In order to furnish a just idea of the reforms which Struensee undertook, it is necessary to take a glance at the state of Denmark at the period when he assumed the administration. Before the war against Charles Gustavus, King of Sweden, the government of Denmark had been a thorough oligarchy, much like that of Poland. The chief power was vested in the hands of the nobles, or of a senate composed of their representatives, and entrusted with their interests: the crown was elective, and the king had no authority but what the senate left him. The clergy had lost their power and wealth through the Reformation. An almost absolute despotism weighed on the citizens of the capital and the other towns, though their deputies figured as a species of third estate in the diets of the nation: the country people, _adstricti glebæ_, were divided among the noble landowners like herds of cattle, and were employed by them to till the soil. In 1660, the citizens of Copenhagen, who had just repulsed the Swedes from their walls, took advantage of their momentary strength to change the government; they abolished the senate, rendered the crown hereditary, and by a solemn treaty unreservedly handed over the whole power to their king, Frederick III., both for himself and his heirs for ever, hoping, doubtless, that the yoke of a single master would be less oppressive than that of a caste of nobles. Frederick III. regulated the absolute power with which he was invested, and in order to compensate the nobility in some measure for what they had lost, he called to him the most considerable of them and formed them into a privy council, which was, as it were, the image of that senate by which the nation had been so long governed. But his successor, Christian V., gave his entire confidence to Schumacker, the son of a wine merchant, who governed Denmark skilfully under the title of Count von Griffenfeldt, and this system was continued even after the favourite's fall. Under the following reigns, as the sovereigns still suspected the nobility of their country, they summoned foreigners into their service; and as this policy was persisted in, foreigners gradually seized on not only the home and foreign offices, but even the most considerable civil and military posts. These foreigners, not having any relatives or friends in the country, and not being always able to obtain subordinates from abroad, chose their confidential agents among their most devoted servants, and procured them advantageous posts as a reward, or else to secure them as partisans. This example was soon followed by the natives; and just as in ancient Rome the power fell into the hands of freed men, lackeys became in Denmark influential personages, who did not limit their ambition to subaltern employments.