion of his peasantry, Rantzau had much influence in Holstein, which he persistently used against Russia.

Rantzau and Struensee had not forgotten their covenant of years ago, that if either attained power he should help the other. Even if Struensee had been inclined to forget it, Rantzau would have reminded him, but Filosofow’s public insult made Struensee determined to break the power of Russia in Denmark, and in Rantzau he found a weapon ready to his hand. He determined to recall Rantzau to court, because he knew that he, of all others, was most disliked by the Empress of Russia. Therefore, when the King and Queen arrived at Traventhal, Struensee wrote to Rantzau and asked him to come and pay his respects to their Majesties. Rantzau was admitted to audience of the King and Queen, who both received him very graciously. Rantzau was the most considerable noble in Holstein, and moreover, any favour shown to him would demonstrate that the Danish court would no longer brook the dictation of Russia in domestic matters. Therefore, when Rantzau, prompted by Struensee, prayed the King and Queen to honour him with a visit to his castle at Ascheberg, they at once consented. Attended by Struensee and Brandt they drove over from Traventhal and spent several days at Ascheberg.

Rantzau entertained his royal guests with lavish magnificence, and, favoured by brilliant weather, the visit was a great success. There was a masque of flowers one day, there were rustic sports another, there was a hunting party on a third, and banquets every evening. The Queen took the first place at all the festivities (the King had ceased to be of account), and the splendour of her entertainment at Ascheberg recalled Elizabeth’s famous visit to Leicester at Kenilworth. 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. As a return for his sumptuous hospitality, Matilda gave Rantzau her husband’s gold snuff-box set with diamonds, which Christian had bought in London for one thousand guineas, and as a further mark of her favour, the Queen presented colours to the regiment at GlÜckstadt, commanded by Rantzau, of which she became honorary colonel. The presentation of these colours was made the occasion of a military pageant, and the court painter, Als, received commands to paint the Queen in her uniform as colonel. This picture was presented to Rantzau as a souvenir.

The royal favours heaped upon Rantzau filled the Russian party with dismay. The visit to Ascheberg had a political significance, which was emphasised by the Queen’s known resentment of Russian dictation. One of the Russian envoys, Saldern, had brought about the dismissal of her chief lady-in-waiting; another, Filosofow, had publicly affronted her favourite. The Queen neither forgot nor forgave. Woodford writes at this time: “Her Danish Majesty, formerly piqued at M. de Saldern’s conduct, and condescending at present to show little management for the Russian party, they are using every indirect influence to keep themselves in place”.[131]

The defeat of the Russian party would involve necessarily the fall of Bernstorff, who, more than any other Danish minister, had identified himself with Russia. He was greatly perturbed at the visit to Ascheberg, which had been undertaken without consulting him. After the King and Queen returned to Traventhal the Prime Minister was treated even more rudely than before; he was no longer honoured with the royal invitation to dinner, but had to eat his meals in his own room, while Struensee and his creatures revelled below. The object of these slights was to force Bernstorff to resign, but he still clung to office, and strove by all possible means to mitigate the anti-Russian policy of the Queen and her advisers. To obtain private audience of the King was impossible, though he was living under the same roof. Bernstorff therefore drew up a memorandum, addressed to the King, in which he forcibly pointed out the displeasure with which Russia would view Rantzau’s appointment to any office, not only because of his well-known opposition to the territorial exchange, but because he was personally objectionable to the Empress, who would resent his promotion as an insult. Bernstorff’s memorandum was read by Struensee and the Queen, and though it made no difference to their policy, yet, as Struensee did not wish to imperil the exchange, he made Rantzau promise not to meddle further in this matter.[132] Rantzau gave the required promise, which was duly communicated to Bernstorff, and with this negative assurance he had to be content.

The King and Queen remained at Traventhal nearly a month in seclusion. The Queen was left without any of her ladies, and nearly the whole of the King’s suite had gone too. Except for Bernstorff, who was kept that Struensee might have an eye on him, the King and Queen were surrounded only by the favourite and his creatures. At Traventhal Struensee was very busy maturing his plans. In concert with Rantzau and General Gahler, an officer of some eminence who had been given a post in the royal household, Struensee discussed the steps that were to be taken for overthrowing Bernstorff and the other ministers, and reforming the administration. There is nothing to show that the Queen took a leading part in these discussions, though she was of course consulted as a matter of form. Unlike her mother, the Princess-Dowager of Wales, or her grandmother, the illustrious Caroline, Matilda cared nothing for politics for their own sake, but she liked to have the semblance of power, and was jealous of her privileges as the reigning Queen. When she had a personal grievance against a minister, as against Bernstorff, she wished him removed, and when she was thwarted by a foreign influence, as in the case of Russia, she wished that influence broken; but otherwise it was a matter of indifference to her who filled the chief offices of state, or whether France or Russia reigned supreme at Copenhagen. Her good heart made her keenly solicitous for the welfare of her people, and some of the social reforms carried out by Struensee may have had their origin with the Queen; but for affairs of state in the larger sense Matilda cared nothing, and she lent herself blindly to abetting Struensee’s policy in all things. In complete abandonment she placed her hands beneath his feet and let him do with her as he would. Her birth as Princess of Great Britain, her rank as Queen of Denmark and Norway, her beauty, her talents, her popularity, were valued by her only as means whereby she might advance Struensee and his schemes.

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. Too late George III. may have felt a twinge of remorse for having married his sister against her will to a profligate and foolish prince, and sent her, without a friend in the world, to encounter the perils and temptations of a strange court in a far-off land. Moreover, the political object for which Matilda had been sacrificed had signally failed. The marriage had in no way advanced English interests in the north. Russia and France had benefited by it, but England not at all. Now there seemed a probability that, with the fall of the Russian influence at Copenhagen, France, the enemy of England, would again be in the ascendant there. Both personal and political reasons therefore made it desirable that some remonstrance should be addressed to the Queen of Denmark by her brother of England. The matter was of too delicate and difficult a nature to be dealt with satisfactorily by letter, and there was the fear that Struensee might intercept the King’s letter to the Queen. Even if he did not venture thus far, he would be sure to learn its contents and seek to counteract its influence. In this difficulty George III. took counsel with his mother, with the result that on June 9, 1770, the Dowager-Princess of Wales set out from Carlton House for the Continent. It was announced that she was going to pay a visit to her daughter Augusta, Hereditary Princess of Brunswick.

Royal journeys were not very frequent in these days, and as this was the first time the Princess-Dowager had quitted England since her marriage many years ago, her sudden departure gave rise to the wildest conjectures. It was generally believed that she was going to meet Lord Bute, who was still wandering in exile about Europe; some said that she was going to bring him back to England for the purpose of fresh intrigue; others that she was not returning to England at all, but meant to spend the rest of her life with Bute in an Italian palace. Against these absurd rumours was to be set the fact that the Duke of Gloucester accompanied his mother, and more charitable persons supposed that she was trying to break off his liaison with Lady Waldegrave, for their secret marriage had not yet been published. Some declared that the Princess-Dowager and Queen Charlotte had had a battle royal, in which the mother-in-law had been signally routed, and was leaving the country to cover her confusion. Others, and this seemed the most probable conjecture, thought that she was going abroad for a little time to escape the scandal which had been brought upon the royal family by her youngest son, Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland.