This decree, which amounted to a virtual abdication on the part of Christian VII. in favour of Struensee, was received with consternation and indignation from one end of the kingdom to the other. At first it seemed impossible that the King could thus vest any subject with unlimited power, but, since no other meaning could be attached to the document, the people declared that it could only have been wrested from the King by force or undue influence. It was now realised that from the beginning Struensee had aimed at absolute power. He first persuaded the King to abolish the Council of State and proclaim himself an absolute monarch, and then forced him to delegate the whole power to him as Privy Cabinet Minister. The Danish nation were, in fact, no longer ruled by their hereditary monarch but by a foreign adventurer, who had usurped the kingly functions, and, having abolished all ministers and councils, gathered up into himself every branch of power and prerogative. The unscrupulousness of the man was only equalled by his audacity. It was the last straw on the back of the long-suffering Danes. Hitherto, the agitation against Struensee had been confined to certain classes; now it represented the whole nation, and not all the laws he had passed for the benefit of the people, nor all the doles he had meted out to them, could avail to quell the tempest of indignation aroused by the publication of this royal decree. Its promulgation at such a time, within a week of the Queen's delivery, gave credence to the rumour that the infant Princess was not the King's child but Struensee's, and it was said that this insolent tyrant, who stopped at nothing, had already formed a plan of getting the King out of the way, of marrying the Queen, of assassinating the Crown Prince, and establishing himself and his posterity upon the throne of Denmark. The Princess was christened on the Queen's birthday, July 22, 1771, under the names of Louise Augusta--the first name having been that of the King's mother, the second that of the Princess-Dowager of Wales. The King, himself, stood as principal sponsor to the child, the others being his brother Prince Frederick, and the Queen-Dowager, Juliana Maria. Whispers of the current scandal had reached the ears of the Queen and Struensee, and the choice of these sponsors was a way of contradicting them. The Queen-Dowager and Prince Frederick were present at the express command of the King, and dared not disobey. They must have come very unwillingly, for Juliana Maria had already stated in private what she afterwards proclaimed in public--that the legitimacy of the Princess was open to grave suspicion. The child was generally spoken of by the courtiers as "the Ma'amselle".