THE EXECUTIONS.

1772.

The prisoners were told of their fate on Friday, April 25, immediately after the sentences were pronounced. Uhldahl and Bang went to the citadel to inform their respective clients of the judgment against them, and to hand them a copy of their sentences.

Uhldahl, who had undertaken the defence of Struensee with a very ill-grace, entered the condemned man’s cell and curtly said: “Good Count, I bring you bad news,” and then, without a word of sympathy, he handed Struensee a copy of his sentence. Struensee, who had shown craven fear at intervals during his imprisonment, now read the document which condemned him to a barbarous and ignominious death with an unmoved air, and when he had perused it to the end, he handed it without a word to Dr. MÜnter, who was with him at the time. Apparently only the sentence, and not the judgment, was handed to the condemned man, for Struensee asked his advocate if he were condemned on all the counts in his indictment, to which Uhldahl answered in the affirmative. “Even on that concerning the education of the Crown Prince?” asked Struensee. “Even on that,” replied Uhldahl briefly. Struensee said that, if he had had any children of his own, he should have reared them in exactly the same way—to which Uhldahl made no reply. “And what is Brandt’s fate?” asked Struensee. “His sentence is exactly the same as yours.” “But could his counsel do nothing to save him?” demanded Struensee. “He said everything that could be urged in his favour; but Count Brandt had too much laid to his charge.” The thought of Brandt’s fate moved Struensee far more than his own; but he soon regained his composure, and resolved to petition the King, who had not yet signed the sentences, for mercy.

When Struensee and MÜnter were left alone, the latter lamented the barbarities of the sentence, but Struensee assured him they mattered little. He still held the same ground—that is to say, he admitted his guilt so far as the Queen was concerned, but maintained his innocence of all the other charges against him, even the one of having forged the document that gave him money from the Treasury, which must have been true. But he admitted that his intrigue with the Queen made him liable to the extremest punishment of the law. “My judges,” he said, “had the law before them, and therefore they could not decide otherwise. I confess my crime is great; I have violated the majesty of the King.” Even now, when the sentence had robbed him of almost his last hope, and he was face to face with a hideous death, this wretched man had no word of remorse or grief for the ruin, misery and suffering he had brought upon the Queen. Uhldahl had given him Matilda’s pathetic message—that she forgave him everything he had said and done against her, even the shameful confession by which he had striven to shield himself at her expense. Struensee received the message without emotion, and even with sullen indifference; he was so much engrossed with his own fate that he had no thought to spare for the Queen. Perhaps he thought it was a device of the Evil One to lure him away from the contemplation of his soul. However much we may suspect the motives which first led Struensee to his conversion, there is no doubt that he was sincerely zealous for his spiritual well-being at the last. The long months of solitary confinement, the ceaseless exhortations and prayers of the fervent MÜnter, the near approach of death, perhaps, too, some echo from the pious home in which he had been reared, combined to detach Struensee’s thoughts from the world and to concentrate them on his soul. He had reached that point which counts earth’s sufferings as little in comparison with the problems of eternity. The worldling, who had once thought of nothing but his material advancement, was now equally ambitious for his spiritual welfare. In his pursuit of the one he was as selfish and as absorbed as he had been in pursuit of the other. The motive had changed, but the man was the same.

Brandt had also received a copy of his sentence from Bang, and, like Struensee, immediately petitioned the King for mercy. It was generally expected that the royal clemency would be exercised in his case. The judges who tried the case had no option but to pass sentence, but some of them had hoped that the extreme penalty of the law would be mitigated. It was the King’s business to sign the sentences, but the question of whether he should, or should not, confirm them was first discussed by the Council of State before the documents were sent to the King to sign. In the council itself there were voices on the side of mercy, especially for Brandt, but Rantzau and Osten, the two members of the council who had been familiar friends of the condemned men, absolutely opposed the idea of any mercy being shown to either of them. Yet there is no doubt that, if strict justice had been meted out, Rantzau, at least, would have been lying under the same sentence. Perhaps it was this thought which made him of all the council the most implacable and unyielding: dead men could tell no tales, and until both Struensee and Brandt were dead, Rantzau would not feel safe. So the council, at any rate by a majority, reported that the King should confirm the sentences.

