THE FALL OF BERNSTORFF.

1770.

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. Together they attended the Copenhagen shooting festival, an honour which had not been bestowed on the citizens for a hundred years, and were most gracious in their demeanour, especially the Queen, who was all bows and smiles. Matilda further gratified the assembly by firing a shot herself, and inducing the King to follow her example. The Queen hit the popinjay, but Christian missed it badly. Matilda gained considerable popularity from the crowd by this exhibition of her skill, but the more sober-minded citizens were scandalised because she rode on to the ground sitting her horse like a man, and clad in her masculine riding-habit. The King rode by her side, but it was jocularly said that the Queen was “by far the better man of the two,” which was what exactly she wished to convey. Certainly the diminutive and feeble Christian looked a poor creature beside his dashing and Amazonian wife.

From Copenhagen the King and Queen went to Hirschholm, the country palace of the late Queen Sophia Magdalena, which, since her death, had been prepared for their use, and henceforth eclipsed Frederiksborg in the royal favour. Hirschholm was not so far from the capital as Frederiksborg, and was situated amid beautiful surroundings. The palace had been built by Sophia Magdalena on an island in the middle of a lake. It was very ornate externally, and one of the most striking features was a huge gate-tower, which terminated in a pyramid supported by four lions, couchant and surmounted by a crown. This gateway gave entrance to a quadrangular court, round three sides of which the palace was built. The interior was gorgeous, and the decorations were so florid as to be almost grotesque; a profusion of silver, mother-of-pearl and rock crystal embellished the walls, and the ceilings and doors were elaborately painted. The south aspect of the palace looked over the lake to the beautiful gardens beyond, which were freely adorned with marble fountains and statuary. In the gardens was a summer-house, which was used as a temporary theatre for the amusement of the Queen and her court. Beyond the park were shady avenues and noble forests of beech and pine. In fine weather Hirschholm was a paradise.[135]

At Hirschholm the Queen made appointments in her household to fill the places of Madame von der LÜhe, FrÄulein von Eyben and others dismissed at Traventhal. The Queen’s chief ladies were now Madame Gahler, Baroness BÜlow and Countess Holstein. They were three young, beautiful and lively women, not too strict in their conduct, and the husbands of all, needless to say, were friends of Struensee. Madame Gahler was the wife of General Gahler, who held high place in the councils of Traventhal. Baron BÜlow was the Master of Horse, and Count Holstein held a post about the King. The Queen had always fretted under the stiff etiquette of the Danish court; now, at the suggestion of Struensee, she dispensed with it altogether, except on public occasions. The result was that the manners of the court at Hirschholm became so lax and unceremonious that it hardly seemed to be a court at all. Some show of deference was kept up towards the King, but the Queen was treated with great familiarity, evidently at her own wish, and in Struensee’s case this familiarity sometimes degenerated into positive rudeness. The ladies and gentlemen of the royal household laughed and joked and flirted as they pleased, without any restraint, in the presence of the Queen, scrambled for places at her table, and quarrelled violently over cards. Even Rantzau was surprised at the conduct at Hirschholm. “When I was a wild young man,” he said, “everybody at court was apparently respectable, except myself. Now that I am old, and obliged to be more careful, every one about the court has gone mad.”

The court at Hirschholm was conducted on a scale of luxury, and on occasion with ceremonial magnificence. The King and Queen dined frequently in public in the grand saloon, and were served on bended knee by pages; the marshal of the palace sat at one end of the table, the Queen’s chief lady at the other, their Majesties in the middle on one side, and the guests honoured with the royal command opposite them. The King was a poor and insignificant figure, and rarely uttered a word; but the Queen, who dressed beautifully, made a grand appearance, and delighted everybody with her lively conversation. Matilda had wit and vivacity, though during her early years in Denmark she had perforce to curb her social qualities; now she gave them full play, and the King gazed at her in silent astonishment and admiration. A table of eighty covers was also laid every day in the adjoining “Chamber of the Rose” for the foreign envoys and great officers of state (if any happened to be present) and the court officials. At this table Struensee, Brandt and the other ladies and gentlemen of the household generally dined, though the favourite was frequently commanded to the King’s table, and might have dined there every day if he had wished. But he generally preferred to hold a little court of his own in the “Chamber of the Rose,” and most of those present paid him far more homage than they paid the King. Struensee accepted it all as a matter of course; his head was already turned by his success, and indeed it was enough to turn any man’s head. Only two years before he had been in an obscure position, crippled with debt, and seriously thinking of quitting the country to repair his fortunes; now he was the all-powerful favourite of a Queen, and could make and unmake ministers as he would. Nothing was done without his consent, and the removal of the court from the capital to Hirschholm was dictated by him from reasons which the English envoy shrewdly guessed at the time:—

