Count Struensee and King Christian VII of Denmark

King Christian VII ruled in the 18th century, and during his reign, his physician finagled a surprising amount of power, and basically ruled the country. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. This episode
was a suggestion by Greg, who is a listener but
also a friend of the show. If you've been to

(00:23):
any of our live shows and you've seen volunteers from
headcount dot org they're registering voters or offering election info,
those volunteers are there thanks in no small part to Greg.
He works with headcount dot org UH and helps get
volunteers assigned to different places. He is also just a
super fun and lovely person and I love to hang
out with him when I'm in New York and I

(00:43):
miss him. So when he sent along this suggestion, I
immediately wanted to do it, So thank you, Greg. Uh.
This is a topic that I suspect is well known
in numerous countries in Europe, particularly of course Denmark, where
most of it takes place. UH. That happens at a
time when it was still Denmark, Norway. We're just going
shortened to Denmark for the sake of of convenience. UM.

(01:03):
And this one is kind of a wild ride because
it has medicine, a mad royal ambition, and an affair
with a queen. So heads up that there is also
some talk of a sexual nature, and we do talk
about mental illness a good bit. So we are covering
Denmark's king, Christian the Seventh, who ruled in the eighteenth century,
and the physician who finagled a surprising amount of power

(01:27):
through his relationship with the king, and that is Johann
Friedrich Struncy, who basically ruled the country. But to talk
about struancy, we first have to go back several decades
to talk about the history of Denmark and give context
to how a doctor at this period of time could
gain so much power. In fifteen thirty six Denmark underwent

(01:51):
a reformation. It made the conversion from Catholic to Protestant,
and this one's carried out pretty gradually. Under the new
or going to national structure, services were no longer performed
in Latin. Instead they were performed in Danish. And in
moving away from Catholicism and the papacy, the king of
Denmark was considered to be the protector of the church.

(02:13):
In this duty, it fell to the king to also
select seven bishops. Yeah, this was kind of responsible for
running the country. We've talked a lot about how religious
organizations and governmental procedure often very linked at this phase
of our history. Yes, sometimes essentially the same thing. Yes,

(02:34):
So this move away from Catholicism also meant that lands
and property in Denmark that had been part of the
Catholic Church's holdings were owned by the crown after the Reformation.
So this was a very beneficial arrangement for the monarchy
and the nobles during this time. The crown didn't just
automatically pass down through family lines the way you might

(02:55):
think with a monarchy. The king was elected and the
merchant last gained more power in this setup, particularly at
the local level. They pretty frequently became part of the
governance of their local municipalities. But while the nobles and
the merchants saw significant improvement in their fortunes through all
of this, the lowest classes in Denmark really saw a

(03:18):
decline in their quality of life. Yeah, we'll talk more
about that whole uh royalty and how the crown passes
down in just a sec But initially in this arrangement,
Denmark as a power was strengthened, but over time, due
to a series of military conflicts that went poorly. That
strength ebbed. In fifteen sixty three, King Frederick the Second

(03:40):
initiated a war with Sweden which lasted seven years, and
when the dust had settled, the objective had not been achieved.
Denmark had not taken control of Sweden, and it was
in serious debt from trying to do so. Frederick the
second successor was his son, Christian the Fourth, and Christian
the Fourth made some strides in improving the finances and

(04:02):
the power base of his kingdom of Denmark and Norway.
As all of this was happening, the Thirty Years War
was beginning. We covered this on the episode that we
did on the Defenistrations of Prague, and as we mentioned
in that episode, it started out mainly a matter of
religious conflict, but as the war continued on, the bigger

(04:22):
issue of the conflict became the control of Europe, and
under Christian the fourth rule, Denmark joined this conflict in
progress that an effort to claim some of that control.
This really was catastrophic, though loss after loss led the
king to ultimately signing a treaty with the Holy Roman

