Sex with the Queen (48 page)

But his appreciative subjects—the poor—were powerless and their approval meant nothing.

Struensee outraged the clergy by removing the customary fine on citizens who worked on Sundays. He further infuriated the church by guaranteeing illegitimate children the same rights as those born within marriage and by prohibiting the punishment of unwed mothers. As a result, unwanted children were no longer exposed or murdered. He built a maternity ward attached to a foundling hospital where children could be dropped off, no questions asked. The pillory—in which adulterers were locked as a jeering populace threw rotten vegetables at them—was re-moved. From their pulpits, pastors railed against Struensee and his mistress the queen.

When Struensee tackled the problem of the national debt, he eliminated thousands of court posts and their corresponding salaries. Naturally, those who lost their positions became his en-emies. He further enraged the nobility with the novel concept that all men were equal before the law, and that a title would not allow a murderer, rapist, or thief to escape justice.

Struensee abolished the council and exiled its members to their country estates. Furious, these powerful nobles banded to-gether in an effort to remove the intruder and regain their an-cient privileges. They found a friend in the person of Dowager Queen Juliana who, once she dislodged Matilda and Struensee, e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y e u r o p e 2 1 9

would rule as regent until Christian’s son came of age at four-teen. Clutching her Bible, Juliana expressed herself outraged at the decadence of the court and denounced the adulterous queen.

Struensee lost the support of the armed forces in a disastrous effort to reorganize them. He alienated the legal profession by dismissing corrupt judges and streamlining the courts of law, thereby rendering superfluous countless clucking lawyers. He angered the diplomatic community by decreasing salaries and benefits. He simplified taxation and reorganized pensions and titles. For every individual pleased with the new laws, there were several others who had lost their livelihoods. Struensee, for all his vision, succeeded in alienating every important segment of Danish society.

Lord Robert Gunning, George III’s ambassador to Denmark, wrote of his alarm at the unrest caused by Struensee’s laws.

“There is scarcely a single family or person in these dominions of any considerable rank, property or influence, who has not been disobliged, disgusted and (as they think) injured,” he warned, “and whose disaffection, there is reason to apprehend, only waits for a favorable opportunity of manifesting itself.”73

Matilda, thrilled at the progress her lover was bringing to Denmark, often compared herself to Catherine the Great. And indeed, the two women had much in common. Both had been trundled into foreign countries and married to imbeciles at the age of fifteen, then abandoned in vicious and dissolute courts.

But Matilda lacked Catherine’s slicing intelligence and brilliant political acumen. The Russian empress laughed heartily to hear of Matilda’s comparison. Aware that Struensee was behind Den-mark’s sudden cooling of relations with Russia, Catherine icily observed, “Give them enough rope and they will hang them-selves.”74

Struensee had plenty of rope. His power came from his con-nection to the queen, a connection which he advertised to the increasing resentment of influential forces at court.

During Christian’s spells of clarity, which were fewer and far-ther between, Struensee and Matilda paraded him in front of his 2 2 0

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subjects in carriage rides and poked him in the ribs to wave to the people. They pushed him onto the palace balcony and nudged him again. Their goal was to give the illusion of a king in charge.

But many who saw the blank stare on their king’s face assumed the royal physician was drugging him. They feared Struensee might do him in and rule Denmark with Matilda.

In fact, Christian’s mental condition continued to sink rap-idly. Many times he was found wandering the palace corridors lost and disoriented. Struensee assigned a keeper to watch over him. Matilda held levees alone, seated on a throne, speaking with courtiers, ministers, and ambassadors. One day the king, who had eluded his keeper, stumbled in. A respectful silence ensued.

Christian began to recite a poem, finished with a shrill ripple of laughter, and ran off. Trembling, Matilda continued the levee as if nothing had happened.

One day as Reverdil and Christian walked in the gardens, Christian confessed that he had been contemplating suicide.

“But how can I do it without making a scandal?” he inquired.

“And if I do, shall I not be even more unhappy? Shall I drown myself? Or knock my head against the wall?” The next day, as the two were rowing on the lake, Christian said, “I should like to jump in—and then be pulled out, very quickly. I am confused.

There is a noise in my head. I cannot go on.”75

On July 1, 1771, the queen gave birth to a daughter in great secrecy in her island palace of Hirscholm. Struensee held the queen in his arms throughout the labor and personally delivered the baby, whom they named Louise Augusta. Contrary to royal tradition, no announcement of her pregnancy had been made in the months before the birth, asking the people to pray for the safe delivery of the queen and her child. The Danish people were amazed by the news that they suddenly had a new princess.

