: A Defence of the Hessians by Rosengarten J G Joseph George - United States History Revolution 1775-1783 Participation German

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A DEFENCE OF THE HESSIANS.

CONTRIBUTED BY JOSEPH G. ROSENGARTEN.

PHILADELPHIA: 1899.

A DEFENCE OF THE HESSIANS.

The Seven Years' War had enlisted England's rich help in men and money. A powerful army of one hundred thousand men, composed of English soldiers, of twenty-four thousand Hessians, of Hanoverians and Brunswickers, enabled Frederick of Prussia to continue a resistance which otherwise he could not have maintained for two years. The North German states were not Prussian vassals, but allies of England for a hundred years, on the basis of common political aims. Hesse, as the stronghold of the Protestants of North Germany, had been in close alliance with England at a time when Brandenburg was little thought of. The ancient military glory of Hesse during the Thirty Years' War was so great that Gustavus Adolphus on landing in Germany had asked for a Hessian, Colonel Falkenburg, as military governor of Magdeburg. For a century and a half Hessian soldiers fought shoulder to shoulder with the English troops, mainly against France. That they should again act together in America was not more surprising than that the Sardinian Italians should co?perate with the French in the Crimea. The same statesmanlike wisdom was shown in Cassel and in Turin, and led to a like result. The little Hesse of 1866 must not be confused with the old Hesse, which was an important factor in German politics. In almost every war of the last century Hesse had taken part with its army of twenty-four thousand men,--an important contingent at that time and one that made Hesse the object of many invitations to close alliance. In the Seven Years' War, England joined Frederick the Great, so, too, did the Hessians and the other German allies. It fared badly with Hesse,--repeatedly it was overrun and often held by the French, while its army was serving in Westphalia and Hanover; the Elector died away from his home and was succeeded by his son; none of the eastern provinces of Prussia suffered like Hesse.

The Elector Frederick had been educated on the Rhine, and shortly before the outbreak of the Seven Years' War was the guest of the Archbishop Elector of Cologne. Political honors have been made the reason of the Elector of Saxony's change of his Protestant faith--that he might secure the throne of Catholic Poland. Vanity and want of patriotic pride have led German princesses to win Russian husbands at the sacrifice of their Protestant faith, while no Russian princess has ever given up her church for the sake of a foreign husband. Frederick of Hesse changed his religion from purely personal reasons and in perfect honesty. It was long concealed from his father, a strong Protestant, ruling the church in the spirit of his ancestor Maurice. An accident revealed the secret, and violent was the anger of the sturdy Protestant father. At first he wanted to exclude his son from the succession, but this required an appeal to the Emperor, who naturally would refuse. The elder prince then, with the approval of his Parliament, made a close alliance with England, and this added to the security of his son's English marriage. The eldest son of that marriage, later on Elector William, was to rule in Hanau, free from any influence of his Catholic father, under the protection of an English garrison, so that his home was temporarily separated from Hesse, and put under strict protection of its church rights. Parliament, people, and army all took an oath to abide by this, and Elector Frederick always kept his Catholic predilections strictly personal, never influencing the old Protestant rule; indeed, out of his own purse he completed the Reformed church in Cassel begun by his father, and endowed it.

In 1762 Elector Frederick returned home at the head of the Hessian army, and Hessian administration replaced that of the foreign invaders; but the treasury was empty, the resources of the state exhausted, and the population reduced one-half. The country had been laid waste. The Elector declined all show, and quietly reoccupied his ancestral castle on January 2, 1763. The Parliament was summoned, and again exercised its constitutional rights to examine and criticise the financial statements of the government. These showed that the only resource for the needs of the army was the claim against England for unpaid subsidies, amounting to 10,143,286 thalers. The government was authorized to reduce the army and to apply any saving thus effected for pressing civil needs. The representative in London was instructed to urge the prompt payment of the debt due for Hessian forces in English service. The matter was warmly discussed in Parliament, and only in 1775 was the debt discharged in part to the amount of 7,923,283 thalers. In 1772 a short supply of food led to the establishment of public warehouses, where flour bought abroad was sold at cost price.

