Starting from the hypothesis that Sweden was “Denmark-Norway’s most active and irreconcilable enemy,” Bernstorff logically included France, the secular ally of Sweden, among the hostile powers with whom an alliance was to be avoided, and drew near to Great Britain as the natural foe of France, especially during the American War of Independence, and this too despite the irritation occasioned in Denmark-Norway by Great Britain’s masterful interpretation of the expression “contraband.” Bernstorff’s sympathy with England grew stronger still when in 1779 Spain joined her enemies; and he was much inclined, the same winter, to join a triple alliance between Great Britain, Russia and Denmark-Norway, proposed by England for the purpose of compelling the Bourbon powers to accept reasonable terms of peace. But he was overruled by the crown prince Frederick, who thought such a policy too hazardous, when Russia declined to have anything to do with it. Instead of this the Russian chancellor Nikita Panin proposed an armed league to embrace all the neutral powers, for the purpose of protecting neutral shipping in time of war. This league was very similar to one proposed by Bernstorff himself in September 1778 for enforcing the principle “a free ship makes the cargo free”; but as now presented by Russia, he rightly regarded it as directed exclusively against England. He acceded to it indeed (9th of July 1780) because he could not help doing so; but he had previously, by a separate treaty with England, on the 4th of July, come to an understanding with that power as to the meaning of the expression “contraband of war.” This independence caused great wrath at St Petersburg, where Bernstorff was accused of disloyalty, and ultimately sacrificed to the resentment of the Russian government (13th of November 1780), the more readily as he already disagreed on many important points of domestic administration with the prime minister Höegh Guldberg. He retired to his Mecklenburg estates, but on the fall of Guldberg four years later, was recalled to office (April 1784). The ensuing thirteen years were perhaps the best days of the old Danish absolutism. The government, under the direction of such enlightened ministers as Bernstorff, Reventlow and others, held the mean between Struensee’s extravagant cosmopolitanism and Guldberg’s stiff conservatism. In such noble projects of reform as the emancipation of the serfs (see [Reventlow]) Bernstorff took a leading part, and so closely did he associate himself with everything Danish, so popular did he become in the Danish capital, that a Swedish diplomatist expressed the opinion that henceforth Bernstorff could not be removed without danger. Liberal-minded as he was, he held that “the will of the nation should be a law to the king,” and he boldly upheld the freedom of the press as the surest of safety-valves.
Meanwhile foreign complications were again endangering the position of Denmark-Norway. As Bernstorff had predicted, Panin’s neutrality project had resulted in a breach between Great Britain and Russia. Then came Gustavus III.’s sudden war with Russia in 1788. Bernstorff was bound by treaty to assist Russia in such a contingency, but he took care that the assistance so rendered should be as trifling as possible, to avoid offending Great Britain and Prussia. Still more menacing became the political situation on the outbreak of the French Revolution. Ill-disposed as Bernstorff was towards the Jacobins, he now condemned on principle any interference in the domestic affairs of France, and he was persuaded that Denmark’s safest policy was to keep clear of every anti-French coalition. From this unassailable standpoint he never swerved, despite the promises and even the menaces both of the eastern and the western powers. He was rewarded with complete success and the respect of all the diplomatists in Europe. His neutrality treaty with Sweden (17th of March 1794), for protecting their merchantmen by combined squadrons, was also extremely beneficial to the Scandinavian powers, both commercially and politically. Taught by the lesson of Poland, he had, in fact, long since abandoned his former policy of weakening Sweden. Bernstorff’s great faculties appeared, indeed, to mature and increase with age, and his death, on the 21st of June 1797, was regarded in Denmark as a national calamity.
Count Bernstorff was twice married, his wives being the two sisters of the writers Counts Christian and Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg. He left seven sons and three daughters. Of his sons the best known is Christian Günther, count von Bernstorff. Another, Count Joachim, was attached to his brother’s fortunes so long as he remained in the Danish service, was associated with him in representing Denmark at the congress of Vienna, and in 1815 was appointed ambassador at that court.
