In the last three years of his administration, Griffenfeldt gave himself entirely to the conduct of the foreign policy of Denmark. It is difficult to form a clear idea of this, first, because his influence was perpetually traversed by opposite tendencies; in the second place, because the force of circumstances compelled him, again and again, to shift his standpoint; and finally because personal considerations largely intermingled with his foreign policy, and made it more elusive and ambiguous than it need have been. Briefly, Griffenfeldt aimed at restoring Denmark to the rank of a great power. He proposed to accomplish this by carefully nursing her resources, and in the meantime securing and enriching her by alliances, which would bring in large subsidies while imposing a minimum of obligations. Such a conditional and tentative policy, on the part of a second-rate power, in a period of universal tension and turmoil, was most difficult; but Griffenfeldt did not regard it as impossible. The first postulate of such a policy was peace, especially peace with Denmark’s most dangerous neighbour, Sweden. The second postulate was a sound financial basis, which he expected the wealth of France to supply in the shape of subsidies to be spent on armaments. Above all things Denmark was to beware of making enemies of France and Sweden at the same time. An alliance, on fairly equal terms, between the three powers, would, in these circumstances, be the consummation of Griffenfeldt’s “system”; an alliance with France to the exclusion of Sweden would be the next best policy; but an alliance between France and Sweden, without the admission of Denmark, was to be avoided at all hazards. Had Griffenfeldt’s policy succeeded, Denmark might have recovered her ancient possessions to the south and east comparatively cheaply. But again and again he was overruled. Despite his open protests and subterraneous counter-mining, war was actually declared against Sweden in 1675, and his subsequent policy seemed so obscure and hazardous to those who did not possess the clue to the perhaps purposely tangled skein, that the numerous enemies whom his arrogance and superciliousness had raised up against him, resolved to destroy him.
On the 11th of March 1676, while on his way to the royal apartments, Griffenfeldt was arrested in the king’s name and conducted to the citadel, a prisoner of state. A minute scrutiny of his papers, lasting nearly six weeks, revealed nothing treasonable; but it provided the enemies of the fallen statesman with a deadly weapon against him in the shape of an entry in his private diary, in which he had imprudently noted that on one occasion Christian V. in a conversation with a foreign ambassador had “spoken like a child.” On the 3rd of May Griffenfeldt was tried not by the usual tribunal, in such cases the Höjesteret, or supreme court, but by an extraordinary tribunal of 10 dignitaries, none of whom was particularly well disposed towards the accused. Griffenfeldt, who was charged with simony, bribery, oath-breaking, malversation and lèse-majesté, conducted his own defence under every imaginable difficulty. For forty-six days before his trial he had been closely confined in a dungeon without lights, books or writing materials. Every legal assistance was illegally denied him. Nevertheless he proved more than a match for the forensic ability arrayed against him, and his first plea in defence is in a high degree dignified and manly. Finally, he was condemned to degradation and decapitation; though one of the ten judges not only refused to sign the sentence, but remonstrated in private with the king against its injustice. And indeed its injustice was flagrant. The primary offence of the ex-chancellor was the taking of bribes, which no twisting of the law could convert into a capital offence, while the charge of treason had not been substantiated. Griffenfeldt was pardoned on the scaffold, at the very moment when the axe was about to descend. On hearing that the sentence was commuted to life-long imprisonment, he declared that the pardon was harder than the punishment, and vainly petitioned for leave to serve his king for the rest of his life as a common soldier. For the next two and twenty years Denmark’s greatest statesman lingered out his life in a lonely state-prison, first in the fortress of Copenhagen, and finally at Munkholm on Trondhjem fiord. He died at Trondhjem on the 12th of March 1699. Griffenfeldt married Kitty Nansen, the granddaughter of the great Burgomaster Hans Nansen, who brought him half a million rix-dollars. She died in 1672, after bearing him a daughter.
See Danmark’s Riges Histoire, vol. v. (Copenhagen, 1897-1905); Jörgenson, Peter Schumacher-Griffenfeldt (Copenhagen, 1893-1894); O. Vaupell, Rigskansler Grev Griffenfeldt (Copenhagen, 1880-1882); Bain, Scandinavia, cap. x. (Cambridge, 1905).
(R. N. B.)
GRIFFIN [O’Griobta, O’Greeva], GERALD (1803-1840), Irish novelist and dramatic writer, was born at Limerick of good family, on the 12th of December 1803. His parents emigrated in 1820 to America, but he was left with an elder brother, who was a medical practitioner at Adare. As early as his eighteenth year he undertook for a short time the editorship of a newspaper in Limerick. Having written a tragedy, Aguire, which was highly praised by his friends, he set out in 1823 for London with the purpose of “revolutionizing the dramatic taste of the time by writing for the stage.” In spite of the recommendations of John Banim, he had a hard struggle with poverty. It was only by degrees that his literary work obtained any favour. The Noyades, an opera entirely in recitative, was produced at the English Opera House in 1826; and the success of Holland Tide Tales (1827) led to Tales of the Munster Festivals (3 vols., 1827), which were still more popular. In 1829 appeared his fine novel, The Collegians, afterwards successfully adapted for the stage by Dion Boucicault under the title of The Colleen Bawn. He followed up this success with The Invasion (1832), Tales of my Neighbourhood (1835), The Duke of Monmouth (1836), and Talis Qualis, or Tales of the Jury-room (1842). He also wrote a number of lyrics touched with his native melancholy. But he became doubtful as to the moral influence of his writings, and ultimately he came to the conclusion that his true sphere of duty was to be found within the Church. He was admitted into a society of the Christian Brothers at Dublin, in September 1838, under the name of Brother Joseph, and in the following summer he removed to Cork, where he died of typhus fever on the 12th of June 1840. Before adopting the monastic habit he burned all his manuscripts; but Gisippus, a tragedy which he had composed before he was twenty, accidentally escaped destruction, and in 1842 was put on the Drury Lane stage by Macready with great success.
The collected works of Gerald Griffin were published in 1842-1843 in eight volumes, with a Life by his brother William Griffin, M.D.; an edition of his Poetical and Dramatic Works (Dublin, 1895) by C. G. Duffy; and a selection of his lyrics, with a notice by George Sigerson, is included in the Treasury of Irish Poetry, edited by Stopford A. Brooke and T. W. Rolleston (London, 1900).
GRIFFIN, a city and the county-seat of Spalding county, Georgia, U.S.A., 43 m. S. of Atlanta, and about 970 ft. above the sea. Pop. (1890) 4503; (1900) 6857 (3258 negroes); (1910) 7478. It is served by the Southern and the Central of Georgia railways, and is the southern terminus of the Griffin & Chattanooga Division of the latter. The city is situated in a rich agricultural region, and just outside the corporate limits is an agricultural experiment station, established by the state but maintained by the Federal government. Griffin has a large trade in cotton and fruit. The principal industry is the manufacture of cotton and cotton-seed oil. Buggies, wagons, chairs and harness are among the other manufactures. The municipality owns and operates the water and electric-lighting systems. Griffin was founded in 1840 and was chartered as a city in 1846.