SUDDENLY STRUENSEE WAS reminded of the theater performance of Zaïre with Christian playing the role of the Sultan.
That too was at the Royal Theater. Wasn‘t it right after his arrival in Copenhagen, following the long European journey? Perhaps a month later; he couldn’t remember. But suddenly he was reminded of Christian in that role. The thin, fragile child’s figure with such clear diction, such oddly vivid pauses and mysterious phrasing, who had moved about in the stylized decor among the French actors, as if in a slow ritual dance, with his peculiar gestures that seemed entirely natural on that stage and in that play, although they otherwise seemed contrived in Christian’s dreadful real life.
He had been quite brilliant. In truth, the best of all the actors. Remarkably calm and believable, as if the stage, the play, and the acting profession were completely natural and all that was possible for him.
He had never actually been able to distinguish between reality and illusion. Not because of any lack of intelligence but because of all his directors.
Had Struensee also become a director for Christian? He had come to visit and had acquired a role and delegated a different one to Christian. It may have been a better role for the poor, terrified boy. Perhaps back then Struensee should have listened more closely; perhaps Christian, like the actors, had a message that he had wanted to convey through the theater.
It was so infinitely long ago. Almost three years.
Now, on January 16, 1772, Christian was dancing a minuet. He had always been a good dancer. His body was as light as a child’s; in the dance he could move with the established replies of the dance, and yet with freedom. Why hadn’t he been allowed to become a dancer? Why hadn’t anyone seen that he was an actor or a dancer or anything else? Anything but the absolute ruler chosen by God.
In the end they all danced. They had their costumes and their disguises; even the Queen was dancing. It was here, at the Royal Theater, during a masked ball, that she had given Struensee the first signal.
It must have been springtime. They were dancing and she had been looking at him the whole time with such an intense expression on her face, as if she were about to say something. Perhaps this was because Struensee had spoken to her as if she were a human being, and she was grateful. Perhaps it was something more. Yes, it was. Afterward she drew him away with her; suddenly they were in one of the corridors. She gave a swift glance around and then she kissed him.
Not a word. Simply kissed him. And then that mysterious little smile, which he first thought was an expression of enchanting childish innocence, but which he then, all of a sudden, realized was a grown woman’s smile, and that it said: I love you. And you shouldn’t underestimate me.
They were all there except for the Dowager Queen, and Rantzau.
Everything was completely normal. After a while the King stopped dancing;he sat down to play loup with General Gähler and a few others. The King, after leaving the dance that for a time had made him seem lively, suddenly appeared distracted and sunk in melancholy. He played without thinking and as usual had no money; he lost 332 riksdaler, which the general had to pay and which, after the catastrophe, was unfortunately never refunded.
In another loge sat Colonel Köller, who was going to command the military part of the coup set for that night. He was playing tarot with the court quartermaster, Berger. Köller’s face was composed. It was impossible to read any agitation on it.
Everyone was in place. Except the Dowager Queen, and Rantzau.
The masks were the typical ones. Struensee’s was a half mask of a weeping jester. Afterward it was said that he wore a mask depicting a skull.
That was not true. He was dressed as a weeping jester.
The ball ended around two.
Everyone agreed afterward to regard the masked ball as completely uneventful. That was the strange thing, considering that this masked ball would be so discussed and so important, but everyone agreed that nothing had happened. Nothing. Everyone seemed normal and danced and waited for nothing.
Struensee and the Queen danced three dances. Everyone noticed their calmly smiling faces and their carefree conversation.
What did they talk about? Afterward they couldn’t remember.
All night long Struensee had a strange feeling of distance, or of a waking dream, as if he had experienced this before but was now dreaming about it all over again, in short sequences that were repeated. Everything in the dream moved infinitely slowly, with mouths opening and closing, but without a sound, like slow movements under water perhaps. As if they were floating in water, and the only thing that came back over and over was the memory of the King in the role of the Sultan in Zaïre and his movements and oddly entreating gestures, which almost resembled an actor’s, but more genuine, like someone who was drowning, and the way his mouth opened and closed, as if he wanted to utter a message but couldn’t get it out. And then the other part of this waking dream: the Queen, whose face came close to his own, and who infinitely quietly kissed him and then took a step back, and the little smile which said that she loved him and that he shouldn’t underestimate her and that this was only the beginning of something magnificent, that they were very close to a boundary, and that at the boundary could be found both the greatest desire and the most enticing death, and that he never ever would regret it if they crossed that boundary.
And it was as if these two, Christian the actor and Caroline Mathilde who promised desire and death, flowed together in that dance of death at the Royal Theater.
He escorted her back.
They were accompanied by two ladies-in-waiting. In the corridor outside the Queen’s bedchamber he kissed her hand without a word.
“Are we sleeping tonight?” the Queen asked.
“Yes, my love. Tonight sleep. Tonight sleep.”
“When will I see you?”
“Always,” he said.”In the eternities of Eternity.”
They looked at each other, and she raised her hand to his cheek and touched it with a little smile.
That was the last time. After that he never saw her again.
2.