“Among other reasons assigned for this retreat,” writes Gunning, “one is said to be the desire of eluding the scrutiny of the public eye, which affects to penetrate somewhat further than is imagined to be [desirable]. Another cause of this retirement is supposed to be their Danish Majesties’ resolution of continuing inaccessible (which they have been for some time) to everybody except M^r Rantzau and the Favourite. And that, if certain dismissions are resolved upon, they may be effected with greater secrecy. M^r Bernstorff tells me that M^r Rantzau has frequent conferences with the French minister. He [Bernstorff] is more alarmed than he has ever yet appeared to be, but nevertheless seems willing to fortify himself with the favourable conclusions afforded by the levity and dissipation which mark the character of his adversaries, and builds upon the unanimity of the Council, which I hope is firmly grounded. He thinks, however, that while the influence prevails, irreparable mischief may be done, and he is at length convinced of a truth I wished him long since to have believed, namely—that which has been transacting is more than a court intrigue, and that [the Favourite] was the cause of all its movements.”[136]

Bernstorff was not long left in suspense as to his future. Struensee had now matured his plans and was ready to strike. Bernstorff was the first to go. Soon after the court arrived at Hirschholm the King was prevailed upon, without much difficulty, to write his Prime Minister an autograph letter in which he informed him that, as he intended to make changes in his system of government, he no longer required his services. He therefore dismissed him with a pension of 6,000 dollars a year, but gave him leave to retain his seat on the council. Bernstorff was seated at his desk in the foreign office when this letter was brought to him by a King’s messenger from Hirschholm; he read its contents in silence, and then turned to one of his secretaries and said: “I am dismissed from office. May the Almighty guide this country and its King.”

Bernstorff fell with great dignity. He replied to the King saying “that he accepted his pleasure with all submission, but begged leave to join the resignation of his seat on the council to that of his other employments”.[137] He accepted the pension, but how beggarly a reward it was for his long years of service was shown by comparison with that assigned to Count St. Germains, a friend of Struensee and Rantzau, who had been granted 14,000 dollars annually after only three years of office. Count Bernstorff had grown grey in the service of the state, and had sacrificed a large portion of his private fortune in the cause of his adopted country. His great achievement as Prime Minister was the treaty effecting the territorial exchange with Russia; for that alone he deserved the gratitude of Denmark. He had his faults, but he was a man of honourable and upright character, virtuous in private life, and in public matters earnestly desirous of the welfare of the state. Bernstorff’s fall called forth loud expressions of regret, not only from the most considerable people in Denmark, but from many foreign courts. Especially was this the case with the court of St. James’s.

On the return of the Princess-Dowager to England with the news of her fruitless mission, and on receipt of Gunning’s despatches, specifying the changes likely to take place in the Danish Government, George III. resolved to write a private letter to his sister, appealing to her directly, and urging her, whatever she did, not to part with Bernstorff, who had shown himself zealous of his country’s welfare, and who was, moreover, a friend of England and its royal house. But this letter arrived too late; it reached Copenhagen a week after Bernstorff’s dismissal. It was enclosed in a private despatch from Lord Rochford to the English envoy, with orders that he was to deliver it into the Queen’s own hand. Gunning thereupon set out at once for Hirschholm “to force the entrenchments,” to quote his own phrase; but the Queen, who probably guessed his errand, would not see him. “On my arrival there,” writes Gunning, “I had the mortification to find that her Majesty was so much indisposed by a fresh attack of cholick as to render my admission to her impracticable. It not being, therefore, in my power to present the King’s letter myself, I took care to have it safely conveyed to her Danish Majesty, who commanded her Grand Master to tell me that I should be informed when she had any orders for me.”[138] But Matilda had no orders for the English envoy, and when she wrote to her brother of England, it was to tell him that Bernstorff had already been dismissed, and if he wished to write to her in future about political matters in Denmark, she would be obliged if he would send his communications to her through her ministers. How George III. received this rebuff is not related.

Bernstorff’s dismissal was followed by that of several other ministers. Men who had grown old in the service of the state were suddenly deprived of their portfolios, and sweeping changes took place in the personnel of the Government. Several important political appointments were made while the court was at Hirschholm. General Gahler, who was avowedly the friend of France, and had spent many years of his life in the French service, was appointed head of the War Department. He did not possess any great military knowledge, and owed his promotion largely to his wife, who was a friend of the Queen. Gunning described him as “a smooth, designing, self-interested man, submissive, cool, deliberate and timid,”[139] and Keith wrote of him later as “dark, intriguing and ungrateful”.[140]

Bernstorff had united the office of Prime Minister with that of Foreign Secretary. The first of these posts, with amplified powers, Struensee reserved for himself, but he did not at once formally assume it. Rantzau was understood to desire the Foreign Office, and his ambition placed Struensee and the Queen in a position of great difficulty. Rantzau’s violent hostility to Russia, and his rash and mercurial temperament, made this appointment impossible. Denmark would probably be embroiled in war in a week. On the other hand, he had rendered great services to Struensee; he was powerful in Holstein, and dangerous to offend. Struensee compromised the matter by giving Rantzau the second place in the War Department. Rantzau took it under protest, and never forgave the affront. From that time he was the secret enemy of Struensee and the Queen, and only waited for an opportunity to wreck them. It would have been a mistake to send him to the Foreign Office, but it was a greater one to place him in a subordinate post, and showed a strange lack of judgment on the part of the Queen and Struensee. It did not satisfy him, and it gave him opportunity to betray the secrets of the Government.