All effort was not at an end, for Guldberg, the most influential of the judges who had condemned Struensee and Brandt, had an audience of Juliana Maria, and implored a mitigation of the punishment, or at least that Brandt’s life should be spared. But Juliana Maria showed herself inflexible, and the vindictive side of her nature asserted itself without disguise. Brandt as well as Struensee had inflicted many slights upon her and her son; therefore he, too, should die. Guldberg, who had supposed his influence over the Queen-Dowager was all-powerful, as indeed it was on most points, was unable to move her in this, and might as well have pleaded to a rock. After a long and violent altercation he withdrew worsted, and until the executions were over he remained in strict retirement. Whatever may be said of the others, Guldberg, at any rate, washed his hands of the blood of the condemned men.

It may be doubted, however, if Juliana Maria, even if she had been otherwise minded, could have saved Brandt’s life, for the King, though easily led in many respects, showed remarkable obstinacy in this. Some of his ministers suggested to him that it would be generous of him to pardon Brandt, as the chief offence was one against his royal person; but the King at once showed the greatest repugnance to pardon. He hated Brandt much more than he hated Struensee; he had never forgiven him the assault, and the mere mention of his name was sufficient to fill him with rage. He positively declared that he would not sign either of the sentences unless he signed both, and, as no one wished Struensee to escape, the ministers gave way. The King signed both sentences, and displayed a savage joy when he heard that they were to be carried out without delay. In the evening he dined in public and went in state to the Italian opera.

On Friday, April 25, the prisoners were told of their sentences, and on Saturday they were informed that the King had signed them, and all hope was over. Their execution would take place on the Monday following. Both prisoners received the news with composure, though Struensee was much affected when he heard that every effort to save Brandt’s life had failed, and commented indignantly on the injustice of his sentence. MÜnter, who brought him the fatal news, greatly lamented that the barbarous and needless cruelties of the sentence had not been abolished. Struensee exhorted his friend and confessor to maintain his firmness, and said he would dispense with his services at the last if the sight would be too much for him. But to this MÜnter would not listen. “I shall suffer much more,” said Struensee, “if I see that you suffer too. Therefore, speak to me on the scaffold as little as you can. I will summon all my strength; I will turn my thoughts to Jesus, my Deliverer; I will not take formal leave of you, for that would unman me.” As to the brutal indignities of his death, he said: “I am far above all this, and I hope my friend Brandt feels the same. Here in this world, since I am on the point of leaving it, neither honour nor infamy can affect me any more. It is equally the same to me, after death, whether my body rots under the ground or in the open air—whether it serves to feed the worms or the birds. God will know how to preserve those particles which on the resurrection day will constitute my glorified body. It is not my all which is to be exposed upon the wheel. Thank God, I am now well assured that this flesh is not my whole being.”

Struensee wrote three letters—one to Brandt’s brother, in which he bewailed having been the innocent cause of bringing “our dear Enevold to this pass”; another to Rantzau, saying he forgave him as he hoped to be forgiven, and exhorting him to turn to religion; and the third to Madam von Berkentin of Pinneberg, the lady who had first recommended Struensee to influential personages, and thus unwittingly had laid the foundation of his future greatness and of his future ruin. To his brother, Justice Struensee, who was also a prisoner, the condemned man sent a message of farewell through MÜnter. But to the Queen he sent neither word of remembrance nor prayer for forgiveness for the wrong he had done her. In this respect, at least, it would seem Struensee’s conversion was not complete.

When Hee brought Brandt the news that his execution was determined upon, he displayed a firmness and dignity hardly to be expected from one of his volatile temperament. He indulged in no pious aspirations after the manner of Struensee, but said quietly that he submitted to the will of God.

For the next two days Copenhagen was filled with subdued excitement. On Sunday, the day before the execution, the places of public resort were closed, but the citizens gathered together in little groups at the corners of the streets, and spoke in hushed accents of the tragedy of to-morrow. Meanwhile, the Government was taking every step to hurry forward the executions and preserve public order. Soldiers were already guarding a large field outside the eastern gate of Copenhagen, where a scaffold, eight yards long, eight yards broad and twenty-seven feet high, was being erected. Other soldiers were posted on the gallows-hill a little distance to the west, where two poles were planted, and four wheels tied to posts. The Government had some difficulty in finding carpenters to build the scaffold, as the men had a superstition about it; many of them refused, and were at last coerced by threats. No wheelwright would supply the wheels on which the remains of the wretched men were to be exposed, so at last they were taken from old carriages in the royal stables. Though the work was pressed forward with all speed, the scaffold was only completed a few hours before the execution, which was arranged to take place early in the morning of Monday, April 28.