(04:43):
Empire in sixteen fifty seven. Denmark once again was in conflict,
this time again with Sweden, in a series of attacks
and treaties that seemed to get just progressively worse for Denmark.
By sixteen fifty nine, all of the country was occupied
by Swedish force is with the exception of Copenhagen. That
city had only been held thanks to the intervention of

(05:05):
Dutch allies. When Frederick the third, the son of Christian
the Fourth, signed the Treaty of Copenhagen in sixteen sixty,
Denmark seeded large chunks of its kingdom. This left the
country in a really precarious situation, both externally and internally.
And internally everything changed as a result. So, leading up

(05:27):
to sixteen sixty, Denmark's crown had been passed down through
this elective monarchy, and normally the person elected was the
eldest son of the deceased monarch. But as we said,
it wasn't this automatic thing, and this was sort of
a way to maintain the balance of power because in
accepting the duties, the newly elected monarch would sign a

(05:48):
coronation charter and that included stipulations that outlined the monarch's
responsibilities and the limitations of their power. Yeah, so instead
of just like toda, you now run the country. It's like, well,
you can run the country, but we have to have
a contract in place first, which I do sort of
like in theory. But in the wake of that series
of costly wars, the blame fell on the nobility. So

(06:12):
the short version of what happened next is that King
Frederick the Third's counselors put forth a proposal that would
establish a hereditary monarchy and would strip away many of
the advantages that the nobility had enjoyed up to that point.
This moved the governing structure away from that idea of
you elect me and we're entering a contract where we
both have responsibilities, to one where the monarch had absolute power.

(06:37):
While the monarchy at this point was determined through the bloodline,
power elsewhere came from wealth rather than lineage. As various
departments were formed to oversee things like war and the treasury,
the leaders of those institutions became wealthy landowners, whether they
were part of the nobility or not. Additionally, the crown

(06:58):
started selling some land to in money to pay off
all those war debts, and the landowners who had purchased
those parcels gained more power as a consequence, taxes went
up to further shore up the government finances. In seventeen
sixty six, the monarch who inherited the throne of Denmark
was Christian the seventh. His father had been Frederick the Fifth,

(07:20):
and when he died and Christian became king, the new
ruler was just sixteen. Later that same year, then seventeen
year old Christian, because he passed a birthday, married Caroline
Matilda of Great Britain that was his cousin. She was
just fifteen at the time. She was also incidentally King
George the third sister. There's been a lot of discussion

(07:42):
of Christian the seventh mental health and the two d
and fifty years since he ruled. It's been theorized that
he may have had schizophrenia. He had probably been traumatized
by a tutor in his formative years. That tutor beat him,
among other things, to the point that he never really
recovered his mental health afterward. It's also possible that he

(08:05):
had porphyria that definitely ran on his mother's English side
of the family. It possibly was present in his father's
side as well, so there was a lot going on
that would have contributed to his overall physical and mental health. Yes,
so if you know that King George had some mental
health issues, those were because he had porphyria um so

(08:25):
we definitely know it was in the bloodline and Christian
the seventh. Behavior was marked also by a significant degree
of debauchery. He was known to drink heavily. He was
a frequent visitor to Copenhagen's Brothels. His demeanor is consistently
characterized in the kindest terms as deeply unstable. But the

(08:45):
establishment of an absolute monarchy in Denmark had never provided
any clauses, and there was no parliament that might have
offered a way to unseat a mentally ill monarch. Enter
Johan's Truancy, and we're going to talk ab Struancy's early
life and how he became part of the king's circle,
after we first pause for a little sponsor break. Johann

(09:14):
Friedrich Struancy was born on August fifth, seventeen thirty seven
in Hala, Prussia now Germany, and he was the third
of seven siblings. His father was Adam Struancy, a theologian
and a teacher. His mother, Maria Dorothea Carl, was from
a well positioned family. Johan's grandfather on his mother's side
was a physician who had served as King Christian the

