Adam Gottlob Moltke - Rise To Power

Rise To Power

Immediately after his accession, Frederick made Moltke Lord Chamberlain and overwhelmed him with marks of favor: making him a privy councillor, a count and bestowing upon him Bregentved, and other estates. As the companion of the king, Moltke's influence grew to the point that foreign diplomatists declared he could make and unmake ministers at will. Especially notable is Moltke's attitude towards the two distinguished statesmen who played the leading parts during the reign of Frederick, Johan Sigismund Schulin and The Elder Bernstorff. For Schulin he had a sort of veneration. Bernstorff irritated him by his grand airs of conscious superiority. But though a Prussian intrigue was set up for the supersession of Bernstorff by Moltke, the latter, convinced that Bernstorff was the right man in the right place, supported him with unswerving loyalty.

Moltke was less liberal in his views than many of his contemporaries. He looked askance at all projects for the emancipation of the serfs, but, as one of the largest landowners of Denmark, he did service to agriculture by lightening the burdens of the countrymen and introducing technical and scientific improvements, which also increased production. His greatest merit, however, was the guardianship he exercised over the king.

On the death of Queen Louisa, the king would have married one of Moltke's daughters had he not peremptorily declined the dangerous honor. On the death of Frederick, who died in his arms (14 January 1766), Moltke's dominion was at an end. The new king, Christian VII, could not endure him, and exclaimed, with reference to his lanky figure: "He's stork below and fox above". At that time Moltke was also unpopular, because he was, wrongly, suspected of enriching himself at the public expense. In July 1766 he was dismissed from all his offices and retired to his estate at Bregentved. Subsequently, through the interest of Russia, to whom he had always been favorable, he regained his seat in the council (February 8, 1768), but his influence was slight and of brief endurance. He was again dismissed without a pension, on the 10th of December 1770, for refusing to have anything to do with Struensee. He lived in retirement until his death on 25 September 1792.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1764. His memoirs, written in German and published in 1870, have considerable historical importance. See H.H. Langhorn, Historische Nachricht über die danischen Moltkes (Kid, 1871).