All the night before crowds of people were moving towards the eastern gate, and at the first break of dawn large bodies of troops marched to the place of execution, and were drawn up in a large square around the scaffold. Others formed a guard along the route from the citadel, and everywhere the posts were doubled. When all preparations were complete, the eastern gate of the city was thrown open, and huge crowds surged towards the fatal field, or pressed against the soldiers who guarded the route along which the condemned men were to journey from the citadel to the scaffold. Everywhere was a sea of countless heads. Upwards of thirty thousand persons, including women and little children, were gathered around the scaffold alone—some animated by a lust for blood and vengeance, but most of them by that morbid curiosity and love of the horrible common to all mobs in all ages of the world.

At a very early hour the two clergymen went to the condemned men to comfort and attend them in their last moments. When MÜnter entered Struensee’s cell, he found him reading Schegel’s Sermons on the Passion of Christ. The unhappy man was already dressed. His jailors had given him, as if in mockery, the clothes he had worn at the masquerade ball the night of his arrest, and in which he had been hurried to prison—a blue cut-velvet coat and pink silk breeches. For the first time for many months his chains were taken off. Struensee greeted MÜnter calmly, and together they conversed on religious matters until the cell door opened and the dread summons came.

Dean Hee found Brandt brave and even cheerful. He, too, had been unchained from the wall, and was enjoying his brief spell of comparative freedom by walking up and down the room. Brandt, also, was vested in the clothes he had brought with him to the citadel—a green court dress richly embroidered with gold. He told Hee that he was not afraid to die, and seemed only anxious that the ordeal should be over. He asked him if he had seen any one executed before, and how far he ought to bare his neck and arm to the headsman’s axe. Presently the summons came for him too.

Both the condemned men were marched out to the large hall of the citadel, where they were again fettered by a chain attached to their left hand and right foot. As the morning was cold, they were allowed to wear their fur pelisses. In this attire they entered the coaches drawn up in the courtyard of the citadel. Brandt occupied the first coach, Struensee the second. On one side of each of the prisoners sat an officer with a drawn sword, on the other the clergyman; opposite them were placed two sergeants. The two coaches were guarded by two hundred infantry soldiers with fixed bayonets, and an equal number of dragoons with drawn sabres. In a third coach were seated the Fiscal-General, Wivet, and the King’s bailiff, and facing them was the deputy-bailiff, holding the two tin shields on which the arms of the Counts were painted, which were to be broken in the sight of the people.

At half-past eight the bell began to toll from the tower of the citadel. The gates were thrown open, and the melancholy procession emerged, and began its slow progress to the place of execution. Though the streets were thronged, and every window, balcony and housetop was filled with spectators, the condemned men passed along their last journey in silence—a silence only broken by the tramp of the soldiers’ and horses’ feet. The morning was dull and cold, and a slight mist hung over the Sound. When the procession reached its destination, the Fiscal-General and the King’s bailiff and his deputy-bailiff mounted the scaffold, where the executioner, masked, and two stalwart assistants, also masked, awaited their victims, surrounded by the dread emblems of their hideous office. The large scaffold, which was twenty-seven feet in height, rose far above the heads of the soldiers who guarded it and the vast crowd beyond. All could see what took place there, even from a far distance, for this platform and the figures upon it were clearly silhouetted against the morning sky.

Brandt was the first of the condemned men to mount the flight of wooden stairs to the scaffold—a task made more difficult from the fact that he was chained hand and foot. He was closely followed by Dean Hee, who exhorted him to firmness the whole time. Arrived on the scaffold, Brandt turned to the clergyman, and assured him that he had no fear, and his mind was quite composed. The worthy divine, however, continued to encourage him with these words: “Son, be of good cheer, for thy sins are forgiven thee.” Brandt throughout behaved with heroism. When his fetters were struck off the King’s bailiff stepped forward to read his sentence; he listened quietly to the end, and then protested his innocence. The deputy-bailiff held up to Brandt the tin shield, and formally asked him if it were his coat of arms painted thereon. Brandt merely nodded in answer, and the bailiff swung the shield into the air and broke it, with the words:

“This is not done in vain, but as a just punishment.” Hee then began to recite in a loud voice the prayer for the dying, and when it was over he put to the condemned man the usual questions, to which Brandt answered again that he was sorry for what he had done wrong, but he left all to God, and was not afraid to die. Hee then gave him his blessing, and, taking him by the hand, delivered him over to the executioner.

When the headsman approached to assist the prisoner in undressing, Brandt exclaimed firmly: “Stand back, and do not dare to touch me!” He undressed alone; he let his fur pelisse fall, took off his hat, removed his coat and waistcoat, bared his neck, and rolled up the shirt sleeve of his right arm. In this he suffered the executioner to help him, for he was afraid he might not roll it up sufficiently. Brandt then knelt down, laid his head on one block, and stretched out his right hand on another, and smaller one, hard by. While he was in this position, Hee whispered some last words of comfort, and then stood back. As the clergyman was reciting: “O Christ, in Thee I live, in Thee I die! O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy!” the executioner stepped forward, and with two well-directed blows completed his dread task.