The agricultural condition, however, was a very unfavorable one, and in 1775 England first broached a renewal of the old alliance, with a view to the employment of Hessian troops in the case of war in America. The project of American independence was heartily disapproved of in Germany and even in republican Switzerland. It was turning colonies into rival states. Then, too, in seeking an alliance with France and Spain, America was turning to the hereditary enemies of Germany. The course of the English Whigs in endorsing the American rebels was condemned as a mere party move against the Tory ministry, crippling the government. Moser, the historian, represented the current opinion of Germany when he described the Yankees as perjured subjects. The modern and advanced German prefers Mirabeau to Moser,--vice to virtue. The threats of that French agitator against Germany have no more historical value than the declamation of Victor Hugo during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. Moser's was the general opinion of his time. As to the English offer, the Elector was personally against taking part in the war: he wanted peace to restore prosperity to the land, to which he was contributing freely out of his own means, while he took almost nothing for his own wants. He objected to sending the army, composed almost entirely of his own subjects, far away, and if he had anticipated a seven years' struggle he would never have consented. His Parliament was anxious to hasten the payment of the balance due by England, which had only of late quickened its remittances. Without a new English alliance it would be long before the country could recover from the exhaustion of the Seven Years' War. Prussia had recouped its exhausted treasury by the booty of the Polish division in 1772. England's offer could not be refused. At that time Hesse was tempted by an offer of a share of the Polish treasure in return for a loan of Hessian troops to Prussia, which it sturdily rejected.

As far back as 1757 the King of Prussia had asked leave to buy eight hundred Hessian recruits to take the place of that number of Saxon Catholic prisoners of war, who had been forced into the Prussian service to turn against their own king and country and had all escaped; but the old Elector of Hesse peremptorily refused permission. Prussia denounced the treaty by which the Hessian army served as allies of the British, but wanted to buy the individual soldiers as so many slaves. The young Elector openly disapproved the partition of Poland and refused any offer from Prussia. The feeling through Hesse-Cassel was strongly against Prussia and just as strongly friendly to England, and this was clearly shown in the debates and action of the Hessian Parliament and in the reports of the Hessian representative in London, Schlieffen. The request of England was finally agreed to. The Hessian troops went to America with the full approval of their country, in accordance with the wishes of its legal representatives, in joyful courage, bent on winning new laurels at the side of their old allies.

The first meeting with the enemy, soon after the landing of the first Hessian division under Lieutenant-General Heister, was a glorious one for his troops. At Flatbush Washington's army was driven at the point of the bayonet almost to destruction, most of the American leaders captured, and nearly all their flags taken. The Hessian grenadiers who at Minden had attacked the French cavalry with the bayonet had lost nothing of the vigor they had shown in the Seven Years' War.

The war might have been finished in one campaign and the loss of the Colonies prevented, for at least two-thirds of the population of America looked on old England as the true source of liberty, but were coerced by the rebellious minority. But the English commander, Lord Howe, was a Whig, and forbade Heister's pursuit and use of his victory. Howe ordered defensive lines to be fortified against the broken force of Washington's army. This turned the tables. Washington enlisted a new army, largely by the promise of liberal head-money to recruits, and France and Spain appeared on the scene. The Yankees alone never could have achieved their independence. The Colonies then had only two and a half million white population. The Americans of to-day are the children of later immigrants, to a great extent the grandchildren of the very men who resisted the causeless rebellion, and even of those who fought against it. The anger of the Yankees wreaked itself on their adversaries by publishing the greatest untruths, the shallowest, idlest lies, that at first were unnoticed in Germany, but gradually, especially after the French Revolution, passed into German reactionary literature. These are now the stock in trade of modern historical writers. In spite of clear proof from the Hessian archives, these vamped-up stories are repeated and renewed.

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