(09:35):
sixth personal doctor, as well as the monarch's son and successor,
King Frederick the fifth. When Johan was fifteen, he enrolled
at the University of Halle, where he studied for a
degree as a doctor. He did that for the next
five years, graduating in December of seventeen fifty seven. And
the remaining years of the seventeen fifties he was employed

(09:57):
as the town physician in Altona, Denmark, which is now
part of Germany. If you're familiar with the timeline of
smallpox vaccination that we've discussed on the show before, he
may be thinking that he got his medical credentials during
a time when very elation was becoming more widely adopted,
and that's correct. He really championed vary elation when he

(10:17):
was a young physician. He also worked to generally improve
hygienic practices in his community as a means to improve
the health of everyone, and as a public doctor, Strudency
was called upon to treat all kinds of ailments, including
mental illness, and he had some fairly important insights in
that aspect of his work. For one, He thought that

(10:39):
mental illness should be studied more thoroughly, specifically to look
for physical causes. That may not sound pretticarly groundbreaking, but
this was a time when often if people were deemed
to be mentally ill, they were kind of just locked away,
Whereas he was like, can we figure out what the
problem actually is? His thinking as a physician was that
if you could identify a physical cause, you could potentially

(11:00):
treated and thus treat the mental illness. He came to
recognize things like head injuries and ingestion of various substances,
some of which were used medicinally, were often the cause
of what had frequently been written off simply as insanity
at the time. During his time as a doctor, he
became acquainted with a number of Danish nobles, and it

(11:21):
was through these connections that he met and became the
traveling doctor to the king. This was a guardian role
of sorts for Christian the seventh, and he got that
role in seventeen sixty eight. At this point, the monarch
was obviously exhibiting instability, and he was supposed to undertake
a tour of several European countries as a matter of diplomacy.

(11:43):
There was also a hope that that change of scenery
might help his mental state. The itinerary included Germany, Holland,
England and France, and having a physician such as Struancy
on hand who could offer the king care that would
enable him to make this everyone at least hoped, and
this offered Struancy a case study in his work in

(12:05):
some mental illness. Uh. This is also interesting because you'll
sometimes read that like, no one was willing to admit
that there was something really wrong with the king, and
Struancy was kind of the first person going, do you
understand there's actually something wrong here? He's not just eccentric.
But throughout their travels, Struancy took care of the King
and offered him companionship, and over time he became a

(12:27):
trusted ally, so much so that when Christian the Seventh
returned to Denmark in early seventeen sixty nine, Struancy returned
with him and he was appointed the king's personal doctor.
Struancy was able to manage the king's shifting moods and
his unpredictability in a way that no one else had
been able to. So initially, this arrangement was welcomed by

(12:48):
pretty much everyone who dealt with Christian the Seventh. But
Struancy took this post for all of the opportunity it offered,
and then some as you'll hear shortly, but he also
was providing both physical and mental care for Christian the Seventh.
Struancy noted that the king had delusions, but he also
observed that they weren't fixed. There was a lot of

(13:08):
variety and shifting among these delusions. The king was often
very agitated. Sometimes he would speak in gibberish or laugh
at inappropriate times, but the doctor also recognized that trying
to stop Christian the seventh from any of these behaviors
just seemed to intensify them. There were also periods where
the king was lucid and could recognize and understand the

(13:31):
nature of the delusions that he had, but he also
never disbelieved those delusions. Eventually, there was, with the agreement
of the Queen and the king's closest advisers, a seven
point plan drawn up to try to cure Christian of
his delusions and keep him from various habits that were
deemed inappropriate. This plan included things like making Christian the

(13:53):
Seventh always feel like everyone was dedicated to his happiness,
he was a bit paranoid that otherwise was the case,
and treating him in private settings just like anyone else
rather than the nation's ruler. There was always someone on
hand to play cards or otherwise entertain the king, and
he was given written notes on affairs of state, which

