Still the means employed to get rid of the favourites were most reprehensible. It is true that the queen dowager and Prince Frederick had a right to feel irritated at having no credit at a court where a Struensee domineered, and that they wished to remove him and his partisans. We can understand that Queen Juliana Maria, who had no experience of business, and Prince Frederick, who had scarce emerged from boyhood, should not suspect the extremities to which Guldberg's faction would lead them; and it may be true that it was owing to their generosity that the children of Caroline Matilda were not deprived of their rights. Nor can we positively condemn Guldberg for wishing to tear from Struensee powers which Struensee had torn from others. Perhaps Guldberg possessed more capacity, or a better claim to hold the power than he. But, as to the means employed in gaining the object, we cannot help agreeing with Falckenskjold when he says: "To make Struensee perish in order to seize on his office, was not this purchasing it very dearly? and especially to add the punishment of the unfortunate Brandt to that of Struensee, and to assail the liberties and fortunes of so many persons who were innocent of the ambition of these two men. And, in order to give a legal appearance to these proscriptions, they do not hesitate to abuse whatever is most sacred in human laws; they convert private intrigues into judicial proceedings; they employ calumnious libels as authentic documents and sentences; they raise the veil and expose to the public the domestic secrets of the king's house! They do not fear violently to break the happy union of the king with his consort; to render doubtful the rights of the issue of that union, by compromising the future tranquillity of the state; and, lastly, to cast on a young queen the affront of a mortal stain, and to condemn her to expire in a lengthened agony! "Was the post of a principal minister of the King of Denmark so important, or desirable at such a price?" FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 17: Reverdil, p. 422.] [Footnote 18: Reverdil is the only writer who produces this curious document.] [Footnote 19: Gespräch im Reiche der Todten.] [Footnote 20: Gespräch im Reiche der Todten.] [Footnote 21: Struensee's skull was eventually stolen by four English sailors, belonging to a Russian man-of-war commanded by Admiral Greig.] [Footnote 22: It has been said that Juliana Maria expressed a regret at not seeing the decapitated corpse of Caroline Matilda by the side of that of her accomplices. But such language would be quite contrary to the reserve, prudence, and dissimulation of which she furnished so many proofs during the whole of her life.]