Immediately the execution was over the assistants advanced to perform the most horrible part of the sentence, and wreak the last indignities. They stripped the body, laid it on a block, disembowelled it, and split it into four quarters with an axe. Each part was then let down by a rope into a cart standing below, with the other remains; the head was held up on a pole, and shown to the multitude; then that, too, was let down into the cart, and lastly the right hand. After this the scaffold was strewn with fresh sand, the axes were roughly cleaned, and everything made ready for the next victim.

Brandt’s execution had taken nearly half an hour. During the whole of this horrible scene Struensee sat in his coach, which was drawn up near the scaffold, with Pastor MÜnter by his side. MÜnter, who showed much more emotion than his penitent, had ordered the coach to be turned round in such a way that they should not see Brandt’s execution. But Struensee’s eyes had wandered to the block, and he said to MÜnter: “I have already seen it,” and then added: “We will look up again to heaven.” In this position he and his comforter remained while the last indignities were being wrought upon Brandt’s poor body, and together they prayed until Struensee was informed that his turn had come.

Struensee became deadly pale, but otherwise retained his composure, and, getting out of the coach, he saluted the guard on either side. Some favoured personages had been allowed inside the square made by the soldiers. Many of these Struensee had known in the days of his triumph, and as he passed, led by MÜnter, he bowed to them also. But, as he approached the scaffold, his fortitude began to give way, and it was with difficulty that he mounted the fifteen steps which led to the top. When he reached the summit, MÜnter repeated in a low voice the comforting words: “He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” Then came the same formalities as in the case of Brandt: Struensee’s fetters were knocked off, the King’s confirmation of the sentence was read, and his coat of arms was broken. Then MÜnter, having prayed according to the melancholy ritual, solemnly asked Struensee if he repented of his sins and died in the true faith of a Christian.

Struensee having answered these questions in the affirmative, MÜnter laid his hand upon his head, and said with deep emotion: “Go in peace whither God calls you. His grace be with you.” He then handed him over to the executioner.

Struensee took off his fur pelisse and his hat. He would fain have undressed himself alone, but his trembling hands refused to do the work, and he was obliged to let the executioner help him. When his coat and waistcoat had been taken off, he produced a handkerchief to bind his eyes; but the executioner assured him that it would not be necessary, and took it away. He further removed his shirt, so that nothing might hinder the fall of the axe. Struensee then, with half his body bare, went with faltering steps to the block, which still reeked with the blood of Brandt. Here he reeled and would have fallen, but the headsman assisted him to kneel, and, with some difficulty, placed his head and hand in the right position. As the executioner raised his axe in the air to cut off the right hand, MÜnter recited: “Remember Christ crucified, who died, but is risen again.” The blow fell before the words were finished, and the right hand lay severed on the scaffold. But the victim was seized with violent convulsions, with the result that the executioner’s second blow, which was intended to behead him, failed. The wretched man sprang up spasmodically, but the assistants seized him by the hair, and held him down to the block by force. The executioner struck again, and this time with deadly effect; but even then it was not a clean blow, and a part of the neck had to be severed.

The same revolting indignities were committed on Struensee’s corpse as on that of Brandt; it is unnecessary to repeat them. When all was over, the mangled remains of both men were thrown into a cart and were conveyed through the city to the gallows-hill outside the western gate. The heads were stuck on poles, the quarters were exposed on the wheels, and the hands nailed on a piece of board. Thus was left all that was mortal of Struensee and Brandt—an awful warning that all might see.[60]

From her watch-tower afar off, the Queen-Dowager witnessed the execution of the men whom she deemed her greatest enemies. Early in the morning Juliana Maria mounted to a tower on the eastern side of the Christiansborg Palace, and there through a strong telescope gloated over this judicial murder. The keen interest she took in every revolting detail revealed the depth of her vindictiveness. When Brandt’s execution was over, and Struensee mounted the steps to the scaffold, she clapped her hands triumphantly and exclaimed: “Now comes the fat one!” So great was her satisfaction that, it is said, she momentarily forgot her caution, and declared the only thing that marred her joy was the thought that Matilda’s corpse was not thrown into the cart with those of her accomplices. When the cart moved away, the Queen-Dowager, fearful lest she should lose any detail of the tragedy, ran down from the tower to the apartments which she occupied on the upper floor of the palace, and from the windows, which commanded a view of the gallows-hill to the west, she saw the last ignominy wrought on the remains of her victims. In after years the Queen-Dowager always lived in these unpretending rooms of the Christiansborg, though at Frederiksberg and the other palaces she took possession of Matilda’s apartments. Suhm, the historian, says that he once expressed surprise that she should still live in little rooms up many stairs, when all the palace was at her disposal, and Juliana Maria replied: “These rooms are dearer to me than my most splendid apartments elsewhere, for from the windows I saw the remains of my bitterest foes exposed on the wheel.” From her windows, too, for many years after, she could see the skulls of Struensee and Brandt withering on the poles.[61]