(14:13):
he preferred to verbal briefings. And while this system did
seem to work for a while, eventually it stopped working
and Christian became angry at everyone involved. However, Struancy's guests
into what was causing Christian the Seventh's delusions and his
other issues, I was probably a little shortsighted. He believed

(14:35):
that the problem stemmed from the king's frequent masturbation, and
his writing about this issue is pretty delicate. He sort
of talks around it. He refers to it with phrases
like a habit one can guess without naming it. Other
accounts from the time helped to form a more certain
sense of what was going on, with one of the
court counselors referring to the king's quote debauched solitaire. While

(15:00):
these accounts of the king's behavior often used to paint
the monarch as being really pleasura driven, Struancy just found
the whole situation to be a lot more complicated. While
the doctor did try to dissuade his royal patient from
this habit, that, like his other dissuasion attempts, did not
really work, Struancy made the king take cold baths that
didn't really help very much either. Struancy did not believe

(15:23):
that pleasure actually had anything to do with Christian the
sevens proclivities, writing quote, this is what ruins and weekends,
not only his body, but also his mind, which is
being suppressed by it. And as he experiences depression, apprehension, anxieties,
his imagination seeks an external reason and cause him to
find everything unpleasant, disgusting and intolerable, and thus the source

(15:47):
of the coolness discussed and even hatred that he's so
easily engenders towards people who approach him most frequently. I
have never observed an inclination towards or a taste for
sensual pleasures in the King. The habit that causes his
unhappiness does not exert great attraction for him. He indulges
it out of boredom and with sang foix. According to

(16:10):
his own assurances, things which usually yield pleasure hardly touch
him and even displease him. So keep in mind with
all this that eighteenth century Europe had some ideas about
sex and masturbation, they were not remotely sex positive. It
wasn't as though Struancy made this connection between the king's
behavior and mental illness in a vacuum. Influential medical texts

(16:34):
of the time asserted this connection between mental illness and
masturbation as well. There's evidence that Struancy and the other
doctors at court were really familiar with those texts. Struency
was not entirely alone in caring for the king. His colleagues.
Justus von Berger, who was the court physician, was often
consulted regarding what the best course of action would be. Yeah,

(16:56):
Struency had the most immediate you know, has on care
with the king. But he was talking to other doctors
about the situation. So, like I said, he's not like
the only person who went I think this is the problem. Later,
Struancy wrote of the king quote, I became aware of
much peculiarity in his mind and character, a great guardedness

(17:17):
and even contempt of all those who are around him,
and in particular a great deal of dissatisfaction with his situation.
He harbored exaggerated ideas about various subjects, which he cherished
to such a degree that he would become angry if
anyone contradicted him or just expressed some doubt. He hoped
to find the means with which he could indulge in

(17:39):
all kinds of debauchery without regretting any bad consequences. In brief,
he harbored several other thoughts, no less extravagant, which I
shall refrain from repeating, in order not to become too diffuse.
If I took the effort to demonstrate the fallacy and
even absurdity of all this, his Majesty answered me that
he was rather convinced of the veracity of these ideas,

(18:01):
but that people hid it from him, and that I
could enlighten him about them if I wished. He felt
that the world was completely different from how it was
presented to him, and that he knew secrets and mysteries
about which he did not dare talk to me. Being
the Royal Doctor was only the first office that the
King gave to Struancy. Next he was made reader to

(18:23):
Their Majesty's and then honorary member of the State Council.
Next he became Maitre de riquets, the Master of Requests,
that are, Master of petitions. That was just after the
King had dissolved the Council of State. Then he became
Cabinet Secretary. This is a significant series of titles for
a doctor from another country to have acquired in a

(18:46):
very short period of time. He was given all of
these titles over about a year. Struency's elevation culminated and
being named Privy Cabinet Minister on July fourteenth, seventeen seventy one.
But well before that, the doctor had also become romantically
involved with Queen Caroline Matilda. The two began their relationship