See Rasmus Nyerup, Bernstorffs Eftermaele (Kjobenhavn, 1799); Peter Edward Holm, Danmark-Norges udenrigske Historie (Copenhagen, 1875); Danmarks Riges Historie V. (Copenhagen, 1897-1905); Christian Ulrich Detlev von Eggers, Denkwurdigskeiten aus dem Leben des Grafen A.P. Bernstorff (Copenhagen, 1800); Aage Frus, A.P. Bernstorff og O. Hoegh-Guldberg (Copenhagen, 1899); and Bernstorfferne og Danmark (Copenhagen, 1903).
(R. N. B.)
BERNSTORFF, CHRISTIAN GÜNTHER, Count von (1769-1835), Danish and Prussian statesman and diplomatist, son of Count Andreas Peter von Bernstorff, was born at Copenhagen on the 3rd of April 1769. Educated for the diplomatic service under his father’s direction, he began his career in 1787, as attaché to the representative of Denmark at the opening of the Swedish diet. In 1789 he went as secretary of legation to Berlin, where his maternal uncle, Count Leopold Friedrich zu Stolberg, was Danish ambassador. His uncle’s influence, as well as his own social qualities, obtained him rapid promotion; he was soon chargé d’affaires, and in 1791 minister plenipotentiary. In 1794 he exchanged this post for the important one of ambassador at Stockholm, where he remained until May 1797, when he was summoned to Copenhagen to act as substitute for his father during his illness. On the death of the latter (21st June), he succeeded him as secretary of state for foreign affairs and privy councillor. In 1800 he became head of the ministry. He remained responsible for the foreign policy of Denmark until May 1810, a fateful period which saw the battle of Copenhagen (2nd of April 1801), the bombardment of Copenhagen and capture of the Danish fleet in 1807. After his retirement he remained without office until his appointment in 1811 as Danish ambassador at Vienna. He remained here, in spite of the fact that for a while Denmark was nominally at war with Austria, until, in January 1814, on the accession of Denmark to the coalition against Napoleon, he publicly resumed his functions as ambassador. He accompanied the emperor Francis to Paris, and was present at the signature of the first peace of Paris. With his brother Joachim, he represented Denmark at the congress of Vienna and, as a member for the commission for the regulation of the affairs of Germany, was responsible for some of that confusion of Danish and German interests which was to bear bitter fruit later in the Schleswig-Holstein question (q.v.). He again accompanied the allied sovereigns to Paris in 1815, returning to Copenhagen the same year. In 1817 he was appointed Danish ambassador at Berlin, his brother Joachim going at the same time to Vienna. In the following year Prince Hardenberg made him the formal proposition that he should transfer his services to Prussia, which, with the consent of his sovereign, he did.
It was, therefore, as a Prussian diplomat that Bernstorff attended the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (October 1818), at the close of which he returned to Berlin as minister of state and head of the department for foreign affairs. Bernstorff’s management of Prussian policy during the many years that he remained in office has been variously judged. He was by training and temperament opposed to the Revolution, and he was initiated into his new duties as a Prussian minister by the reactionary Ancillon. He is accused of having subordinated the particular interests of Prussia to the European policy of Metternich and the “Holy Alliance.” Whether any other policy would in the long run have served Prussia better is a matter for speculation. It is true that Bernstorff supported the Carlsbad decrees, and the Vienna Final Act; he was also the faithful henchman of Metternich at the congresses of Laibach, Troppau and Verona. On the other hand, he took a considerable share in laying the foundations of the customs union (Zollverein), which was destined to be the foundation of the Prussian hegemony in Germany. In his support of Russia’s action against Turkey in 1828 also he showed that he was no blind follower of Metternich’s views. In the crisis of 1830 his moderation in face of the warlike clamour of the military party at Berlin did much to prevent the troubles in Belgium and Poland from ending in a universal European conflagration.
From 1824 onward Bernstorff had been a constant sufferer from hereditary gout, intensified and complicated by the results of overwork. In the spring of 1832 the state of his health compelled him to resign the ministry of foreign affairs to Ancillon, who had already acted as his deputy for a year. He died on the 18th of March 1835.
See J. Caro in Allgem. Deutsch. Biog. s.v.; also H. von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte (Leipzig, 1874-1894).