A Defence of the Hessians — Background and Themes

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 cooeperate 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.

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 Mueller, 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.

The contrast between the two cousins and namesakes was a very marked one, for Elector Frederick was an orthodox Christian, King Frederick a follower of Voltaire. The Swiss historian, Mueller, republican as he was, wrote from Cassel to his Swiss home in terms of strong praise of the Hessian corps of officers, of their scientific and social culture; the Hessians, he said, are sound, honest folk, warlike and courageous,--all the peasants have served in the army, and in every village the men show the good effects in their manly strength and love of discipline. Almost every one can speak of his own or his father's service in Sicily, in the Morea, in Scotland, Flanders, Hungary, or Germany, under Morisini or Prince Eugene or Maurice of Saxony or Ferdinand of Brunswick.

And now in the New World the Hessians showed their old valor and discipline,--one regiment surrounded in a forest by eight thousand Americans fought its way out. After a march of five hundred miles, without bread or wine or brandy, almost barefooted, in burning heat, after fording seven streams, often up to the neck in water, the Hessians fought so well that Lord Cornwallis praised them beyond all his other troops; and such a preference from the British commander reconciled his Hessians to all their trials. Mueller, as a faithful historian, loved to record their brave deeds. He says the country is poor, but that is due to the never ending German wars. The Seven Years' War had left the country waste to a degree that the Swiss, always living in peace, could hardly realize. But the Hessians are industrious, and the country flourished in 1781 under the Elector Frederick, a man of kindly nature and the best intentions, and yet many foreigners criticise him unfairly. Why should a Swiss object to a crowned head? The government is as well suited to the country as a republic to Switzerland, and even there no one has more personal freedom than the Hessian citizen. People and country are unusually attractive. No men were ever finer than the Hessian soldiers; they are worthy of their ancestors, made famous by Tacitus. It is thus that a republican describes the country of this excellent prince, who had healed the wounds inflicted by the Seven Years' War, encouraged arts and sciences, and supported, when he did not found, many charitable institutions, and not only did not enrich himself, but during and through the American war was able to relieve his country of many millions of taxes, and to lay the foundation of a large reserve for the expenses of the government. The administration was so painfully careful that, in spite of the interruption of Napoleon's kingdom of Westphalia, the accounts were so kept as to show satisfactorily just what proportion of the revenue belonged to the nation and what to the sovereign.

All that Hesse has of material as well as intellectual advantages it owes to Elector Frederick, from hospitals to art galleries. In his day the visitor might think that Cassel was equal to Sparta and Athens. He died all too soon for the honorable love of his faithful subjects. He never ceased to mourn over the long absence of his army, his dear subjects. Instead of a year's service, it lasted for nine years, although the last years of the war were comparatively free from bloodshed, and spent in occasional skirmishes and in marching to and fro through vast regions. The Elector often wanted to put an end to the alliance with England, but his ministers and his Parliament held firmly to it. He did insist on replacing the losses of the Hessians by foreign enlistments, to which he had once so patriotically objected, but now men from beyond his borders poured in with the hope of joining the Hessian army and thus seeing the wonderland, America. Anxiety, years of longing and quiet grief, weighed on his noble heart, so that a few months after the return of the last of his soldiers he died suddenly. He saw once more the old victorious flags that had waved in triumph at Minden and Crefeld, at Flatbush, White Plains, Fort Washington, and Gildford [_sic_] Court-House; he saw them once again and died.

The circumstances of the enlistment of the Hessian troops may be explained thus: German and other European countries had for centuries strengthened their armies by enlisting men. Hesse, and later Brandenburg Prussia, made service compulsory, and thus, in the years that followed the Thirty Years' War, filled their armies with their own subjects. Still, voluntary enlistments continued and do so still. But no country cared for the enlisted man and for his protection from acts of violence at the hands of officers as Hesse-Cassel did, and yet no country has been so much blamed for its dealing with its soldiers. Personally, the Elector was opposed to all enlistments, both at home and from outside, and he tried hard to limit it after the close of the Seven Years' War. When, however, in 1777, the Hessian Parliament concluded its treaty of alliance, which provided for Hessian troops to serve in the British army, it was necessary to increase the force, and there was a rush of volunteers from all parts of Germany, and the Elector republished an order of December 16, 1762, substantially as follows: "Officers guilty of enlisting men by force or unfair means will be dismissed the service; non-commissioned officers and privates for the like offence will receive corporeal punishment, and the orders of their superiors will not protect them. Soldiers enlisted by force or trick shall be released at once without expense to them or any charge for food or pay, which shall be collected from the officer responsible for such illegal enlistment."

No foreign subject was ever retained in the Hessian service against his will. All those who voluntarily enlisted for the American war were, on their return, regularly and honorably discharged, and received as a reward half a month's pay at the high English rate as the personal gift of the Elector. All of this is proved by the official records. During his whole reign the Elector made a steadfast effort to prevent forcible enlistment, and went so far in opposition to neighboring sovereigns, who acted differently, that once, at least, this led to a formal declaration of war.

His conduct was met by false reports industriously spread abroad to his injury. Frederick of Prussia knew that the Hessian government neither could nor would allow Hessian subjects to be enlisted against their will in foreign service. With consent of the Parliament, Hessian troops could serve as allies for a time regulated by treaty with any friendly power, but the State could never sell its individual citizens into foreign service. King Frederick could never introduce in Hesse the servitude that put his Brandenburg and Pomeranian subjects at his beck and nod. As early as 1760 the Hessian troops took the oath under the Hessian constitution, but the Prussian and Brandenburg people were helplessly bound to the nobility and princes as chattels down to 1808, and it was not until 1848 that the Prussian constitution, as the outcome of a revolution, gave the people the protection which the Hessians had always enjoyed.