(19:07):
in February seventeen seventy, roughly a year after Struancy arrived
at court. Also in seventeen seventy, he made a bold
move in a bid for power. Uh he did away,
as we said, just a moment ago, with the Council
of State and the Governorship of Norway. These were all
signed off on by the King. But it was Struancy
pulling the strings. He was systematically removing any obstacles that

(19:30):
would keep him from doing exactly as he pleased. Caroline
Matilda had already provided an heir to Christian the seventh
that was their son, Frederick, who would eventually become Frederick
the sixth. But when she gave birth to another child
in July of seventeen seventy one, that was a daughter
named Louise Augusta, it was likely and really assumed by

(19:51):
most of the parties that courts, that Johann Struancy was
really the father. On the day of Louise Augusta's baptism, Struancy,
and being the auspices of the king, granted himself another
new title and became Count Construency. He gave the same
tile to his friend at court and the King's companion
and of old brand. But even before those appointments, he

(20:14):
was making decisions that would normally be the work of
somebody far far above his station. He was passing laws
for the country in line with his progressive ideals. While
a lot of these reforms were ultimately good for the country,
a lot of them were focused on improving the lives
of the peasantry while taking away things like extravagant allowances

(20:35):
for nobility. They were of course not welcomed by everyone,
and many government officials felt particularly prickly about the King's
doctor having managed to wield so much power and in
a way that pretty negatively impacted their status. We'll talk
about Struency's downfall after we take a quick break for
a word from the sponsors that keep stuff he missed

(20:56):
in history class going. Andreas Peter Bernstorff, who was a
state official at the time all of this was going on,
wrote to his uncle about the situation with Christian the
seventh and Struancy. He pondered, what there is to be

(21:16):
done when quote Huax embassill when one is obliged to
obey a fool king. It was clear that Bernstorff was
mortified by the power that Struancy had been able to amass,
and he referred openly to the Doctor as a criminal.
All of that meddling in the government and his relationship
with Queen Caroline Matilda offered Struency's detractors the way to

(21:40):
unseat him. Rumors started to spread that Struancy was not
content with all that he had managed to snatch for himself,
and that he was planning to overthrow the king entirely,
become the king himself and marry the Queen. There had
been another rumor about him even before that, that the
Doctor was trying to slowly poison the king, claiming that

(22:01):
he was dispensing medicines. As this rumor gained some tractions,
Struancy's medical supplies were seized and a commission investigated the situation,
but nothing sinister was found. In the last months of
seventeen seventy one and into early seventeen seventy two, Struancy's
enemies at court really multiplied. On January seventeen, seventeen seventy two,

(22:23):
Christian the seventh stepmother the Queen dowager Julianna Maria, fearful
that the monarchy and the country were in jeopardy, catalyzed
a palace revolution. The night before that there had been
a masked ball, and Julianna Maria, along with accomplices, took
advantage of the exhausted and likely stupefied state of the

(22:44):
king to wake him in the very early morning and
force him to sign papers that called for the arrest
of both Struancy and Queen Caroline Matilda. Struancy's allies, including
Intervald Brand, were also arrested. The queen was taken to
crone Or Castle and Helsinger, roughly forty five kilometers away. Incidentally,

(23:04):
that is indeed the Kronborg Castle that is the setting
of Shakespeare's Hamlet. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Two commissions were forms to investigate Struancy's supposed crimes. The
members of those commissions were definitely biased. They were all
people who disliked him. They had all been impacted by
his governmental reformations. Their investigations were expedient, and Struancy was

(23:28):
declared guilty of usurpation of the throne and less majest
or offenses against the King. And the trial of Struancy
included the following condemnation in the opening remarks, the King
has been rendered obnoxious in the eyes of the people,
and the people have been represented to his majesty as
unworthy of their sovereign's affection. No one could approach the King,

(23:52):
but those who belonged to the junto of those miscreants, who,
under the specious pretense of being the King's friends, were
his greatest enemies. Insolence, audacity, and infamy dared to approach
the throne and stamped the immaculate luster of the royal
house with indelible reproach. The case against Struancy was largely

