Pity she is so large in her person. The Princess was quite English all over-a black hat over her eyes and a common night-gown with a black apron."

The next day Wraxall took his leave of Celle, well pleased with his visit, and proceeded to Hamburg, where he intended to take ship for England. But at Hamburg something happened which upset all his plans, and for a short time linked his fortunes closely with those of Queen Matilda.

CHAPTER XIII.1

THE RESTORATION PLOT.

1774-1775.

ALTONA, then a town in Danish territory, was only half a mile from the free city of Hamburg, and at the time of Wraxall's visit was thronged with partisans of the deposed Queen. Many of them had been exiled from Copenhagen after the palace revolution of 1772; several belonged to the Danish nobility, and chief among these was Baron Bülow, who had formerly held the post of Master of the Horse to Queen Matilda. Owing to the unpopularity of the Queen-Dowager's rule at Copenhagen, their numbers were increasing daily, and already a plan was under consideration to effect another palace revolution, abolish Juliana Maria and her adherents, and restore Matilda. But so far the plan existed on paper only; no steps had been taken to carry it into effect.

Things had not gone well with the Danish Government at Copenhagen since Matilda had sailed from Kronborg more than two years before. The QueenDowager quickly found that it was one thing to

'This chapter is based upon Sir N. Wraxall's Posthumous Memoirs, vol. i., where a more detailed narrative will be found.

seize power and another to maintain it; her spell of popularity was brief, and before long she became the most hated woman in Denmark, not always very justly, for according to her lights she seems honestly to have tried to do her duty. Before long the conspirators who, under her, had effected the palace revolution fell out among themselves, and the Government was split into two factions, with Rantzau and Köller-Banner on one side, Eickstedt and Guldberg on the other, and Osten trimming between the two. It was not long before the Guldberg faction triumphed. Rantzau was compelled to resign all his offices, and dismissed with a pension to his estates in Holstein, but, as he showed a desire to return to Copenhagen, he was eventually exiled.1 Osten was banished to Jutland, where he was living in retirement. Köller-Banner was in disgrace, and dismissed from his posts on a suspicion of treasonable correspondence with the French and Swedish envoys. The Queen-Dowager tried to recall him, for he was a favourite with her, and succeeded for a time; but he was eventually overthrown.3 Thus retribution had fallen on some of Matilda's chief enemies, and though others, like Eickstedt and Beringskjold, remained, their authority was shaken, and the whole power had insensibly passed into the hands of

1 Rantzau went to the south of France. He died in 1789, in his seventy-second year.

"A few years later Osten was recalled, and appointed President of the Supreme Court in Copenhagen, but he fell again with Juliana Maria's Government, and died in 1797 at the age of eighty years. Köller-Banner died at Altona in 1811.

Guldberg, who acquired the unbounded confidence of the Queen-Dowager. Guldberg was very clever, and a far more cautious man than Struensee, though he did not possess either his genius or his aspirations. The first step of the new Government had been to establish the old régime, and to abolish all the reforms brought in by Struensee,' and place the power once more in the hands of the privileged classes. But the people, having once tasted the sweets of liberty, did not take kindly to the reimposition of their former yoke, and the Government grew daily more unpopular. Much though they had disliked Struensee, they had approved of many of his reforms it was not so much what he did, as the way he did it, to which they objected.

The King, who was theoretically the source of all power, was tightly held in the grasp of the Queen-Dowager, whom he had now come to hate quite as much as he used to hate Struensee and Brandt. But he was powerless to free himself from this thraldom, though at times he showed flashes of insubordination. For instance, in one of his comparatively lucid intervals he signed a state paper as follows: "Christian VII. by the grace of God King of Denmark, etc., in company with Juliana Maria by the grace of the devil". He often lamented the loss of Matilda, whom he said he had been forced to divorce against his will, and wished

The only one that remains of Struensee's institutions to this day is the foundling hospital, which was so bitterly attacked at the time of its foundation.