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218
COPENHAGEN.
Chap. XIV.
against him was that of having endeavoured to get
created an English peer. His defence was admirable,
but his doom was already sealed; he was condemned
to first lose his hand, be decapitated, and broken on the
wheel.
The sentence was ordered td be carried into
execution on the 11th of June. Griffenfeld lost none of his
courage, but received the sacrament. Everything was
done to make him feel uncomfortable; in the
evening his grave-clothes were brought to the prison, and
the following morning his coffin, the outside of which
was covered with pitch, and the inside with cotton.
When he had tied up his hair (or rather taken off his
wig) his escutcheon was broken to pieces by the
executioner, who exclaimed, “ This is not without cause, but
for your bad deedswhereupon he replied without
hesitation, “ What the king has given me he has now taken
away.” When he had finished praying and given sign
to the executioner to cut off his head, the general
adjutant cried out, “ Stop! his Majesty in his mercy
spares his lifeto which Griffenfeld replied, “ The
mercy is more cruel than the punishment: I have not
escaped death except for a more cruel fate;” and
he begged later through the medium of Count Schack
to enlist as a common soldier. He died at Tronyem,
where he had been removed from the castle of
Munk-holm on account of his serious illness, after a rigorous
imprisonment of twenty-one years. Hue and Cry
representations by Huusmann, of the execution of the
“ once Count Griffenfeld, now Peter Schumacher,” were
not wanting, and I have seen several preserved among
the Müller collection of engravings in the Royal Library.
The ex-minister is certainly not represented to
ad
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