These six hundred thousand thalers were a straight bonus, for the English Government agreed to pay the Hessian soldiers the same as they paid their own English soldiers, and to treat them in all other ways as their own.
A second division of four thousand men was afterward supplied, for which the Landgrave of Hesse was paid two hundred thousand thalers.
Alluring tales of loot were held out to the soldiers, also educational advantages, somewhat after the style of the recruiting-posters in this Year of Grace, Nineteen Hundred Thirteen, that seek to lead and lure the lusty youth of America to enlist in the cause of Mars.
Of course the common people knew nothing of the details of this deal of Hesse with England. The Americans were represented to them as savages who had arisen against their masters, and were massacring men, women and children.
To stop this bloodshed was looked upon as a duty for the sake of humanity. Let it be stated that these Hessian soldiers were not sent to America against their will. They voted by regiments to go to the defense of their English Cousins. All of the officers were given a month's pay as a bonus, and this no doubt helped their zeal. The soldiers were to go simply until the war was over, which, it was represented, would be in one year, or possibly less.
The money came so easily that the Landgrave of Hesse, in Seventeen Hundred Ninety-four, supplied the English with a third detachment of four thousand troops—this time, to fight the French.
It is not always the case that the terms of sale of human beings in war-time are so well known as are these particular deals. The Hessian officials kept no books. They made no records, and wrote no letters. Boards of Investigation were powerless. The business was transacted by personal messengers, who went to London and closed the deal by word of mouth, and later brought back the coin. Wise men write few letters. What would you? Is Farley a rogue and a varlet? However, things in Threadneedle Street can not be done in secret.
England has a wonderful system of bookkeeping and bureaucraft—there are spies upon spies, and checks and counterchecks, so that filching a large sum from the Bank of England has been a trick never so far successfully turned.
England's share in this transaction was not dishonorable—that is to say, to buy a man is not so bad as to sell one. All she did was to hire strike-breakers. English statesmen generally regarded the matter as a bit of necessary war-time expediency. If the rebel Colonies could be put down by hiring a few extra soldiers, why, hire them, of course.
Not so, said Edmund Burke, who gave the matter an unlooked-for publicity by denouncing the Hessians as "hired assassins." He prophesied that the Americans would not consider these hirelings as amenable to the rules of civilized warfare, but would "welcome them with bloody hands to hospitable graves"—a phrase so fine that it was, years after, seized upon by Tom Corwin and applied to the conquest of Mexico.