Struensee sought to conciliate Rantzau by paying the most flattering attention to his opinions, and it was at Rantzau’s suggestion that Colonel Falckenskjold was recalled from the Russian service and entrusted with the reform of the Danish army. Falckenskjold was a Dane of noble family, and had fought with distinction in the French service during the Seven Years’ War; subsequently he entered the service of Russia. He was a man of upright character, but poor and ambitious. It was the prospect of power that induced him, in an evil hour, to accept an appointment at Struensee’s hands. “His views of aggrandisement are said to be boundless,” wrote Gunning.[141]

Brandt was given several lucrative court appointments, but he neither asked nor received any post in the Government. Gunning thus summed him up: “M^r Brandt, the King of Denmark’s favourite, seems to be too light and insignificant to deserve mention in a political light; he is considered by the others as a sort of dragon which they have planted within the precincts of the court to stop the avenues to the throne”.[142] Keith declared him to be “naturally rash, turbulent and waspish”.[143]

These were the principal men Struensee chose to help him in governing the internal affairs of the kingdom, in place of the experienced statesmen whom he had evicted to make room for them. They were none of them first-class men, but they were the best available. Statesmen of credit and renown held aloof from Struensee, and would not have accepted office at his hands. Neither did he seek them, for the men he wanted were not colleagues but creatures, who would carry out his bidding. He had now complete control of the situation, and was already in fact invested with autocratic power. Although nominally only lecteur du roi, he read all letters that came to the King, and answered them in the King’s name as he thought best, the King doing whatever the Queen advised him, and signing all the documents laid before him by Struensee. In order to gather power still more into his hands, Struensee caused Christian to issue a rescript to the heads of departments of the state requesting them henceforth to send all communications to the King in writing, and the King would answer them in the same way. Audiences between the King and his ministers were hereby abolished.

Struensee followed up this rescript by an attack upon the Council of State, still nominally the governing body. Soon after Bernstorff’s dismissal a royal decree was issued, limiting the power of the council and increasing the King’s prerogative. The King wished—so the message ran—to have the Council of State organised in the best manner. He therefore requested that the councillors, at their meetings in future, should duly weigh and consider all the business laid before them, but leave the final decision to the King. Their object was not to govern, but to afford the King assistance in governing. The King, therefore, would have them remember that there must be no encroachment on the sovereign power, which was vested wholly in the King.

These changes caused great excitement among the official classes and the nobility. The government of the kingdom had hitherto been in the hands of an oligarchy, which was recruited solely from the nobility and their dependents. By this last decree the King intended to strip the nobility of their privileges and power. But the King was known to be a figurehead, and therefore the resentment aroused by these changes was directed, not against him but against the Queen. Struensee was still working behind the Queen, and therefore, though he was known to have great influence, the malcontents made the Queen the first object of their resentment. The hostility felt against Matilda for the revolutionary policy now inaugurated was especially bitter amongst the old nobility, many of whom, notably Count Reventlow, had formerly been her friends. Reventlow communicated his anger to Gunning, who wrote in haste to Lord Rochford. He saw in the present confusion an opportunity for English influence to be re-established in Copenhagen, and, ignorant of the rebuff the King had received from his sister a few weeks before, he urged his old expedient that George III. should write a private letter to Queen Matilda.

“Both Count Reventlow and everybody ascribe [these new measures] without scruple to the Queen of Denmark,” he writes, “whose power is affirmed to be unlimited, and on whose will all depends. If these assertions are not made without reason, your Lordship will judge how much those persons who are honoured with her Danish Majesty’s confidence have misrepresented the state of affairs to her, in order to make her consent to what is so evidently against the system this court has some time adopted. Should the preservation of it be thought worthy of the King’s (George III.’s) attention, your Lordship will, I am sure, think it necessary that the Queen of Denmark should be made acquainted with his Majesty’s sentiments on this important point as soon as possible, and before the Prince Royal of Sweden comes here, which under the present circumstances will be most effectually done (if I may humbly presume to offer my opinion) by a private letter from his Majesty to the Queen his sister. It is not to be doubted but that this would have great weight; and should it either procure the reinstatement of Count Bernstorff (whose indubitable attachment to the King’s person and family gives him a claim on his Majesty’s protection), or till such time as this could be more easily effected, prevent any extension of the present influence, it would soon give his Majesty (George III.) as great an ascendency here as the court of Petersburg has had, and which, were it conducted in a more moderate and judicious manner, would not be liable to the same reverse. It is not, however, impracticable for the latter [the court of Petersburg] still to prevent the defection of this court, but it must be by different and harsher methods than those (it is hoped) his Majesty has occasion to take.”[144]

It is unlikely that George III., who was still smarting under the affront Queen Matilda offered to his last communication, acted on his envoy’s suggestion. Neither his brotherly remonstrances nor “the different and harsher methods” of the court of St. Petersburg would have had any effect on the Queen of Denmark. She was entirely under Struensee’s influence, and did whatever he wished, and in this case their wishes were identical. Nothing would have induced her to recall Bernstorff, against whom she had a grievance, and she had suffered so much from the meddlesome interference of the Russian envoys that she was determined to stop it at all hazards.