At two-thirty, half an hour after the music stopped playing, blank cartridges were issued to the Second Grenadier Company from the Falster Regiment, and the soldiers were deployed to their assigned posts.
All of the castle exits were put under guard.
The operational head of the coup, Colonel Köller, who an hour earlier had ended his tarot game with the court quartermaster Berger, informed two of his lieutenants of a handwritten command from the Dowager Queen which ordered the arrest of a number of specifically named individuals. It stated, among other things, that “since His Majesty the King wishes to ensure his own safety and that of the country and to punish certain persons who are close to him, he has entrusted this undertaking to us. We hereby command you, Colonel Köller, on this night and in the King’s name, to implement the will of the King. Furthermore, it is the King’s wish that defensive guards be stationed at all exits from the ruling Queen’s apartment.” The letter was signed by the Dowager Queen and the Crown Prince, and it had been written by Guldberg.
The key to the operation was to seize swiftly the King and the Queen, and to keep them apart. Rantzau was to play a decisive role in this. But he had disappeared.
Count Rantzau had been struck by an attack of nerves.
Rantzau lived in the royal residence that was separated by a canal from Christiansborg Palace, and which today is called the Prince’s Palace; all day long he had kept out of sight. But while the masked ball was still going on, a messenger was stopped at the entrance to the Royal Theater. He had made a strange impression, seemed extremely nervous, and said that he had an important message from Count Rantzau to Struensee.
The messenger was detained by the conspirators’ guards, and Guldberg was summoned.
Guldberg, without bothering to ask permission and in spite of the messenger’s protests, had grabbed the letter and opened it. He read it. The letter said that Rantzau wished to speak
with Struensee before midnight, “and keep in mind that if you fail to arrange for this meeting, you will bitterly regret it.”
That was all. On the other hand, it was quite clear. Count Rantzau wished to find a solution to his dilemma, another way out of the lion’s den.
Guldberg read it and smiled one of his rare smiles.
“A little Judas who no doubt expects to become a country squire in Lolland as a reward. But he won’t.”
He stuffed the letter in his pocket and ordered the messenger taken away and put under guard.
Three hours later all the conspirators were in place and the troops ready, but Rantzau was missing. Then Guldberg, along with six soldiers, quickly headed over to Rantzau’s residence and found him fully dressed, sitting in his armchair and smoking his pipe, with a cup of tea in front of him.
“We’ve been looking for you,” Guldberg said.
Rantzau propped his leg up on a footstool, and with a nervous and glum face pointed at his foot. He had come down with an attack of gout, he stammered, his toe was very swollen, he could barely stand on that foot; he deeply regretted it, and was inconsolable, but because of this he would not be able to complete his task.
“You cowardly wretch,” Guldberg said in a calm voice, without trying to soften the rudeness with which he addressed the Count. “You’re trying to weasel your way out of it.”
Guldberg deliberately used the informal means of address.
“No, no!” Rantzau desperately protested.“I’m sticking by the agreement, but my gout, I am in despair …”
Guldberg then ordered the others to leave the room. After they did so, he pulled out the letter, held it between his thumb and index finger as if it were foul smelling, and merely said:
“I’ve read your letter, you rat. For the last time: are you with us or against us?”
Pale as a corpse, Rantzau stared at the letter and realized that there were few alternatives.
“Of course I’m with you,” said Rantzau.”Perhaps I could be carried to my assignment … in a portechaise …”
“Fine,” said Guldberg. “And I’m going to save this letter. No one but me needs to see it. But on one condition. That after this purifying act is completed and Denmark is saved, you do not annoy me. But from now on you’re not going to annoy me, are you? So that I’m forced to show this letter to anyone else?”
A moment of silence followed, and then Rantzau said in a very low voice:
“Of course not. Of course not.”
“Never ever?”
“Never ever.”
“Fine,” said Guldberg.”Now we know where we stand in the future. It’s good to have reliable allies.”
Guldberg then summoned the soldiers and ordered two of them to carry Count Rantzau to his position at the exit in the north arch. They carried him across the bridge, but then Rantzau assured them that he was willing to try to walk on his own, despite the unbearable pain, and he limped to his command post in the north arch.
* * *
3.
At four-thirty in the morning on January 17, 1772, they went into action.
Two groups of grenadiers, one led by Köller, the other by Beringskjold, simultaneously broke into Struensee’s and Brandt‘s apartments. Struensee was found sleeping calmly. He sat up in bed, looked in surprise at the soldiers, and, when Colonel Köller explained that he was under arrest, asked to see the arrest warrant.
This he was denied, since no such warrant existed.
He then stared at them apathetically, slowly put on the barest essentials, and followed without another word. He was put into a hired coach and driven to the guardhouse at the Citadel.
Brandt didn’t even inquire about an arrest warrant. He merely asked whether he could take along his flute.
He too was put into a coach.
The commandant at the Citadel, who had not been forewarned, was roused out of bed, but was said to have received them both with joy. Everyone seemed surprised that Struensee had given up so easily. He just sat in the coach and stared at his hands.
He seemed to be prepared.
One of the many sketches that was later done depicting the arrest of Struensee shows an act of much greater violence.
