"Remember Jesus Christ crucified, who died, but is risen again."
The first blow fell, and with it, Struensee was attacked by violent convulsions, the result of which was, that the second blow intended to behead the poor wretch, failed. He sprang up convulsively, but the assistant seized him by the hair, and pulled him down on the block by force; even when the head was removed, a portion of the chin was left behind.
The same horrors were committed on his poor corpse as on Brandt's, but I have no heart to dwell on them: let us rather agree with the poet in saying,
"Excidat illa dies ævo: nec postera credant
Sæcula: nos certé taceamus et obruta multa
Nocte tegi nostræ patiamur crimina gentis."
The mangled remains, after they had been thrown into the cart, were conveyed all through the city to the field at the other extremity, where they were to be left to moulder or be devoured by the fowls of the air. For each, four stout balks were, at equal distances, driven into the earth; a taller pole was fixed in the centre; the entrails, &c., were buried in a hole dug at the foot of the central pole; on the top the head was fixed, the pole being forced up inside the skull, through which a spike was driven to make it fast; the hand was nailed on a piece of board, placed transversely below the head; a cart wheel was fixed horizontally on the top of each of the four posts or pillars, on which a quarter of the body was exposed, made fast to the wheel by iron chains.
The countless crowd, whose curiosity was now fully satisfied, returned to the city, shaken by the scenes they had witnessed, and the deep impression produced by the awful drama could be noticed for a long time. Convicts had to be employed on the next day in removing the scaffold, as no honest man would have a hand in it; but Gallows Hill preserved its decorations for some years, and even in 1775, Mr. Coxe saw Struensee's and Brandt's skulls and bones there.[21] All this was done to satiate the vengeance of the queen dowager. With a telescope in her hand, Juliana Maria had witnessed the whole execution from the tower of the Christiansborg, and when the turn arrived for the special object of her hatred, Struensee, she rubbed her hands joyously, and exclaimed, "Now comes the fat one."[22]
But the queen did not neglect to observe decorum even in this affair, and hence, soon after the execution, sent for Dr. Münter, in order to hear all the details of the judicial murder from this immediate witness of the fearful scene. When he had ended his report, the queen burst into tears; but, as our Danish authority remarks, "it is notorious that a crocodile can weep." Then she said to Münter—
"I feel sorry for the unhappy man. I have examined myself whether in all I have done against him I have acted through any feeling of personal enmity; but my conscience acquits me of it."