(24:13):
about his being a sneak at an opportunist. The king
was described in pretty glowing terms, not as somebody who
had any kind of a mental illness, but as somebody
who had fallen under the bad and weakening influence of
Struancy and his friends. The affair he was having with
the Queen was not included in any especially direct way,

(24:34):
but it was definitely mentioned as follows quote. The first
step he took towards the summit of his ambition is
an act so daring and dangerous that horror and indignation
seizes every honest mind at the very idea thereof by
the seduction of innocence, and by resting from his royal master,
the dearest object of his felicity, and while he was

(24:57):
imprisoned and awaiting his fate, Struancy wrote a detailed description
of the king's health, which was used by his defense
in their case. You have heard some excerpts from it already,
but he also wrote quote, I have decided to break
the silence, convinced that people who will become acquainted with
this memoir will only make proper use of it, resulting
in true happiness for the king. It is this record

(25:20):
that most of the medical scholars who debate the cause
of Christian the seventh mental illness used because it is
very detailed. Struancy wrote of Christian the seventh disdain for
kindness and affection quote. People who were considered with the
most contempt and who were treated with indignation, according to him,
were the happiest, and impatiently he awaited the moment when

(25:42):
he could inspire emotions capable of attracting such treatment for him.
This is why he always nurtured a very strong inclination
toward indulging all kinds of debauchery and profligacy, roaming the streets,
smashing windows, taunting and even murdering the wayfares, visiting the
disreputable houses, fighting with the watchman, associating himself with the

(26:07):
most notoriously wicked, and carrying out everything that not only
the most perverse person can imagine. Duels, combats, and even
battles did not appear to him less necessary to obtain
his goal, And for some time he imagined that he
had engaged in such things at night, and that several
times he had killed five, six or more people, but

(26:29):
that afterwards he was given opium to lose the memory
of it, as he did not yet dare to know
about it. So, according to this, Christian even believed that
he behaved morally worse than he actually did, and that
he was being poisoned to erase his memories of these events. Additionally,
this disdain for kindness often caused him to abuse the

(26:51):
people who were trying to serve or care for him. Yeah,
there's a pretty long discussion that Truancy wrote about how
you know, and a servant was perpetually in danger and
like if the king stumbled and you reached out your
arm to him, you were going to get hit and
possibly worse. Um. The king also engaged in a variety
of self harming behaviors, according to Struancy, and he believed

(27:14):
that he was not born a prince and that he
had somehow been swapped to take the role. He fantasized
about being dethroned so that he could be free, and
he waited for the moment that it was coming, he
believed when his body would transform into marble and make
him all but invincible. He believed, according to Struancy quote,
that there were six people in the world who had

(27:36):
been born morally blind, and he viewed things in nature differently,
or for whom those were changed to impose on them,
and he believed he was one of those six. Struancy
struggles a bit in this account to try to make
sense of some of the king's delusions. In particular, Christian
had decided that there was a special group of people

(27:56):
that he called comsat, which just means like that in French.
Struancy never really came to understand exactly what these people were.
He admits that he didn't understand it, saying, quote, it
would be difficult to give a clear idea about it.
For largely I understood nothing of it, even though I
had very much studied the train of his imagination. It

(28:18):
seems that the king believed that these people were shape
shifters and that he could identify them, and Christian was
ever on the lookout for these people any time he
was in a crowd of any size, and he would
point them out to Struancy. At the end of his
lengthy account of his experiences treating the king and the
various things that he suspected might be wrong, Struancy concludes

(28:40):
that he had withheld a lot of this information out
of respect to the monarch, and because the queen did
not want the extent of the king's problems to be known.
He concluded his account. With my conscience has obliged me
to reveal all that I have just explained. Although I
have not even permitted myself to exonerate myself with regard
to various accusations in the Commission's interrogation, I wish that