Against this statement of Suhm’s is to be set one of MÜnter’s. It does not necessarily conflict, but it shows how capable the Queen-Dowager was of acting a part. If she forgot herself for a moment on the tower of the Christiansborg, she quickly recovered her self-command, and behaved with her usual decorum. She sent for MÜnter, ostensibly to thank him for having effected Struensee’s conversion, in reality to extract from him all the mental agonies of her victims’ last moments, and thus further gratify her lust for vengeance. MÜnter expatiated on Struensee’s conversion, and gave her full particulars of his terror and sufferings at the last. The Queen-Dowager affected to be moved to tears, and said: “I feel sorry for the unhappy man. I have examined myself whether in all I have done against him I have been animated by any feeling of personal enmity, and my conscience acquits me.” She gave MÜnter a valuable snuff-box of rock-crystal, as a small token of her appreciation of his labours on behalf of Struensee’s soul. To Hee she also sent a snuff-box, but it was only of porcelain. Whether this was to mark her sense of the greater thoroughness of Struensee’s conversion, or whether it showed that she was not so much interested in Brandt as Struensee, it is impossible to say. Nor did her rewards end here. That both she and the ministers looked upon these clergymen as accomplices in bringing Struensee and Brandt to their death is shown from the fact that, when a commission of inquiry was appointed to consider “in what manner the persons employed in convicting the prisoners of state should be rewarded,” this commission allotted to MÜnter and Hee three hundred dollars each. But Juliana Maria was of a different opinion, and judged it more proper to make them presents.[62]

The executions of Struensee and Brandt brought about a revulsion in public feeling. It was felt that the national honour was satisfied, and the time had come to temper justice with mercy. The Queen-Dowager’s party were quick to note the change. Fearful of the least breath of popular displeasure, they now swung round from barbarity to leniency. Those placed under “house arrest” were set free, and the ten prisoners of state imprisoned in the citadel, were treated, for the most part, with leniency. Madame Gahler, Colonel Hesselberg, Admiral Hansel, Councillor StÜrtz, Lieutenant AbÖe, and Councillor Willebrandt, since no evidence could be produced against them, were released after an imprisonment of four and a half months, and were all banished from the capital. Professor Berger, the physician, who had been accused of poisoning, or drugging, the King, was also set free, and banished to Aalborg, in northern Jutland. It was found, after a searching examination, that the medicines he had given the King were quite innocuous.

Three state prisoners still remained—General Gahler, Colonel Falckenskjold and Justice Struensee. Gahler was dismissed from the King’s service, and all his appointments, and was banished from Copenhagen. But on the understanding that the ruined soldier would neither speak nor write of public affairs, the King, by an act of special clemency, granted him a pension of five hundred dollars, and the same to his wife. Justice Struensee was also released, but ordered to quit the country immediately. This clemency, so different from what had been shown to his brother, was due to the interposition of the King of Prussia, who had kept Struensee’s position as professor of medicine at Liegnitz open for him, and with whom he was a favourite. Justice Struensee eventually became a Minister of State in Prussia.

Falckenskjold, who was considered the worst of all the offenders after Struensee and Brandt, was stripped of all his employments and honours, and condemned to be imprisoned for life in the fortress of Munkholm. Falckenskjold remained at Munkholm for four years, where he suffered many hardships; but in 1776, through the intercession of Prince Frederick, he was set at liberty, on the condition that he would never return to Danish territory. After the revolution of 1784, when Queen Matilda’s son assumed the regency, the penalties against him were repealed; he was allowed to return to Copenhagen for a time to look after his affairs, and later was promoted to the rank of major-general. He never again took active part in Danish politics, but retired to Lausanne, where he found such friends as Gibbon and Reverdil. There he wrote his Memoirs, which were largely directed to proving the innocence of Queen Matilda, and there he died in 1820 at the age of eighty-two years.