On March 3, the sentence of the commissioners was made known, which decreed the highest criminal penalty against Chamberlain von Beringskjold, that is, like Struensee and Brandt, loss of honour, life, and property.
The king resolved on this that Beringskjold, although he had added more than one offence to his original crimes, should be spared the extreme penalty, but as a dangerous criminal remain in secure arrest; be degraded from his dignity as chamberlain; and be told that, on the slightest attempt to renew his designs, he would suffer death. This penalty, however, was in no way intended to degrade or humiliate his innocent wife or her sons.
On April 9, the convict was informed of the royal pardon, and the chamberlain's key taken from him for the second time. He was left in the citadel under arrest, but no one was allowed access to him but Dean Thybring. For all that, early in May he found means to write a letter to his wife, which really reached its destination. In this letter he complains of the "incredible godless treatment he had endured;" dropped hints about the charges brought against him; and gave instructions for further correspondence; stating, in conclusion, that he had already written twice, for which purpose paper and pens were given him by special orders of the commandant.
When Frau von Beringskjold received this letter, she was so affected by its contents, that she was attacked by a mortal disease. In her dying moments, however, she handed the letter to Quartermaster Schiött, who at once forwarded a copy to Eickstedt, and shortly after, by the general's orders, the original to Guldberg.
Beringskjold was now removed to Munkholm, where he took the place of Falckenskjold, who had been overthrown by his machinations, and was kept in the strictest arrest in the rock fortress. When, two years later, the government passed into other hands, Beringskjold fancied that the hour of his deliverance had arrived. He therefore hastened to send a petition to Copenhagen, in which he requested a revision of his trial, but naturally gained no hearing from the son of Caroline Matilda. However, the gentle young prince allowed the originator of the conspiracy of 1772 to walk about the fortress and pay visits, and his sons were ordered to give him a portion of what they had inherited from their mother.
A few years later, Beringskjold obtained his removal to the fortress of Bergenhuus, where he remained as a prisoner till 1795, but lived in incessant contention with the commandant, Major-General de Mothe, and the officers. In the last-named year he obtained the regent's permission to end his days in the unfortified town of Stavanger, in Southern Norway, where he was placed under the supervision of the bailiff. He lived here eight years, and died in 1803, at the great age of upwards of eighty years.
Count von der Osten, who became minister of foreign affairs through the palace revolution of 1772, did not occupy his post long, but was banished to Jütland in 1774, when, on the recommendation of Landgrave Charles, Count Bernstorff's nephew, the afterwards so celebrated Peter Andreas Bernstorff, was summoned to Denmark, and the foreign affairs were entrusted to him. A few years after, however, Von der Osten was recalled from his bailiff's post in Aalborg, and appointed president of the Supreme Court; a little later, chief president of Copenhagen; and, shortly before the downfall of the usurping government, was decorated with the order of the Elephant. This participator in the conspiracy also attained an age of upwards of eighty years, and died in 1797.
All that is left now is to describe the fate of the fifth principal conspirator and actual manager of the palace revolution, Cabinet Secretary Guldberg, after whom the misgovernment, from January 17, 1772, to April 14, 1784, has been called the Guldberg Ministry.
Always keeping behind the scenes so long as he had any one to fear who might contend with him for the supreme power, Guldberg accepted no seat in the privy council established immediately after Struensee's fall, but temporarily contented himself with his position as cabinet secretary to the hereditary prince and intimate adviser of the queen dowager, though he at the same time decided everything. But when the younger Bernstorff undertook the foreign ministry in 1774, and Guldberg was alarmed at the influence of this respected man, he effected his own appointment to the hitherto vacant post of privy cabinet secretary to the king, which ensued on the birthday of the hereditary prince. In this way, the cabinet government, which had been charged as the highest crime against Struensee, was re-established, and Guldberg granted official interference in all higher affairs of state. External dignities speedily followed; for the king, in 1777, raised him to the Danish nobility, with precedence from January 29, 1773, the king's birthday, and granted him the name of Höegh-Guldberg. In his new post of honour, he very soon made Bernstorff tired of his ministerial functions;[62] so that the latter sent in his resignation in 1780, and it was accepted. Immediately after, Höegh-Guldberg was appointed a privy councillor, and it was at the same time published that the king had also selected him as a member of the privy council of state.