A courtier is illuminating the room with a three-armed candelabra. Through the splintered door the soldiers are pouring in with their rifles raised and their bayonets fixed, pointing them threateningly at Struensee. Colonel Köller is standing next to the bed, holding out the arrest warrant in his left hand. Lying on the floor is the death mask from the masked ball, the mask of a skull. Clothing is scattered all around. The clock shows four o’clock. Crowded bookshelves. Writing materials on a desk. And Struensee in bed, sitting up, wearing only a nightshirt, and with both hands desperately raised, as if in capitulation or in prayer to Almighty God, Whom he had always renounced, to show mercy in this grave hour to a poor sinner in dire need.
But the picture does not speak the truth. He docilely allowed himself to be led away, like a lamb to the slaughter.
The King, of course, was not to be arrested.
On the contrary, King Christian VII was to be rescued from a murderous assault, and thus he only had to sign the documents that would legally authorize the other arrests.
It is easy to forget that he was one of the absolute rulers chosen by God.
Those who poured into his dark bedchamber were numerous. They included the Dowager Queen, her son Frederik, Rantzau, Eichstedt, Köller, and Guldberg, as well as seven grenadiers from the Life Guards, who, however, were ordered to leave and wait outside the door because of the King’s hysterical reaction and his uncontrolled terror of soldiers and their weapons.
Christian thought he was going to be murdered and began crying and screaming shrilly, like a child. At the same time the dog, his schnauzer, who was sleeping as usual in Christian’s bed that night, began barking furiously. They finally took the dog out. The Negro page Moranti, who had been sleeping curled up at the foot of the bed, hid in a corner, terrified.
They managed at last to calm the monarch. His life was not in danger. They were not going to kill him.
But what they then told him brought on a renewed fit of weeping. The reason for this nighttime visit, they explained, was a conspiracy against the King. Struensee and the Queen were after his life. He had to be rescued. That was why he must sign a number of documents.
Guldberg had composed the wording of them. He led Christian, clad in his dressing gown, over to the desk. There the King signed seventeen documents.
He sobbed the entire time, his hand and body shaking. Only at the sight of one document did he seem to brighten. It was the arrest warrant for Brandt.
“This is the punishment,” he muttered, “for trying to violate the Sovereign of the Universe. The punishment.”
No one, except perhaps Guldberg, could have understood what he meant.
4.
Rantzau was the one who was supposed to arrest the Queen.
He took along five soldiers and a sublieutenant; with one of the arrest warrants signed by the King in hand, he went to the Queen’s bedchamber. A lady-in-waiting was sent in to wake the Queen because, as he writes in his report, “respect forbade me from approaching the Queen’s bed”; but Sublieutenant Beck gives a livelier description of what happened. The Queen was awakened by her lady-in-waiting. She came rushing out, wearing only a shift, and furiously asked Rantzau what was going on. Rantzau simply held out the King’s order.
It said: “I have found it necessary to send you to Kronborg Castle, since your behavior has forced me to do this. I sincerely regret this action, for which I am not to blame, and hope that you will show genuine repentance.”
Signed: Christian.
She then crumpled up the warrant and shrieked that Rantzau would come to regret this; she asked who else had been arrested. She was given no answer. Then she rushed into her bedchamber, followed by Rantzau and Sublieutenant Beck along with a couple of the soldiers. As she furiously berated Rantzau, sh
e tore off her shift and ran naked around the room looking for her clothes. Bowing, Rantzau then said with an elegance that was characteristic of him:
“Her Majesty must have mercy and not subject me to the magic powers of her voluptuousness.”
“Don’t just stand there and stare, you damned wheedling toad,” exclaimed the Queen, this time in her native language of English. But at that moment lady’s maid Arensbach came dashing in with a petticoat, a gown, and a pair of shoes, and in all haste the Queen threw on these garments.
The whole time she kept up her steady, enraged attack on Rantzau, who at one point was forced to defend himself with his cane, which he held up to fend off the Queen’s blows, but only to defend himself; he had brought along the cane to help him better support his weight on his foot, which on that particular night was aching with gout—something that the Queen, in her wrath, had not taken into consideration.
In his report Rantzau claims that for reasons of discretion, and so as not to sully Her Royal Highness with his gaze, he held his hat in front of his face the entire time, until the Queen was fully dressed. Sublieutenant Beck states, however, that he, Rantzau, and four soldiers carefully and unremittingly scrutinized the Queen in her bewildered and furious nakedness, and watched her as she dressed. He also describes what garments the Queen put on.
She did not weep but steadily railed at Rantzau and, as he emphasizes in his report to the members of the Board of Inquisition, he was particularly incensed by “the contemptuous manner in which she spoke of the King.”
As soon as she was dressed—she merely stuck her bare feet into her shoes, without stockings, which shocked everyone—she raced out of the room and could not be stopped. She ran down the stairs and tried to force her way into Struensee’s room. But outside stood a guard who informed her that Count Struensee had been taken prisoner and transported to the Citadel. She then continued her search for help and set off running toward the King’s suite.
Rantzau and the soldiers did nothing to stop her.
The Royal Physician's Visit Page 25
