A Defence of the Hessians

by J. G. Rosengarten

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.

England paid into the Hessian state treasury, not to the Elector himself, between 1776 and 1783, besides indirect expenses, 21,276,778 thalers as subsidy money, and of this 2,203,003 thalers were arrears from the Seven Years’ War. Of this amount part went to pay the difference between the war footing and the peace footing expense of the Hessian army for eight years. The soldiers received the high English pay without deduction, often in gold, as is shown by reports, pay lists, and money accounts. The exceptions to the advantage of the war-chest were very rare, and for these the troops gained in a larger proportion at home. The wealth of the Hessian army in America is shown by the fact that in the first three and a half years of the war the common soldiers sent home through the regular channels some 600,000 thalers, and at least two or even three times that amount by mail or other facilities. The idea of a sale of these troops is absurd and ridiculous.

Just as in other wars where allied troops serve together, so did the Hessians fight on the side of the English in America, with the advantage of not serving in unwholesome climates. They served under their own officers and were subject only to Hessian laws of war. The troops could not be divided unless in case of necessity; the supremacy of the Hessian state was never touched. If there were a “sale,” then there must have been a re-sale to their own country. At the beginning of the American war the Elector recommended to his Parliament the establishment of a war fund of 4,549,925 thalers for future state requirements. His wisdom secured a thoroughly good government, and at his death a national reserve fund of 12,473,000 thalers, while he had relieved the people of taxes to the amount of 8,255,000 thalers, practically a saving of 20,000,000 for the people. All he asked in return was an increase of his civil list of half of one per cent. He had found the country a waste; he left it a blooming, prosperous garden; he deserved the praise of Müller, the historian, and he earned the love of his people, who in his lifetime made voluntary gifts for a memorial to testify the gratitude of his country for his services.

At this time Frederick the Second [of Prussia] made another effort to draw Hesse within the influence of his policy. In 1779 he asked the Elector to send troops against a threatened Austrian advance from Belgium, then still under the Hapsburgs, so as to leave Prussia a free hand against its old enemy, and Prussia promised to pay subsidy for the force thus helping it against Austria. The Elector was supported by his Parliament in refusing thus to be tempted to violate his loyalty to the Emperor Joseph, for whom he had always felt profound respect.

Frederick the Second was stirred to great anger, as he had made the Elector the honorary colonel of the Prussian regiment stationed at Wesel, and wrote to Voltaire: “If the Elector were of his way of thinking, he would not have hired his troops to England, but to Prussia; but the Elector was a Catholic and therefore loyal to the Emperor.” His real anger was thus confusing England with the Catholic powers. But it was a great good fortune that, thanks to the wise policy of its sensible Elector, Hesse was spared a renewal of the horrors of the Seven Years’ War, which its unquiet neighbor would have gladly invited, to its own great injury.