"Oh, nothing is easier; come with me." And the king took the man, just as he stood, by the hand, and led him from his cabinet into the hall, where the whole court was assembled. He walked with his client into the middle of the assembly, and shouted in a loud voice, "I appoint this man a chamberlain."
As the fiction that Christian VII. was absolute ruler must be kept up, they had to acknowledge this appointment, in which the humour of insanity was expressed; but the title was bought back of the lucky fellow at the price of a small freehold farm.
The king was generally left to the company of a black boy, introduced by Brandt, who became Christian's inseparable companion. Children and fools, it is notorious, have an equal propensity for mischief. Christian consequently found great delight in smashing the windows and china, with the black boy's assistance, and beheading the statues in the garden. As a change, he rolled on the floor with the lad, biting and scratching him. From time to time, however, there was something that resembled a lucid interval. Thus the king one evening suddenly appeared at a court party, waved his hand to the company, and imperiously ordered "silence." The whole of the guests stopped and stared, and then the poor gentleman delivered, with great earnestness and deep pathos, Klopstock's warning ode "to the princes." This finished, he clapped his hands, burst into a loud laugh, turned on his heel, and went away.
After reading such an account of the husband to whom Caroline Matilda was unhappily bound, we can hardly feel surprised that she sought refuge in dissipation, and for this Struensee amply provided. The Royal Theatre was enlarged and embellished, and Sarti, the Capellmeister, was ordered to get up operas under the superintendence of Brandt. Further on in the season performances were also given on Sunday, which caused great annoyance among the clergy, and justly so; for though Struensee, as a German, was accustomed to such a desecration of the Sabbath, Caroline Matilda had been brought up in the Anglican faith, and ought not to have sanctioned such proceedings by her presence. The only way in which this sudden change in the queen, which was so utterly at variance with her previous blameless life, can be accounted for, is, that she was intoxicated by the homage that now surrounded her, and formed such a contrast with the early part of her reign.
A regulation about the boxes at the Royal Theatre produced a fresh grievance among the already disunited family. A separate box was given to the hereditary Prince Frederick, who had hitherto been accustomed to sit with the king; because, so the excuse was, the king did not care to have the prince's suite about him. On this affair a correspondence took place between the prince's chamberlain and Brandt, but the regulation was not rescinded. On the other hand, Struensee and Brandt appeared in the royal box, sometimes seating themselves behind the king and queen. Masquerades were now also given in the king's theatre, and on the 18th December the king gave one, to which everybody was admitted. Probably with the object of extending public liberty, persons in carriages and on foot, without distinction, were allowed to use torches at night. Mobs, doubtless hired for the purpose, once took advantage of this permission to make a riot, but did so only once, as the police interfered very sharply. From this time only few employed the permission granted them.
During the last year the country had suffered from a bad harvest, in consequence of which the price of bread and flour reached an unheard-of height. In order to prevent the threatening results of this evil as far as possible, Struensee issued, early in November, an edict against exporting corn, while the importation from the duchies, and from one inland province to another, was encouraged. Many thousand loads of grain of every description were brought from the provincial granaries to the capital, and, when a severe winter followed, Struensee sold flour at half the ordinary price to the inhabitants, caused bread to be sold at the same rate to the poor, and prohibited the distillation of spirits from corn.
In this period of universal necessity the court received a visit from the crown prince of Sweden, the future king, Gustavus III., and his younger brother, the hereditary prince, Frederick Adolphus. The princes were present at a masquerade, and in honour of them some of Holberg's plays were performed, and other court festivals arranged. The elder prince was not particularly pleased at his reception; having been invited to dine at the king's table with one or two merchants' wives, he asked if there were not Jews in the company too. One of these ladies having scolded him politely for not paying her a visit, though she was his neighbour, he replied, that he would severely reprimand the minister of his court, whom he had requested to present him to all ladies of distinction.[137] After a fortnight's stay, the princes continued their journey to Paris, but paid a visit of some days to their relations at Gottorp. To them they expressed their dissatisfaction at their reception in Copenhagen; but though it had been cooler than it should have been between such close connexions, it was explained by the fact that the Prince of Sweden neglected his wife most shamefully, and this was well known in Copenhagen.
The reforms which had been interrupted by this visit, were carried on with increased zeal after the departure of the royal guests. Struensee appears to have had great sympathy with suffering humanity, as a decree of December 7, 1770, proves. In it the establishment of a hospice for 600 poor children of both sexes was ordered, and to cover the expense a tax was laid on all carriage and saddle horses in the capital.
The next steps that Struensee took appear to me to have been of a very serious nature, and to have resulted from his erroneous views about population. It is quite true that secret births, infanticide, and the exposure of infants, were common in Copenhagen. In order to prevent these unnatural crimes, Struensee ordered a drawer containing a mattress to be placed at a window of the Lying-in Hospital looking on the street, in which unfortunate mothers could lay their children to be taken care of by the state. After this had been carried into effect, twenty-four children were placed in the crèche during the first four days. Aiding foundlings is a duty which government cannot neglect without violating the laws of humanity, but detecting and punishing parents who desert their children is no less obligatory. The clergy were therefore in the right when they denounced the new state of things, and stated that it favoured debauchery and indolence, degraded marriage, and enfeebled the advantages and rights that ought to encourage it: that it was rearing, at the cost of the industrious classes, a race of wretches, who would only increase the duties of the police and the expenses of the state. But Struensee was of the same opinion as Frederick the Great, who only saw in the human species a mode of producing soldiers: taking the increase or diminution of the population as a positive index of a state of prosperity or decay, Struensee—instead of merely favouring it indirectly, by causing good order and diminishing the impediments that checked the industry of private persons, and prevented them from attaining a competency—persuaded himself that the increased multiplication of children was the most efficacious method of augmenting the public prosperity; or, in other words, he confounded the effect with the cause. Hence it is a remarkable circumstance that the Foundling Hospital was almost the only one of Struensee's institutions that survived his fall.