Ad possum 1mum.
"According to the Fiscal General, Count Brandt, of his free will, and after due reflection, went in to his master the king and challenged, abused, attacked, and bit him."
If Count Brandt performed this execrable deed in the way the Fiscal General represents it, his righteous king would not have hesitated a moment to have had him thrown into fetters, and given him his well-merited reward—the hardest death. His Majesty, however after this event is stated to have occurred, namely, at the end of September, for several months admitted him to his presence as before, and granted him his most gracious daily intercourse, which satisfactorily proves that his royal Majesty did not regard the aforesaid occurrence as criminal.
Count Brandt, for his part, equally little regarded it as audacious, either when the affair occurred, or afterwards. For, just as he described it, in its full details, in presence of the commission, when nothing could induce him to do so but the innocence which, according to his opinion, lay in the whole affair, if the circumstances connected with it were taken into consideration in the same way, his open confession proves the confidence he placed in his innocence, as the affair could not be proved by witnesses; and the man who knows himself to be innocent is never criminal. This confession of Count Brandt, therefore, must, as the sole existing proof in the affair, be registered as credible, just as well in those passages where it speaks for his acquittal as where it serves to testify against him.
From this deposition, which perfectly agrees with Count Struensee's statement before the commission on March 21, we see what in this strange affair speaks in Count Brandt's defence. We must, therefore, regard in the first instance the peculiar circumstance that his Majesty the King, for the sake of enjoying the pleasures of private intercourse, as people of equal rank carry it on together—although the "sweetness" of such intercourse usually shuns thrones—commanded that the man whom he selected as his intimate should not consort with him as the king, but as his equal, or as one friend with the other. If Count Brandt, through submissive respect, addressed him differently, the king answered sarcastically, "Most submissive knave," in order to remind him of the commands which had been given, that Count Brandt in daily intercourse should forget he was the king, just as one of his Majesty's ancestors, of most revered memory used to act, and at times remarked, "Now the king is not at home;" and, again, when the free conversation was to have an end, "The king is at home again now."[2] But his present Majesty never would be at home, so to speak, for the man he had admitted to his intimacy, but demanded equality.
From those men selected for his constant society, the king demanded what is understood by the term un homme fait, that they should be smart fellows, and before all, have their heart in the right place, of which they must furnish a proof if he desired it, and he could not on any terms endure cowards, because such disgusted his heroic nature. As now his Majesty had seen no proof of this good quality from Count Brandt, not even after many inducements had been given, because Count Brandt always held back, his Majesty most effectually forced them from him by threatening to cudgel him in the presence of the queen, Struensee, and other persons. Count Brandt, who regarded this as a real sign of the king's disfavour, fell into a state of desperation about it, until he was informed by Struensee, who had spoken with the king on the subject, that his Majesty's wishes and most gracious intentions were only directed to obtain a proof of Brandt's courage. It was for this reason that Count Brandt one evening, without feeling the slightest anger, went into the king, and, after ordering out the lad, who was not to witness the sport, stated to the king that he had been told by Count Struensee that his Majesty wished him to prove himself a man of courage, and to do so against the king. His Majesty, far from being offended at such a scene on the part of Count Brandt, "admitted" him, in accordance with his given order, at once to a fight, and the king himself made the first five or six attacks. This would have assuredly taken a very different course if the king had regarded it as an insult. On this occasion, his Majesty involuntarily thrust a finger into Count Brandt's mouth, which the latter quite as innocently seized with his teeth. The defence followed the attack: the king demanded of Count Brandt, presta te virum. Upon this Count Brandt seized the king by the coat, thrust him against the wall, and thus proved that he was stronger than the king; and with this the whole affair ended.
Count Brandt persistently denies having beaten the king, or audaciously raised his hand against his Majesty; he only proved himself to be strong and brave, without seriousness or passion, by his Majesty's commands. His Majesty's own most gracious conduct to Count Brandt also proves that everything passed off without anger and annoyance, as his Majesty showed the count the signal favour of kissing him on the spot, and requesting him to remain and kill the time with conversation, which Count Brandt did by the king's orders, and all of which points to the disposition of their minds, and proves that they were not excited, as is also confirmed by Count Struensee's statement in the examination of March 21, that Count Brandt, when he went in to the king, was not at all irritated, but perfectly calm. After this time his Majesty also promoted him to be grand maître de la garderobe, and carried on his confidential intercourse with him for several months as before, all of which speaks for the nature of this affair. In Count Brandt's heart reigned no bitterness against the king, and no contempt: trembling from veneration, he performed the action which he would have regarded as audacious, had it not been for the king's command. It is true that Count Brandt, a few days previously, laid a riding whip upon a pianoforte standing in the king's ante-chamber, but only did so thoughtlessly, which he afterwards regretted, and as ill-deeds consist in actions carried out but not in inconsiderate designs, this occurrence cannot be reckoned as a crime on the part of Count Brandt.
If Count Brandt employed some expressions against the king which, according to the strict letter, would be highly criminal, he only employed them in the tone of all the rest, and consequently only in jest. I pass over the statements of the witnesses examined, as these people neither heard nor saw the occurrence, but only testify what they heard said about it. On the other hand, the declaration which his Majesty laid before the commission, through his page of the chamber Schack, is of the extremest importance. I read it to Count Brandt, and he has requested me to make the following explanation about it:—
"He did not remember this 'passage' in the way that it flowed from the page's lips: he considers himself too insignificant to contradict a declaration which emanated from the king his master, and only emboldens himself in dust and fetters to mention, that if his Majesty were most graciously disposed to take this affair seriously, as the declaration made by page of the chamber Schack appears to intimate, he regards himself as lost, and will not from this moment attempt any further justification, but will at once throw himself at his Majesty's feet, and seek his salvation in the king's clemency; but in the most submissive confidence in his Majesty's mercy, he would venture most humbly to remind him of the circumstances already mentioned."