Princess Mary begged the queen, her niece, would excuse her from taking any part in these royal feuds, which, instead of producing the desired effect, might perhaps stimulate her rival's vengeance, to offer her Majesty some new affronts and indignities. She professed, at the same time, a great concern for her troubles and anxiety, hoping her Majesty's good sense and conduct would confound the vile imputations of Juliana, and make the king sensible of his errors.
If the public entertained any doubts as to the terms on which the king and queen stood to each other, they were removed when the court proceeded, in May, to the palace of Frederiksberg, near Copenhagen. This gave the affair another turn, and soon dispelled the good opinion about a change in the king's mode of life, and the fancied wedded happiness of the young queen. Count Holck now lived at the "Blue Farm," in close proximity to the summer residence of the court, after being married on May 8, to the Countess Juliana Sophia, daughter of the admiral, Count Danneskjold Laurvig, which, however, did not prevent him from continuing his old course of life. Elegant court dames lodged for the summer in villas round his country seat, and a constant communication was kept up between Frederiksberg and the "Blaagaard."
In July, a visit from the Duke of Gloucester, brother of Queen Caroline Matilda, gave occasion for numerous court festivities, but also for an increased dislike on the part of the queen against the favourite. One day, the king asked Count Holck, whom the duke resembled? And the impudent favourite answered, "An English ox." The duke was in truth extremely stout, and had a corresponding broad face. The king laughed at his favourite's joke, but was so malicious as to repeat Holck's sally to the queen. The duke appears to have enjoyed himself right royally while in Copenhagen, for we read that he and his gentlemen indulged so immoderately at table, after the fashion of the age, that they were obliged to take foot-baths, and use other preventives, for fear of an attack of apoplexy before morning.
The boldness which the favourite displayed, and the loose life he himself led, and to which he habituated the king, at length aroused a party against him, which plainly increased more and more daily. At the head of it was the Supreme Court Marshal Frederick Christian von Moltke, who had recently been deposed on behalf of a man who in other respects stood far below him. But this Count Moltke did not possess the cleverness and practised craft of his father, and did not know how to overthrow the arrogant favourite. This was reserved for another man, from whom it had not been expected. This man of bourgeois origin contrived within a short period to remove not only Count Holck, but nearly all those in authority, and to introduce a spirit into the government which, had it not been overthrown, might have had the best consequences for land and nation; for the most important of his reforms were such as had endured a lengthened trial. This man was Dr. Struensee.
John Frederick Struensee was born at Halle, on August 5, 1737, where his father, Adam Struensee, the son of a cloth-factor, in New Ruppin, was at the time preacher at St. Ulrich's Church. His mother, Maria Dorothea, was the only daughter of Dr. Carl, a man given to mysticism, who had been appointed physician in ordinary by Christian VII.'s grandfather, and died in 1757, as a practising physician at Mildorf, in Dittmarsch, at the great age of ninety years.[91]
Struensee had light brown, almost flaxen hair, blue, sharp, and flashing eyes, an aquiline nose, and a high forehead; he was firmly built, and gifted with an admirable ability, great desire for learning, and a most excellent memory.[92] He received his first education at the Orphan School of his native town, where religious instruction was not only treated superficially, but several of his teachers were also given to mysticism. In their lessons they constantly said, "This you must believe, because God has spoken so in the Bible," but offered no proof that the Bible was really the word of God. Struensee concluded from this, that his teachers regarded the Bible as of divine origin, solely because they had been taught so in their youth, and was not satisfied with this.
It happened on one occasion that many of his fellow-pupils, of whom several were of notoriously loose morals, declared that they had been suddenly enlightened and converted. All sorts of edifying exercises were at once performed with these young men. Struensee, and others of his school friends, who were not among the enlightened, considered this ridiculous; and the foolish penance which the teachers imposed upon them in consequence, rendered Struensee only the more obstinate. The pietistic teachers declared that it was as godless to go about in ruffles and powdered hair as to commit actual sin. Struensee drew from this the conclusion, that as the former cannot possibly be sinful, consequently excesses are just as little sinful. The religious views of his parents, with which they sought to inoculate their son, also aided to confirm the young man in his free-thinking opinions, as he was too clever not to give the preference to an unfeigned belief in God. The father incessantly told his incredulous son how he, from his youth up, had felt in himself the most powerful workings of grace, and was constantly tormenting him with other religious tenets of a nature more or less abstruse. The mother, who had by her marriage been only confirmed in the misty views she had imbibed from her father, entirely agreed with her husband, and thus did her part to turn her son against his home; and, lastly, the father's ill-applied strictures hardened young Struensee's heart against all the exhortations of his over-pious parents. The sermons which he was forced to listen to on Sunday were powerless to produce any other opinion about religion. He saw persons at church weeping from remorse, and found them after the tears of pious repentance had been shed, no better than they had been before. The result was, that Struensee, in opposition to these hypocrites, became a perfect free-thinker.
Another trait of Struensee's character forms the keynote of his catastrophe. He was from an early age gifted with an enterprising and restless mind, and an unbridled ambition. This fact aroused in his father a well-founded apprehension, when he heard of his son's rapid progress in the world. "My son," he said to a friend, "will not be able to bear the favour of his monarch." These words contain Struensee's whole fate. Moreover, he had always an immoderate propensity for pleasure, and very liberal views as regards morality. Such faults are wont to assume enormous proportions in the intoxication of fortune: they are the more dangerous for a man whose career attracts the general attention; they lead him into serious errors; and any statesman ought carefully to try and keep them in submission.[93]
With what remarkable abilities the young man must have been endowed is proved by the fact that he was able to matriculate at the University of Halle in his fourteenth year, and had not completed his twentieth when he received his degree as Doctor. In 1757, the call of his father to be chief preacher in the town church of Altona had a material influence on Struensee's fate. The young doctor accompanied his father there, and remained for a time in the house of his parents. Ere long, however, he entered the public service, for, on October 20 of the same year, he was appointed by the government town physician of Altona, and country physician of the lordship of Pinneberg and the county of Rantzau. When his father, who had become celebrated as a theologian, was appointed by the government superintendent-general of the two duchies, and removed first to Rendsburg and then to Schleswig, the young doctor bought a house in Altona, and set up his own household. His table was laid at dinner for six persons, at supper for four, and the meals were accompanied by clever conversation. The host often gave free course to his satire, though without offending any one, and his guests were principally men of letters and officers.