It was their office to attend the king, as often as matters of importance were to be laid before him, in order to afford his Majesty the necessary explanations about everything he wished to know, so that he might give his decision.
These men, however, as members of the council, had no vote, no expedition, no secretaries; for everything depended on the king's will, and everything was carried into effect by the departments concerned.
This traditional and so natural council Struensee and his adherents[6] wished to have entirely abolished and quashed, for this man apprehended that if such a council existed, and even if it were composed of his own friends, the time would arrive when it would oppose his injurious propositions, and reveal them to the king, as he could not exclude them (the members) from speaking with his Majesty, and representing to him what was best for him and the land.
For this end Struensee had previously calumniated the ministry by all sorts of insinuations, and even depicted in the blackest colours those of their actions which were evidently to the advantage of the king and the state.
His Majesty the king, who heartily loves his people, only desires honest officials, and jealously holds to his sovereign power, now lost his confidence in the council, wished to appoint other men to it, and to give it a different constitution; but Struensee, by false statements, and the most cunning tricks, laid such obstacles in the king's way that the council gradually ceased to meet, and was finally solemnly abolished by a decree of December 27, 1770.
At the same time, he became maître des requêtes, and as it was his plan that only he should have the right to speak to the king about the affairs, and that all other persons should be excluded from doing so, it appeared to him that the remaining colleges might still lay some impediments in his way.
In order to prevent this, he represented to his Majesty the King, who wished to be thoroughly acquainted with the affairs sent in from the colleges for his most gracious decision, that nothing would be more useful for this object than for the colleges to be ordered to deliver their written requests in a portfolio, so that the king might be allowed the requisite time to read through the memoirs and reflect.
By this brilliant, and apparently so useful advice, this man gained his object of also "excluding" the colleges from the king.
He soon seizes the portfolios, and thus becomes the sole master to lay matters before the king at his pleasure.
If the colleges wished to produce further reasons for the king's better information, they must apply to Struensee, and thus he alone became what the council and the colleges together had formerly been.