t. Court favouritism was the fashion in Denmark, and the King
and Queen were equally ruled by favourites. But, in a short period, a
young physician of the household managed both, obtaining peculiarly
the confidence of the Queen. Scandal was not idle on this occasion,
and Germany and England rang with stories of the court of Denmark. The
physician was soon created a noble, and figured for a while as the
prime minister, or rather sovereign of the kingdom, by the well-known
title of Count Struensee. A party was formed against him by the
Queen-mother, at the head of some of the nobility. The Queen was made
prisoner, and died in prison. Struensee was tried as traitor, and
beheaded. The King was finally incapacitated from reigning, and his
son was raised to the regency. This melancholy transaction formed one
of the tragedies of Europe; but it had the additional misfortune of
occurring at a time when royalty had begun to sink under the incessant
attacks of the revolutionists, and France, the leader of public
opinion on the Continent, was filled with opinions contemptuous of all
thrones.

The year 1768 exhibited France in her most humiliating position before
Europe. The Duc de Choiseul was the minister--a man of wit, elegance,
and accomplishment; but too frivolous to follow, if he had not been
too ignorant to discover, the true sources of national greatness. His
foreign policy was intrigue, and his domestic policy the favouritism
of the court by administering to its vices. He raised a war between
the Russians and Turks, and had the mortification of seeing his
_protege_ the Turk trampled by the armies of his rival the Czarina.
Even the Corsicans had degraded the military name of France. But he
had a new peril at home. Old Marshal Richelieu--who, as Walpole
sarcastically observes, "had retained none of his faculties, but that
last talent of a decayed Frenchman, a spirit of back-stairs
intrigue"--had provided old Louis XV. with a new mistress. Of all the
persons of this character who had made French royal life scandalous in
the eyes of Europe, this connexion was the most scandalous. It
scandalized even France. This mistress was the famous Countess du
Barri--a wretched creature, originally of the very lowest condition;
whose vices would have stained the very highest; and who, in the
convulsions of the reign that followed, was butchered by the
guillotine.

In November of this year died the Duke of Newcastle, at the age of
seventy