“I am very sorry to communicate so disagreeable an article of news as that alarming reports have been circulated on the subject of his Danish Majesty’s health. Notwithstanding infinite pains have been taken to conceal or explain away some very unpromising symptoms, I am apprehensive they have but too much foundation.”[161]

[161] Gunning’s despatch, Copenhagen, February 12, 1771.

The court had by this time returned to Copenhagen and taken up residence at the Christiansborg Palace. Struensee now strove in every way to win popularity for his administration. He was a great believer in panem et circenses, and in pursuance of this policy seized upon the King’s birthday (January 29, 1771) as an opportunity for bribing the populace. The celebrations rivalled in magnificence those of the coronation, and were also intended to dispel the idea that the King was ignored in his own court. A fountain was erected in the palace yard whence flowed red and white wine, and all who would were allowed to drink from it the King’s health. Sheep and oxen were roasted whole, and distributed to the crowd; gold and silver medals were struck, and money thrown to the people. The King and Queen looked down upon the scene from a balcony, while the galleries which ran round the quadrangle were crowded with spectators.

The King’s birthday was also made the occasion of glorifying the reigning Queen, and of rewarding her adherents. Struensee gave Matilda all the semblance of power, and himself grasped the substance. In order to identify the young Queen with the revolutionary changes that had recently taken place, and impressing upon the nation the prominent position which she now held in the councils of the state, a new order was established, which was called the Order of Matilda. The Queen was founder of the order, and the statutes were as follows:—

The badge of the order was a medallion with the letters “C. M.” set in diamonds, with a royal crown over it and a laurel wreath round it. The Queen was pleased to confer it on the King, the Queen-Dowager, and Prince Frederick. The others to whom it was given on the day of its institution were Struensee, Rantzau, Osten, Brandt, General and Madame Gahler, Madame de Plessen, who still lived at Celle, and Baroness Schimmelmann, and Countess Holstein, the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. The Queen only decorated those who were her avowed supporters, and the establishment of this order gave her the opportunity of honouring them in a special and personal manner. But Struensee’s enemies declared that he had invented the order for his own special benefit, inasmuch as he despised the Order of the Dannebrog, and did not yet dare to take for himself the Order of the Elephant—the highest order in Denmark. This, however, was a malicious invention, for Struensee could have had any order and title he wished, and if he did not take them all at once, it was because he liked to prolong the pleasure of anticipation.

The court remained at Christiansborg throughout the winter, and Brandt, who was now established as a sort of master of the revels, had the arrangement of all the festivities. His first step was to alter and redecorate the royal theatre in Copenhagen at great cost, and arrange a series of operas. For the first time in Denmark, since the Reformation, performances were given on Sunday, and Sunday came to be regarded as the gala night at the opera, when the King and Queen would attend. This gave fresh offence to the puritan party in Copenhagen. The rearranging of the royal theatre was used as an occasion for offering a further slight to the Queen-Dowager and her son. They had hitherto been accustomed to share the King’s box, but now they were allotted one of their own. The Queen-Dowager rarely attended operas, but Prince Frederick did, and the excuse put forward was that there was no room for the Prince in the royal box; but when, after protest, he yielded the point, Struensee and Brandt appeared in the box, and seated themselves immediately behind the King and Queen.

Struensee turned his attention to the court, and soon the new brooms were busily sweeping out this Augean stable of privilege and corruption. The expenditure of the court was carefully revised, a great many useless offices, chiefly held by the younger sons of the nobility, were abolished, and pensions and salaries greatly reduced. The King of Denmark was burdened with a great number of costly palaces, which were always in need of repair. None of these palaces was closed, but the embellishment of them, which was always going on, was commanded to cease. By order of the late King Frederick V. the building of a marble church, to be named after him Frederiks-Kirke, had been begun in Copenhagen, after magnificent designs by Jardin, the French architect. The building of this church, which had now been going on for twenty years at enormous cost, crippled the treasury. Struensee, who considered the building of churches as useless waste, put a stop to the works, and broke the contracts with the builders. The church remained half-finished.[162] This occasioned much discontent; the contractors declared that they were ruined, the architect was loud in his complaints, artists protested against the vandalism of abandoning so magnificent an undertaking, and the clergy were scandalised that the house of the Lord should be left in this condition while large sums were squandered upon masquerades and play-houses. It is true that Struensee’s changes in the court did not effect much economy, for the perpetual round of entertainments and festivities organised by Brandt more than ate up anything that might be saved in another direction.

[162] It so remained until 1878 for lack of funds, when Tietgen, a wealthy banker of Copenhagen, undertook the cost, and it was finally completed in 1894. The handsome copper-sheathed dome is a conspicuous object in Copenhagen, especially when the city is approached from the sea.

To bring money into the depleted treasury, Struensee established a royal Danish lottery, and it became a most profitable institution, not only to the court but to the Government. Its establishment was regarded by many as state encouragement of gambling, which would not fail to bring ruin upon thousands; but protest was unavailing, for a mania for gambling seized the citizens of Copenhagen and the people in the provinces, and nothing was talked of but the lottery, to the hindrance of regular and honest occupation. Struensee’s defence to his critics was that he did not establish gambling, which already existed in Denmark; he merely sought to regulate it, and turn the craze to the benefit of the state. In this, as in many other things, he was imitating Catherine the Great, who raised money in the same way.