Note 104 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
In "Northern Courts" it is stated that the two men were in love with the wife of General von Gähler, and that the Russian, knowing that an ambassador could not meet a doctor with the sword, took the cowardly revenge of inflicting a severe castigation on Struensee with a cane—a mode of discipline to which he had himself been often subjected at Petersburg. It is also stated by the same author, that Frau von Gähler's motive for dismissing the Russian was, because he refused to join the queen's party. If this is authentic, we may conclude that the crafty envoy, even at that time, saw in the queen an opponent of the Philo-Russian policy of the Copenhagen cabinet.