The dockyard men were much disappointed at the non-appearance of their Majesties, and their disappointment was changed to indignation when they learned that it was fear which kept them at Hirschholm. It seemed incredible that the King of Denmark should distrust his own people. The King, in point of fact, did not distrust them; he showed himself quite indifferent whether he went to Frederiksberg or stayed at home; it was Struensee who feared for himself, and the Queen who feared for her favourite. The proceedings at Frederiksberg passed off without any disturbance, though the dockyard men jestingly remarked that the ox sacrificed for them was not the ox they had been promised—an allusion to Struensee’s corpulence. Struensee probably showed discretion in keeping away from the festival, for there was a deep-laid plot to capture him, alive or dead, when he mingled with the crowd.[5]
[5] In 1774 Baron Bülow gave Mr. Wraxall a detailed account of the plot to murder Struensee and his partisans on this occasion.—Wraxall’s Posthumous Memoirs.
The terror and irresolution displayed by Struensee were quite foreign to the character before conceived of him both by friends and foes. “I have begun to see his character in a different light from that in which it appeared formerly,”[6] writes Keith; and again: “It has been whispered about that, upon the late disturbances, he betrayed some unexpected signs of personal fear, and the natural result of this suspicion is to loosen the attachment of the persons whom he has trusted, and to diminish that awe which is necessary for the maintenance of his unbounded authority.”[7]
[6] Keith’s despatch, Copenhagen, September, 1771.
[7] Ibid.
Struensee’s cowardice, now twice proved, dealt a fatal blow to his prestige: the man of iron had feet of clay; the despotic minister, “the man mountain,” whose reign, according to Brandt, was based on the terror he inspired, was himself stricken with craven fears. It seemed inconceivable that a man who had dared everything, and braved every risk to gain power, should, the moment he reached the goal of his ambition, reveal himself a poltroon. For two years Struensee had shown an unmoved front to the threats of his enemies; for two years he had carried his life in his hand; but now the mere hint of insurrection, or assassination, made him tremble and cower behind the skirts of the Queen. This inconsistency has never been satisfactorily explained in any of the books written on Struensee and his administration. His admirers pass it over as lightly as possible. His enemies say that it reveals the man in his true colours as a sorry rogue; but this theory will not hold, for the courage and resource which Struensee showed all through his career until the last few months give it the lie. The key to the mystery is probably to be found in physical causes.
Struensee was still a young man as statesmen go; he was only thirty-four years of age—an age when most men are entering upon the prime and full vigour of their manhood—and he came of a healthy stock; but the herculean labours of the last two years had told upon him. No man could overthrow ministers, reform public offices, formulate a new code of laws, and change the whole policy of a kingdom without feeling the strain. For two years Struensee had been working at high pressure, toiling early and late. He left little or nothing to subordinates; his eagle eye was everywhere, and not a detail escaped him, either in the Government or in the court. He was a glutton for work, and gathered to himself every department of the administration. No step could be taken without his approval; no change, however slight, effected until it had first been submitted to him. We have seen how Osten complained that Struensee meddled in his department; we have seen how Brandt complained that even the comedies and dances, the colour and shape of the Queen’s dresses, had to receive the dictator’s approval. It was not humanly possible that any man, even though he were a “beyond-man,” could work at this pitch for any length of time. He could not do justice to matters of high policy and government, and supervise every petty detail of a court; either one or the other must suffer, and with Struensee the more important, in the long run, went to the wall. He lost his sense of the proportion of things, and became burdened with a mass of detail. It was not only the work which suffered, but the man himself; overstrained, he lost his balance, overwrought, he lost his nerve. To this must be ascribed the fatal errors which characterised the last few months of his administration. To this and his self-indulgence.
It was almost impossible that a man could work at so high a pressure without injury; it could only be possible if he took the greatest heed of himself, carefully guarded his bodily health, and led a regular and abstemious life. Two of Struensee’s greatest contemporaries, who achieved most in the world, Frederick the Great and Catherine the Great, were careful to lead simple, abstemious lives;[8] but Struensee was by nature a voluptuary, and he lived the life of the senses as well as the life of the intellect. In early years he had to check this tendency to some extent, for he lacked the means to purchase his pleasures; but when, by an extraordinary turn of fortune’s wheel, he found himself raised from obscurity to power, from poverty to affluence, with the exchequer of a kingdom at his disposal, and unlimited means whereby to gratify every wish, he gave full rein to his appetites. He was a gourmand; the dishes which came to the royal table were made to tickle his palate, and what he did not like was not served, for this mighty minister even superintended the cuisine, and took a pleasure therein. Rich food called for rare vintages, and the choicest wines in the royal cellar were at Struensee’s disposal. He did not stint himself either with food or drink; he was a wine-bibber as well as a glutton, and habitually ate and drank more than was good for him. All his life he had been a scoffer at morality, and now he deliberately made use of his opportunities to practise what he preached. In fine, when he was not at work, his time was spent in the gratification of carnal pleasures. He never took any real rest; a few hours’ sleep, generally not begun until long after midnight, were all he allowed himself, and the moment his eyes opened he was at work again. The result of this excess, both in work and pleasure, was a nervous breakdown; he became corpulent and flabby, his physical and mental health was shattered, and he was no longer able to keep that firm grasp upon affairs which the position he had arrogated to himself demanded from the man at the helm. He relaxed his hold, and the ship of state, which he had built with so much care, began to drift rapidly and surely towards destruction. In the royal archives at Copenhagen may be seen many specimens of Struensee’s signature which he inscribed upon documents during his brief rule, and in the last months of his administration this signature is no longer bold and firm, but wavering and disjointed, as though written with a trembling hand. This was accounted for at the time by the statement that Struensee had hurt his wrist in a heavy fall from his horse, while riding with the Queen at Hirschholm towards the end of September. But the cause probably lay deeper than that, and the trembling signature was an evidence of the rapidly failing powers of the man, who, until he showed fear at the arrival of the handful of sailors at Hirschholm, had been considered almost superhuman.
[8] Catherine the Great, of course, broke her rule in one respect, but then she was an exception of all rules.