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 Caroline queen Juliana Maria, who during the summer had watched the progress of affairs from Fredensborg, where she lived isolated with her son Frederick, to approve of the plot, by showing her forged evidence of a conspiracy between Struensee and the queen against the king (, 328). The details of Rantzau s scheme were settled in Juliana Maria's palace 15 Jan. (ib. 329), and its execution was fixed for the night from 16-17 Jan., after the termination of a masked ball in the Christiansborg palace. Though Rantzau himself hesitated at the last moment, the palace revolution was punctually and successfully carried out by himself and his confederates. Struensee, Brandt, and their chief actual or supposed abettors were placed under arrest, and on the same night the queen was with cynical brutality taken prisoner by Rantzau, accompanied by a body of soldiery under Major Castenskjold. With her little daughter in her arms she was hurriedly driven to Kronborg, a royal castle and prison on the Sound, near Elsinore, and there consigned to carefully guarded apartments. It is said that in the evening she saw in the distance Copenhagen illuminated in celebration of her disaster (ib. 336-8).

In solitude, relieved only by the presence of her infant daughter, whom she nursed through an attack of the measles, and by occasional visits from the faithful Keith, Caroline Matilda awaited her fate. The genuineness of her letters to Keith and to her brother, George III, is open to serious doubt they are given by, ii. 205-7). Her attendants were persons whom she disliked (ib. ii. 203), and she had to listen to pulpit addresses, which must have been hard to bear (the best account of her period of confinement is stated by, 143 note, to be that of in ''Hist. Tidsskr''. iv. vol. ii. 776 seqq.; see also ap. , i. 544-5). During the course of her imprisonment she must have heard of the death of her mother, the dowager Princess of Wales, 8 Feb. 1772. The interrogatory of Struensee began 20 Feb., but it was not till the third day of his examination that, under pressure, he confessed to criminal familiarity with the queen; afterwards he sought to throw the blame as much as possible on her. Questions affecting the legitimacy of the Princess Louisa Augusta were, however, satisfactorily answered. Brandt, in his interrogatory, declared that Struensee had confessed his criminality to him (, 394-8). Hereupon a commission of four subjected the queen to an interrogatory at Kronborg; at the first visit, acting it is said on Keith's advice, she refused to answer, declaring that she acknowledged no superior or judge besides the king. At the second, 9 March, Struensee's confession signed by him was shown to her, when she avowed herself guilty, and signed a written confession, generously taking the original blame upon herself (, 400-1; according to, 401-2, she was induced to sign by the assurance that her confession would mitigate Struensee's fate; while this, though possible, is improbable, the dramatic account of Falckenskjold, which is also that of the Authentische Nachrichten, 223-8, is almost certainly fictitious. Horace Walpole s account, Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 77-9, 90, is clearly untrustworthy. On the whole subject of the queen's examination and confession, see, 222-32). On 24 March an indictment was preferred against the queen before a tribunal of thirty-five notables (it is given at length in , 226-40); on 2 April her defence was delivered (ib. 241-53; notices that while her advocate Uldall here represents her as asserting her innocence the crime is admitted in his defence of Struensee. For the rest his pleas on behalf of the queen are in essence hardly more than technical); sentence was given on 6 April and communicated to the queen on the 8th. It declared her marriage with the king to be dissolved. Her name was hereupon removed from its place in the liturgy (the order of Matilda, which she had instituted on her birthday in January 1771, had been abolished immediately after the catastrophe). Capital sentences on Struensee and Brandt followed shortly afterwards, and were carried out 28 April. It is said that in her prison the queen intuitively knew the day of her favourite's doom.

In England the news of Caroline Matilda's arrest had created a passing excitement (see flippant letters to Holroyd in his Miscellaneous Works, ii. 72-6; cf., i. 3, 42). At first George III's government took up a threatening attitude, but the public press made indignant comments on the supposed apathy of Lord North's administration (, i. 89; cf., ii. 169). Soon, however, public feeling acquiesced in the manifest opmion of the initiated, that the affair had better be taken quietly. Keith's activity at Copenhagen had been acknowledged pendente lite by admission to the order of the Bath (, i. 121); but, as is now known, the diplomatic correspondence between the two courts at this stage gave rise to no very serious differences. While George III was informed of the evidence against his sister and of the necessity of removing her from the court after the sentence pronounced against her, he was assured that