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74* ] ANNUAL REGISTER
plot. The principal persons concerned, besides the Queen Dowager and Prince Frederick, were Count Ostein, who is now minister of state, Count Rantzau, General Eichstedt, and Colonel Koller, who commanded the regiment that was that night upon duty, and brought over all the officers to their party. About four o'clock in the morning, the Queen Dowager, her son. General Eichstedt, and Count Rantzau, entered the King's bed-chamber, and ordered the valet de chambre to awake him, and, in the surprise and alarm, that this unexpected intrusion excited, informed him, that the reigning Queen and the two Struenfee's, were at that instant busy in drawing up an act of renunciation, which they would immediately after compel him to sign ; and that the only means he could use to prevent so imminent a danger, was to sign those orders without loss of time, which they had brought with them, for arresting the Queen and there accomplices. The King having hesitated at this proposal, the Queen Julia told him, that if he did not sign them it would be of not great consequence, as she and her son would do it without him ; some other conversation pass, and the King was in too great a terror not to comply with their demands.
Count Rantzau, and three officers, were dispatched at that untimely hour to the Queen's apartments, and immediately arrested her ; she shewed great indignation, and seemed almost distracted at this insult ; told Rantzau, that he should lose his head for it, and repeatedly attempted to make her way to the King's apartments. She was however obliged to submit to a necessity which she could not resist, and had but a very short time allowed her to prepare for a journey to the Castle of Cronenburgh ; for which place she was obliged, with the infant princess, to set out early in the morning, attended by Lady Mostyn, and escorted by a party of Dragoons.
Struensee and Brandt were seized in their beds, and it seems to have been done before the orders were signed ; for the former having started up suddenly, and demanded eagerly to see the authority upon which he was arrested, Col. Loller, shewed him the point of his sword, and said that was sufficient authority for the present ; but that he made himself answerable for the King's confirming it. Stuenfee's brother was seized at the same time, and the three were sent together to the citadel. Struenfee's adherents, the most of the members of the late administration, were seized the same night, to the number of about eighteen, among whom were General Gahler and his lady, the master of the horse, Baron Bulow, Gen. Gude, Col. Falkenshoild, Gen. Heffelburg, Wildebrand, a privy counsellor, and two secretaries of state. Some of these were sent to different prisons, and others were confined to their own houses.
The populace received some intelligence of these transactions early in the morning, and proceeded to great excesses, in the eagerness, of their joy for the downfal of the favorites. Near an hundred houses are said to have been plundered or demolished upon this occasion. As the people had some apprehensions with respect to the King's person, he passed slowly in a coach through the principal streets of the city, in company 

For the YEAR 1772. [*75
company with his brother, to make them easy.
The unfortunate Struenfee, who had seen himself the idol of a crowded levee on the day immediately preceding, where the first people of the kingdom seemed ready to prostrate themselves, if he but happened to cast his eyes towards them, and measured their importance when they came out, only by the countenance which he shewed them within, was now in in a dark dungeon chained to the floor, and loaded with the execrations of all mankind, while they who were most proud of his favor before, now either totally denied, or evaded the connection, and were the loudest in the outcry against him. The animosity of the populace to him, was so extreme, that the commissioners were obliged to take his examinations within the Citadel, with all the bridges drawn up to prevent their outrage. Nothing was to be met with in the streets but ridiculous histories and ballads of his rise and fall, and caricatura prints and pictures, which people were obliged to buy, to prevent their being thought his friends of abettors.
The government seemed now to be entirely lodged in the hands of the Queen Dowager and her son, supported and afflisted by those who had the principal share in the revolution ; while the King seemed little more than a pageant, whose person and name it was necessary occasionally to make use of. All the officers who had a hand in the revolution were immediately promoted, and an almost total change took place in all the departments of administration. A new council was appointed, in which Prince Fredrick presided, and a commission of eight members, to examine the papers of the prisoners, and to commence a process against them.
The city was illuminated on the night of the revolution, as if it had been a deliverance form a foreign enemy, Doctor Munter, and other court preachers, were employed on the following Sunday, to preach thanksgiving sermons, which breathed none of that tenderness and charity, that are the distinguishing characteristics of the christian religion, but were calculated only to inflame and exasperate in the highest degree the minds of the people, which were already too well prepared for the purpose. This conduct, which was equally indecent with respect to the character and dignity of the Queen, abasing whom no charge was yet established, as it was culpable with respect to the unhappy culprits, whose process was already begun, and their lives trembling into hands of their judges ; was no less degrading with respect to their own sacred character and function. In these discourses, the late government was described, much in the ideas that have been conceived of the reign of the antichrist, and the member shot t conducted it as having no other views, than those devilish ones, of totally overthrowing all religion, morality, and law. In a word, their bombastic style distinguished them as much from oratory, as the nature of the subject, and their affected exclamations of piety, did from christianity.
In the mean time, amusements and diversions, which were so much complained of before, were now assiduously cultivated and promoted, and instead of that serious and