When the birth was announced, the press, which had been freed from censorship by Struensee, decried their benefactor who “had shamelessly dishonored the King’s bed, and intro-duced his vile posterity” into the royal family.76 In response to these accusations, Struensee issued a proclamation with Chris-tian’s signature stating that the child had indeed been fathered by e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y e u r o p e 2 2 1

the king. Christian actually believed Louise Augusta to be his and had great fun planning the christening.

Shortly after the birth, Struensee made himself privy coun-cilor and a count. The poor physician from Altona luxuriated in the trappings of royalty. He bought himself a new gilded coach of regal appearance and ordered for his servants uniforms of scar-let and white adorned with diamond badges.

Despite his unheard-of success, sometimes Struensee suf-fered from a melancholy foreboding. He often told his friends that he wanted to leave court, that he was exhausted from his round-the-clock issuing of decrees. When asked why he did not leave, Struensee replied, “Where else could you be Prime Minis-ter, the King’s friend and the Queen’s lover?”77

The harvest of 1771 was scant. The merchants of Copenhagen were suffering, as Struensee had exiled most of the free-spending nobility to their country estates. The clergy decried the country’s woes as clear evidence of God’s displeasure at wicked-ness in high places. Warned on all sides of rising discontent and possible rebellion, Struensee simply shrugged. George III be-came so alarmed at his sister’s affair with the detested prime minister that he sent their mother, Dowager Princess Augusta, to Denmark to lecture her sternly. But Matilda abruptly ended her mother’s scolding with a scathing reference to Augusta’s own lover, Lord Bute. Furious, the princess dowager rumbled away in her carriage, never to speak to her daughter again.

When Matilda’s ladies begged her to send Struensee away, she only answered, “How fortunate you are, to marry where you wish! If I were a widow, I would marry him I loved, and give up my throne and my country.”78

Dowager Queen Juliana had been hard at work amassing co-pious evidence of Matilda’s love affair. Four of the queen’s ser-vants willingly became Juliana’s highly paid spies. They wrote down the time at which Matilda and Struensee drove out alone in a carriage and the time they returned—usually several hours later. Each night they sprinkled powder on the secret staircase that led from Struensee’s apartments up to Matilda’s rooms. The next day they could see a man’s footprints in the powder, foot-2 2 2

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steps that reached the queen’s bed itself. The spies examined the sheets—unkempt, thrown about—and gloated over the stains.

Struensee’s valet, paid to rifle through his coat pockets, found a special prize—a man’s handkerchief with semen stains.

Sometimes after Struensee left the queen’s room, her maids entered and saw her naked in bed. While dressing Matilda, her ladies exclaimed over the bruises on her throat and breasts. She would only laugh and say it was nothing. In the evening, spying at the keyhole, they saw the prime minister massaging the bruises.

Armed with indisputable proof of adultery, Juliana organized a highly placed group of conspirators. Many were nobles who had lost power and money at Struensee’s hands and bore him a seething resentment. One of them was Count Schack Karl Rantzau, a close friend of Struensee’s from Altona, who felt slighted that the prime minister had not adequately rewarded him with a high-level position. The conspirators set the date for the coup in the wee hours of January 17, following a masked ball at court. They hoped that the noise and drunkenness of the ball would cloak their treasonous plot until it was too late.

As a diversion for the discontented, Struensee had ordered that the ball be particularly ornate. It was held in a theater, the boxes newly regilded and hung with purple curtains. Hothouse flowers and colored lanterns added to the festive atmosphere. At ten p.m. Struensee arrived wearing a blue velvet coat and rose satin breeches. On his arm he wore the queen, dressed in a gown of white brocade embroidered in pink roses, a sparkling cascade of diamonds dripping down the length of her bodice. In the royal box, Christian sat down to cards while Struensee and Matilda opened the dance.

Reverdil later recalled how beautiful the queen looked that evening as she stepped the minuet, and how powerful and com-manding Struensee. She was more in love with him than ever, and for his part he believed the threat of revolution had passed.

At midnight the supper was over, and Christian was led back to his rooms. Matilda and Struensee danced until three a.m.

With their departure the ball was over and guests ambled out.

The lamps were guttering, the flowers wilted. Wine goblets were e i g h t e e n t h - c e n t u r y e u r o p e 2 2 3