These sentences are certainly among the rarest documents which the annals of justice contain. Struensee was convicted of a single crime; Brandt was innocent. In the sentence, Struensee's crime is not stated, and the whole document is a disgustingly long narrative of undecided actions, not one of which would offer grounds for a sentence of death. Reverdil, usually so cool and impartial, cannot restrain his feelings when he writes about these atrocious verdicts:—
"The sentences were minuted by Wiwet. They were inserted in the newspapers; among others, the Leyden Gazette. They seem expressly drawn up to dishonour the king, the judges, and the country. The crimes proved are confounded in them with presumptions, offences with imprudences, faults peculiar to favourites with those in which, as they were covered by the king's authority, the culpability falls on him. In the fear of not charging enough, intentions and passions are taken into account. In the sentence passed on Brandt, after describing the scene of fisticuffs, which so strongly revealed the king's imbecility, they were not ashamed to add: 'Count Brandt has certainly alleged in his defence that the king had pardoned him; but even supposing that the fact was proved, it could not be understood otherwise than that his Majesty was kind enough to suffer so great an extremity for a time. After all, the culprit has proved nothing in this respect, and his Majesty is the sole judge of the extent he gives to his own indulgence.' When this extraordinary document was read to the man whom it concerned, he said very justly in his way, that its author deserved a hundred lashes with a stirrup-leather."
It is not surprising to find that the authenticity of the sentences was not believed when they were published in foreign countries. Thus we read in the Annales Belgiques for May, 1772:—
"A sentence ought to state the facts simply, and declare the penalty which is pronounced against the man who has been guilty of them. Care should be taken to avoid mixing up in it reasonings and epithets which denote in the judge a disposition for vengeance or any passion: now this pamphlet, which is offered us under the title of a sentence, displays from one end to the other such marked characters of a violent prejudice against the condemned, that this in itself would be sufficient to render it suspicious. It forms a tissue of vague imputations which can be easily destroyed."
But the dominant faction did not trouble itself about what might be said: sentence had been passed, and the next matter of importance was to have it executed before any revulsion took place in public opinion.