(29:04):
it may generate something good for the King and for
the state. The facts that I have alleged can be
verified by all those with whom the King established familiar
ties and by those who approached him. Especially Count Brandt
in particular, is acquainted with the details of the extravagances
of the King's imagination over the last six months, during
which time I have refrained as much as possible from

(29:26):
broaching this matter with his majesty. All of this information
about the King is from Struancy's perspective, but at the
same time, most of these details have also been corroborated
by separate accounts that were written by various members of
the court over the years. And while this paints a
picture of Struancy trying to help a very troubled monarch,

(29:47):
it was not enough to save him. Struancy was sentenced
to death by beheading, to be followed by being drawn
and quartered. This was all carried out publicly. Brandt received
the same death sentence and that took play son April
seventeen seventy two. By all accounts, this execution was particularly brutal.
If you go looking for any pictures, you will see

(30:09):
the parts of their bodies after they had been dismembered,
were put on display. Uh there's some debate about what
happened after that. There are some accounts that will say
that their bodies, what was left of them, were displayed
for as long as two years until there was nothing
but bone left. And there's a lot there are some
question marks around exactly where they were buried. Christian the

(30:31):
seventh marriage to Caroline Matilda was annulled, and after a
bit of back and forth, due to the tension that
this whole episode created between Denmark and Britain, she was
deported back to her home country. She died in May
of seventeen seventy five at the age of twenty three.
Over the period of about thirteen months in which Struancy
effectively acted as ruler of Denmark, he enacted more than

(30:54):
one thousand cabinet ordinances, and many of these were, in
historical view, very good policy. Or significant improvements, particularly when
it came to human rights. Struancy banned slave trade in
Denmark's colonies. He had eliminated the practice of corvey that
required peasants to work for free for their landowners for

(31:15):
a certain number of days each year. Those were also
often brutal. He also allocated land to peasants and overhauled
the nation's hospital system, and he reformed criminal law with
far less harsh penalties and punishments, so capital punishment kind
of went out the door, and on September four of
seventeen seventy he enacted the first ordinance in Europe that

(31:36):
created freedom of the press. As for Christian the seventh,
he continued on as king, but it was his stepmother,
Juliana Maria who really ran things. She rolled back most
of Struency's laws. In seventeen eighty four, Christian's son, Frederick
the sixth became Prince Regent. Christian lived until March of
eighteen o eight, and he died of either a heart

(31:58):
attack or a stroke, to ending on which source you read.
He lived out his final years in confinement with pretty
rudimentary and often cruel care by people who didn't really
work to alleviate his illness in any way. No, he
was just being kind of contained in controlled at the
end of his life. And despite the controversial nature of

(32:18):
his bid for power to enact reform, Struancy's legacy and
particularly his trial and execution, remained controversial in the late
eighteen nineties, and extensive analysis of the case was written
by Danish judge and Lawson. That examination of the facts
available led Lawson to determine that because the king's mental
health issues were never expressly mentioned in the court proceedings,

(32:42):
the entire argument made in seventeen seventy two that Struancy
had taken advantage of the monarch's condition was flawed. In
perhaps trying to avoid embarrassment by mentioning the king's ailments
and his mental illness issues, it would indicate that any
decisions that he signed off on, whether Struancy initiated them
or not, and including all of the doctor's promotions, would

(33:03):
have been valid, so that judgment of less mass Day
was incorrect. As time had gone on, the ideas that
Struancy was enacting into law have come to be seen
in a pretty positive light. His image has been largely
rehabilitated from that of this opportunistic criminal instead becoming an
enlightened thinker who kind of overstepped his bounds kind of

(33:26):
a law Yeah, that's a mixed bag. Yeah he had
some great ideas, but who yeah, who. I really enjoyed
researching this, although it was a bit tricky because there
aren't a lot of translations of primary sources for that one,

