CHAPTER X.
THE EXECUTIONS.
1772.
The prisoners were told of their fate on Friday, April 25, immediately after the sentences were pronounced. Uhldahl and Bang went to the citadel to inform their respective clients of the judgment against them, and to hand them a copy of their sentences.
Uhldahl, who had undertaken the defence of Struensee with a very ill-grace, entered the condemned man’s cell and curtly said: “Good Count, I bring you bad news,” and then, without a word of sympathy, he handed Struensee a copy of his sentence. Struensee, who had shown craven fear at intervals during his imprisonment, now read the document which condemned him to a barbarous and ignominious death with an unmoved air, and when he had perused it to the end, he handed it without a word to Dr. Münter, who was with him at the time. Apparently only the sentence, and not the judgment, was handed to the condemned man, for Struensee asked his advocate if he were condemned on all the counts in his indictment, to which Uhldahl answered in the affirmative. “Even on that concerning the education of the Crown Prince?” asked Struensee. “Even on that,” replied Uhldahl briefly. Struensee said that, if he had had any children of his own, he should have reared them in exactly the same way—to which Uhldahl made no reply. “And what is Brandt’s fate?” asked Struensee. “His sentence is exactly the same as yours.” “But could his counsel do nothing to save him?” demanded Struensee. “He said everything that could be urged in his favour; but Count Brandt had too much laid to his charge.” The thought of Brandt’s fate moved Struensee far more than his own; but he soon regained his composure, and resolved to petition the King, who had not yet signed the sentences, for mercy.
When Struensee and Münter were left alone, the latter lamented the barbarities of the sentence, but Struensee assured him they mattered little. He still held the same ground—that is to say, he admitted his guilt so far as the Queen was concerned, but maintained his innocence of all the other charges against him, even the one of having forged the document that gave him money from the Treasury, which must have been true. But he admitted that his intrigue with the Queen made him liable to the extremest punishment of the law. “My judges,” he said, “had the law before them, and therefore they could not decide otherwise. I confess my crime is great; I have violated the majesty of the King.” Even now, when the sentence had robbed him of almost his last hope, and he was face to face with a hideous death, this wretched man had no word of remorse or grief for the ruin, misery and suffering he had brought upon the Queen. Uhldahl had given him Matilda’s pathetic message—that she forgave him everything he had said and done against her, even the shameful confession by which he had striven to shield himself at her expense. Struensee received the message without emotion, and even with sullen indifference; he was so much engrossed with his own fate that he had no thought to spare for the Queen. Perhaps he thought it was a device of the Evil One to lure him away from the contemplation of his soul. However much we may suspect the motives which first led Struensee to his conversion, there is no doubt that he was sincerely zealous for his spiritual well-being at the last. The long months of solitary confinement, the ceaseless exhortations and prayers of the fervent Münter, the near approach of death, perhaps, too, some echo from the pious home in which he had been reared, combined to detach Struensee’s thoughts from the world and to concentrate them on his soul. He had reached that point which counts earth’s sufferings as little in comparison with the problems of eternity. The worldling, who had once thought of nothing but his material advancement, was now equally ambitious for his spiritual welfare. In his pursuit of the one he was as selfish and as absorbed as he had been in pursuit of the other. The motive had changed, but the man was the same.
STRUENSEE IN HIS DUNGEON.
From a Contemporary Print.