Brandt had also received a copy of his sentence from Bang, and, like Struensee, immediately petitioned the King for mercy. It was generally expected that the royal clemency would be exercised in his case. The judges who tried the case had no option but to pass sentence, but some of them had hoped that the extreme penalty of the law would be mitigated. It was the King’s business to sign the sentences, but the question of whether he should, or should not, confirm them was first discussed by the Council of State before the documents were sent to the King to sign. In the council itself there were voices on the side of mercy, especially for Brandt, but Rantzau and Osten, the two members of the council who had been familiar friends of the condemned men, absolutely opposed the idea of any mercy being shown to either of them. Yet there is no doubt that, if strict justice had been meted out, Rantzau, at least, would have been lying under the same sentence. Perhaps it was this thought which made him of all the council the most implacable and unyielding: dead men could tell no tales, and until both Struensee and Brandt were dead, Rantzau would not feel safe. So the council, at any rate by a majority, reported that the King should confirm the sentences.
All effort was not at an end, for Guldberg, the most influential of the judges who had condemned Struensee and Brandt, had an audience of Juliana Maria, and implored a mitigation of the punishment, or at least that Brandt’s life should be spared. But Juliana Maria showed herself inflexible, and the vindictive side of her nature asserted itself without disguise. Brandt as well as Struensee had inflicted many slights upon her and her son; therefore he, too, should die. Guldberg, who had supposed his influence over the Queen-Dowager was all-powerful, as indeed it was on most points, was unable to move her in this, and might as well have pleaded to a rock. After a long and violent altercation he withdrew worsted, and until the executions were over he remained in strict retirement. Whatever may be said of the others, Guldberg, at any rate, washed his hands of the blood of the condemned men.
It may be doubted, however, if Juliana Maria, even if she had been otherwise minded, could have saved Brandt’s life, for the King, though easily led in many respects, showed remarkable obstinacy in this. Some of his ministers suggested to him that it would be generous of him to pardon Brandt, as the chief offence was one against his royal person; but the King at once showed the greatest repugnance to pardon. He hated Brandt much more than he hated Struensee; he had never forgiven him the assault, and the mere mention of his name was sufficient to fill him with rage. He positively declared that he would not sign either of the sentences unless he signed both, and, as no one wished Struensee to escape, the ministers gave way. The King signed both sentences, and displayed a savage joy when he heard that they were to be carried out without delay. In the evening he dined in public and went in state to the Italian opera.
On Friday, April 25, the prisoners were told of their sentences, and on Saturday they were informed that the King had signed them, and all hope was over. Their execution would take place on the Monday following. Both prisoners received the news with composure, though Struensee was much affected when he heard that every effort to save Brandt’s life had failed, and commented indignantly on the injustice of his sentence. Münter, who brought him the fatal news, greatly lamented that the barbarous and needless cruelties of the sentence had not been abolished. Struensee exhorted his friend and confessor to maintain his firmness, and said he would dispense with his services at the last if the sight would be too much for him. But to this Münter would not listen. “I shall suffer much more,” said Struensee, “if I see that you suffer too. Therefore, speak to me on the scaffold as little as you can. I will summon all my strength; I will turn my thoughts to Jesus, my Deliverer; I will not take formal leave of you, for that would unman me.” As to the brutal indignities of his death, he said: “I am far above all this, and I hope my friend Brandt feels the same. Here in this world, since I am on the point of leaving it, neither honour nor infamy can affect me any more. It is equally the same to me, after death, whether my body rots under the ground or in the open air—whether it serves to feed the worms or the birds. God will know how to preserve those particles which on the resurrection day will constitute my glorified body. It is not my all which is to be exposed upon the wheel. Thank God, I am now well assured that this flesh is not my whole being.”
Struensee wrote three letters—one to Brandt’s brother, in which he bewailed having been the innocent cause of bringing “our dear Enevold to this pass”; another to Rantzau, saying he forgave him as he hoped to be forgiven, and exhorting him to turn to religion; and the third to Madam von Berkentin of Pinneberg, the lady who had first recommended Struensee to influential personages, and thus unwittingly had laid the foundation of his future greatness and of his future ruin. To his brother, Justice Struensee, who was also a prisoner, the condemned man sent a message of farewell through Münter. But to the Queen he sent neither word of remembrance nor prayer for forgiveness for the wrong he had done her. In this respect, at least, it would seem Struensee’s conversion was not complete.
When Hee brought Brandt the news that his execution was determined upon, he displayed a firmness and dignity hardly to be expected from one of his volatile temperament. He indulged in no pious aspirations after the manner of Struensee, but said quietly that he submitted to the will of God.
For the next two days Copenhagen was filled with subdued excitement. On Sunday, the day before the execution, the places of public resort were closed, but the citizens gathered together in little groups at the corners of the streets, and spoke in hushed accents of the tragedy of to-morrow. Meanwhile, the Government was taking every step to hurry forward the executions and preserve public order. Soldiers were already guarding a large field outside the eastern gate of Copenhagen, where a scaffold, eight yards long, eight yards broad and twenty-seven feet high, was being erected. Other soldiers were posted on the gallows-hill a little distance to the west, where two poles were planted, and four wheels tied to posts. The Government had some difficulty in finding carpenters to build the scaffold, as the men had a superstition about it; many of them refused, and were at last coerced by threats. No wheelwright would supply the wheels on which the remains of the wretched men were to be exposed, so at last they were taken from old carriages in the royal stables. Though the work was pressed forward with all speed, the scaffold was only completed a few hours before the execution, which was arranged to take place early in the morning of Monday, April 28.
All the night before crowds of people were moving towards the eastern gate, and at the first break of dawn large bodies of troops marched to the place of execution, and were drawn up in a large square around the scaffold. Others formed a guard along the route from the citadel, and everywhere the posts were doubled. When all preparations were complete, the eastern gate of the city was thrown open, and huge crowds surged towards the fatal field, or pressed against the soldiers who guarded the route along which the condemned men were to journey from the citadel to the scaffold. Everywhere was a sea of countless heads. Upwards of thirty thousand persons, including women and little children, were gathered around the scaffold alone—some animated by a lust for blood and vengeance, but most of them by that morbid curiosity and love of the horrible common to all mobs in all ages of the world.
At a very early hour the two clergymen went to the condemned men to comfort and attend them in their last moments. When Münter entered Struensee’s cell, he found him reading Schegel’s Sermons on the Passion of Christ. The unhappy man was already dressed. His jailors had given him, as if in mockery, the clothes he had worn at the masquerade ball the night of his arrest, and in which he had been hurried to prison—a blue cut-velvet coat and pink silk breeches. For the first time for many months his chains were taken off. Struensee greeted Münter calmly, and together they conversed on religious matters until the cell door opened and the dread summons came.
Dean Hee found Brandt brave and even cheerful. He, too, had been unchained from the wall, and was enjoying his brief spell of comparative freedom by walking up and down the room. Brandt, also, was vested in the clothes he had brought with him to the citadel—a green court dress richly embroidered with gold. He told Hee that he was not afraid to die, and seemed only anxious that the ordeal should be over. He asked him if he had seen any one executed before, and how far he ought to bare his neck and arm to the headsman’s axe. Presently the summons came for him too.