The Hessians in the Revolution

ONE of the most interesting episodes in our Revolutionary War was Great Britain’s employment of German troops to aid in conquering her revolted provinces. There are several works by German authors upon this subject, and some portions of the same topic have been discussed by American writers. Mr. Lowell, however, is the first to give us a full and complete history of the German auxiliaries of England from the time when they were recruited and sold down to their final return to the fatherland with sadly depleted numbers.¹ Mr. Lowell has done his work extremely well and with perfect thoroughness. He has not only reviewed all published authorities, native and foreign, and drawn freely on the hitherto untouched resources of the correspondence published in contemporary German newspapers, but, taking advantage of a long residence in Germany, he has. also examined and digested all the new material which a careful search among the manuscripts of state archives revealed. There is therefore a good deal of entirely original matter in the volume, which constitutes a fresh and valuable contribution to our knowledge of the war for independence.

Mr. Lowell has been, moreover, as successful in presentation as in research. He writes in an agreeable and easy style, wholly free from any straining after effect, and exhibits a nice perception of the lighter and more humorous side of the incidents which he records. His book, too, is well proportioned. There is enough detail, but not too much, and there is an entire absence of diffuse ness, which is the besetting sin of the writers of monographs.

If we were required to make a selection, we should say that the first five chapters were the freshest and most attractive. They give an interesting picture of the life at the little German courts of the eighteenth century, and afford many glimpses of the queer structure of society in those petty sovereignties, one of which Thackeray has immortalized by the wonderfully graphic sketch with which the lectures on the Georges open. They were a very contemptible set, those German princelings, and there is nothing which makes the French Revolution and its consequences seem so profoundly right as a brief contemplation of the Landgraves and Margraves, and other small men with big titles, who tyrannized over little communities, and gave themselves up to brutal and vulgar imitations of the splendors and vices of Paris and Versailles. Mr. Lowell’s careful account of the negotiations and bargains by which England obtained troops from these various potentates brings home to us very strongly the utter wretchedness of a system which made such miserable despots possible. The only ruler in Germany who said a word against this sale of men was Frederick the Great, and his opposition amounted to nothing. Mr. Bancroft has dwelt upon this episode at some length; but in reality Frederick merely happened to be in bad humor with England, and as he did not like to see German soldiers wasted, he sneered at the little traders in men, threw some trifling obstacles in their way, and straightway forgot all about it. Frederick took no more real, human interest in the matter, he had no more honest hatred for this traffic, than the princes actually engaged in it. He only differed from his neighbors in the fact that as he was a great man, and they were very much the reverse, he was able to see the wider and more dangerous elements in this dealing in men, which escaped the notice of the actual participants. Mr. Lowell’s brief and accurate account of the matter of Frederick’s interference is very satisfactory, as it does simple justice to a very small incident which has had a glamor thrown upon it by the fame of the great king of Prussia. The people of the United States were no more indebted to Frederick for sympathy or aid in the war for independence than they are to Prince Bismarck for an observance of the ordinary rules of civility which obtain among gentlemen.

By EDWARD J. LOWELL. With Maps and Plans New York : Harper and Brothers. 1884.

The largest contingent of German auxiliaries came from Hesse-Cassel, and the name “ Hessian ” passed into a byword in this country, as a convenient expression to describe any mean, mercenary, adventurous villain. In the rough contact of war, Americans soon found that the German soldiers were by no means the monsters they had fancied them to be, but nevertheless the hatred and prejudice to which the employment of foreign troops gave rise were never abated. Yet the unfortunate Hessians were really blameless. The poor fellows were not even mercenaries. With the exception of the higher officers, they were not men of the Dalgetty type, who made a living by professional fighting, and who carried their swords from one country to another, wherever wages could be earned and spoils obtained. The German soldiers in onr war were men seized and kidnapped by recruiting officers, taken from all pursuits, chiefly from farms, drilled and disciplined with savage severity, and then sold by their masters to the highest bidders. They were purely military serfs, and were treated as chattels. The officers were in opinion favorable to England, because they naturally believed in monarchy and constituted authority. The men fought simply because they were obliged to do so. When one reads Mr. Lowell’s vivid description of their ill-treatment and misery on shipboard and elsewhere, the only wonder is that the whole contingent did not desert as soon as they landed. That only one fifth of them adopted this judicious course is a striking evidence of the loyalty of the men and the barbarity of the discipline ; for, fighting in a cause not their own, they had no more reason to be faithful to their colors than slaves have to remain with their drivers.

The story of their adventures involves, of course, the narration of much that has been told over and over again. This is especially the case with the Burgoyne campaign, which the translation of the Riedesel journals has made familiar to all American readers. Mr. Lowell has shown, however a wise discrimination in dealing with these topics, which necessarily involve much repetition. He has adhered strictly to the German share in the war, and has thus been able to tell many old stories in a fresh way, and cast much new light on others. It is shown, among other, things, that the Hessians did a great deal of hard fighting, were as a rule in the posts of danger, and proved themselves to be both brave and well-disciplined troops. Mr. Lowell has also given us extracts from letters of the German officers, which are full of suggestive glimpses of daily life among the people whom the writers had come to conquer. Nothing in the book is more valuable or more interesting than these well-chosen bits of description, which picture a past society to us from a new point of view, and we cannot but wish that in this direction the author had been less sparing.

There is only one side of his subject which Mr. Lowell does not touch, or which he at most refers to very briefly. This is the meaning and effect of the employment of these auxiliaries in regard to England herself. This matter is of great importance, and is a most significant illustration of the condition of England at that period. There can be no doubt that the hiring of foreign mercenaries was one of the greatest among the many flagrant blunders of the English ministry. Nothing did more to make the alienation between the mother country and the colonies absolutely hopeless, and it encouraged and justified the Americans in seeking foreign assistance on their side. The eager search and the hasty purchase of the German troops indicate, too, the weakness of the English government at that time. George III. was planning to restore the prerogative, and yet when the first forcible resistance to his schemes came he was so ill prepared that his ministers were obliged to turn to the little German states, and even to Russia, for soldiers. Such a necessity gives an excellent idea of the blundering incapacity and stupid domineering which cost England her American empire, and proves how really incompetent George III. was to carry out his plans of personal aggrandizement, which required above everything else strength, forethought, and careful preparation. The engagement of the Hessians is also suggestive of the dangers which would have beset England in case the resistance of the colonies had failed. England was on the edge of revolution, and the outbreak came in America ; but if resistance had been crushed there, it is impossible to say what might have followed, or to deny that George III., with an army of victorious veterans and well-trained mercenaries, might have attempted once more with better success Strafford’s policy of “thorough.” It was not at all necessary for the author’s purpose to discuss these topics, which, in fact, open up the most far-reaching questions of English history in the eighteenth century, and it was probably wise to refrain from so doing. It is at all events certain that Mr. Lowell has given us a valuable and well-written volume, embodying much new material, in regard to a very interesting chapter in our Revolutionary history.