(33:51):
and so I had to order some very strange reproductions
of translations that were done like of the court case
and stuff, uh, you know, in the the early twentieth
century or and so I was definitely paging through a
lot of um texts that had the um the weird
spellings and the the various letters switcheros. But it's ultimately

(34:14):
super fun. Do you have some listener mail to take
us out? I have two pieces of listener mail. These
are both about our Ralph McCary episodes. Before we get
to them, I will say, I know not everyone loved
the three D nous of those episodes. Don't fret. That's
not a permanent change. It was just part of a
network wide kind of project we were many of our
shows were doing that week. UM, so if you didn't

(34:36):
like it, no worries and it's just those episodes. You're good.
Uh So I am first going to read an email
from our listener, Ann, who writes, Hello, Holly and Tracy.
I've been a fan of stuff you missed in history
class for many years. I started listening at my first
data entry job back in twelve, and you've been keeping
me company insane through several data entry jobs, a couple

(34:58):
of road trips to Dragon Con, and my current job
sewing aprons and masks at artifact bags dot com. Check
us out. We make nice stuff. I've been wanting to
email you for the last year to hopefully provide some
cheer with cute dog o picks and Star Wars costumes,
but I am a procrastinator. When you did your two
partner on Ralph mcquarie, I figured now is as good
a time as any to send fan mail. I had

(35:19):
heard of mcquarie before, but never realized how extensive his
work was, or that his drawings were used as inspiration
for Rebels. A friend of mine and I are working
on Hara and Asoca costumes from Rebels right now. Actually, anyway,
I have probably gone on too long, but keep up
the excellent work. You guys are my favorite podcast. Uh,
that wasn't very long at all, really, and also you

(35:40):
have to send us those pictures because I love me
some Hara and Asoca and uh and sent pictures of
some Star Wars costumes. There's a great Mandalorian. There is
a great Princess Leiah. And there is a dog that
she should never bring near me because I'll try to
steal it. Uh. It appears to be a shiba Inu,
which is a breed that I have in love with.

(36:01):
That dog is stinking cute, um adorable, adorable, adorable. We
have another another one that comes with fabulous pictures. This
is from our listener Ariel or Ariel. I'm sorry if
I pronounce it the wrong way. Who rights? Hello, ladies.
I've enjoyed the stuff you missed in History Class podcast
for years now, and I don't know how, but I

(36:22):
sometimes forget how much of a Star Wars fan Holly
is until the topic is stumbled upon. I've just listened
to your episodes on Ralph mcquarie and his artistic influence
on Star Wars. My husband and I grew up on
the original trilogy, and, like Holly, remained devoted fans, which
is why these episodes inspired me to share photos of
our most recent Star Wars themed acquisition. Meet bar Too

(36:43):
D two. Barto D two is a custom built bourbon
barrel bar that a very good friend who is also
quite a renaissance man, made for us. I do secretly
hope it makes Holly just a little bit jealous well success,
because that thing is amazing. Um, it's really beautiful like
it has you know, the front has been cut so
that it opens out like a door and reveals the

(37:06):
wonderful assortment of spirits within. But moreover, it has like
a beautiful blue I'm presuming led inside, and it's painted
in this really charming way. Uh Ariel also sent pictures
of uh of her creatures, so her hiking partner Nikki,
Sir Sid and Lady Ewen, so her her pupper, and

(37:30):
cats who pose in the cutest ways I can ever imagine.
Thanks for this an amazing podcast that makes a subject
I thoroughly hated in school so much more enjoyable. UM,
thank you so much for sharing that. I assure you
I am the appropriate levels of jealous of your very
cool bar. Um. My only concern would be that I
would never fit all of my stuff in them. I'm

(37:52):
an accumulator. I cannot help it. So thank you for
for writing to us, and if you would like to
write to us, you can do so at his podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. You can also find us
on social media as miss in History and it is
very easy to subscribe to the podcast on the I
heart radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or wherever it is
you listen. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a

(38:18):
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.