and scoffed alike at the Old Testament and the New. In his view, Calvinism had died out even in Geneva; and Luther, though commendable for having loved wine and women, was but an ordinary man; he therefore turned Catholic in 1749, from dislike to the simplicity of the established worship of his people. He had learned to favor toleration, to abolish the use of torture, and to make capital punishments exceedingly rare; at the same time, he paraded his vices publicly with shameless indecorum. Having no nationality, he sought to introduce French modes of life; had his opera, ballet-dancers, masquerades during the carnival, his French playhouse, a cast-off French coquette for his principal mistress, a French superintendent of theatres for his librarian. But nothing could be less like France than his court; life in Cassel was spiritless; "nobody here reads," said Forster; "the different ranks are stiffly separated," said the historian Müller. Birth or wealth alone had influence: merit could not command respect, nor talent hope for fostering care.

To this man Faucitt delivered a letter from the British king. General Schlieffen, the minister with whom he was to conduct the negotiation, prepared him to acquiesce unconditionally in every demand of the landgrave.

The first extortion of the prince was a sum of more than forty thousand pounds for hospital disbursements during the last war. The account had been liquidated, paid, and closed; but the scandalous claim was revived and enforced.

of

The landgrave accumulated in the new treaty every favorable stipulation that had separately found a place in any the old ones. In the levy money agreed upon, the Hessian contract had an advantage of twenty per cent over that with Brunswick.

The master stroke of Schlieffen was the settlement of the subsidy. The British agent believed that one campaign would terminate the war; the Hessian therefore, with seeming moderation, accepted a double subsidy, to be paid from the signature of the treaty to its expiration. As the engagement actually continued in force for about ten years, it afforded a clear profit to the landgrave of five millions of our dollars.

The taxes paid by the Hessians were sufficient to defray the

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pay-rolls and expenses of the Hessian army. One half of this tax was rigorously exacted for the troops in the British service.

It was stipulated that the British pay, which was higher than the Hessian, should be paid into the treasury of Hesse; and this afforded great opportunities for peculation. The payrolls, after the first month, invariably included more persons than were in the service; with Brunswick, the price to be paid for the killed and wounded was fixed; the landgrave introduced no such covenant, and was left with the right to exact full pay for every man who had been mustered into the British. service, whether in active service or dead.

The British minister urged that the Hessian soldiers should be allowed as ample and extensive enjoyment of their pay as the British; "I dare not agree to any stipulation on this head," answered Schlieffen, "for fear of giving offence to the landgrave." "They are my fellow-soldiers," said the landgrave; "and do I not mean to treat them well?"

The sick and the wounded of the Brunswickers were to be taken care of in British hospitals; for the Hessians, the landgrave claimed the benefit of providing a hospital of his own.

The British ministers wished to clothe the mercenary troops in British manufactures; but the landgrave would not allow this branch of his profits to be impaired.

It had been thought in England that the landgrave could furnish no more than five thousand foot; but the price was so high that, after contracting for twelve thousand, he further bargained to supply four hundred Hessian yagers, armed with rifled guns; and then three hundred dismounted dragoons; and then three corps of artillery; taking care for every addition to require the double subsidy.

To escape impressment, his subjects fled into Hanover; King George, who was elector of Hanover, was therefore called upon "to discourage the elopement of Hessian subjects into that country, when the demand for men to enable the landgrave to fulfil his engagement with Great Britain was so pressing."

It was thought essential to march the troops through the electorate to their place of embarkation; for it was not doubted, "if the Hessians were to march along the left bank of the

Weser, through the territories of Prussia and perhaps half a score of petty princes, one half of them would be lost on the way by desertion." Yet very many went willingly, having been made to believe that in America they would have free license to plunder and to indulge their passions.

Every point in dispute having been yielded to the categorical demands of the landgrave, the treaty was signed on the thirty-first day of January. This would have seemed definitive; but, as the payment of the double subsidy was to begin from the day of the signature of the treaty, the landgrave put back the date of the instrument to January the fifteenth.

His troops were among the best in Europe; their chief commander was Lieutenant-General Heister, a brave old man of nearly sixty, cheerful in disposition, crippled with wounds, of a good understanding, but without genius for war. Next him stood Lieutenant-General Knyphausen, remarkable for taciturnity and reserve; one of the best officers in the landgrave's service.

Of the four major-generals, not one was remarkable for capacity or skill. Of the colonels, every one praised Donop, who commanded the four battalions of grenadiers and the yagers; Rall, Minigerode, Wurmb, Loos, and four or five others had served with distinction.

The excuse of the British ministry for yielding to all the exactions of the landgrave was their eagerness to obtain the troops early in February. "Delay," wrote Suffolk, "will mar the expected advantage." The landgrave consented that thirteen battalions should be prepared to march on the fifteenth of February; but corruption was then so thoroughly a part of the British administration that they were sent in private vessels, that interested people might levy a commission on the contractors, who did not provide transports enough at the time appointed, and even in March could not tell when they would all be ready. The first detachment from Brunswick did not sail from England till the fourth of April, and yet reached Quebec before the first division of the Hessians cleared the British channel.

The transports were very badly fitted up; the bedding was shamefully scanty. The clothing of the Brunswick troops

was old, and only patched up for the present; "the person who executed the commission" for purchasing shoes for them in England sent "fine thin dancing pumps," and of these the greatest number were too small for use.

The treaty with the hereditary prince of Hesse-Cassel, who ruled in Hanau, met with no obstacle. He went in person round the different bailiwicks to choose recruits, and accompanied his regiment as far as Frankfort on their way to Helvoetsluys. Conscious of the merit of this devotion, he pressed for an additional special subsidy. Suffolk granted the demand under an injunction of the most absolute secrecy, and received written promises of a discretion without bounds. "My attachment to the best of kings removes all idea of interest in me," wrote the prince.

It was doubted if the prince of Waldeck could make good his offers, for there were already three Waldeck regiments in the service of the Netherlands; the states of the overtasked principality had complained of the loss of its subjects; but the prince vowed so warm an attachment to the "incomparable monarch" of Britain that, on the twentieth of April, the treaty with him was closed. To raise a regiment needed force and authority, and that "he should not be too tender of his own subjects." To prevent their deserting, a corps of mounted yagers escorted them to Beverungen.

The half-crazed ruling prince of the house of AnhaltZerbst, brother to the empress of Russia, who lived very rarely within his own dominions but kept up sixteen recruitingstations outside of them, wrote directly to George III., offering a regiment of six hundred and twenty-seven men; but the letter was so strange that it was pronounced not fit to be delivered, and during that year nothing came of his proposal.

The elector of Bavaria made an overture to Elliot, the British minister at Ratisbon; but it was not heeded, for "his court was so sold to Austria and France" that he dared not speak of it "to his own ministers."

On the last day of February the treaties with Brunswick and Hesse were considered in the house of commons. Lord North said: "The troops are wanted; the terms on which they are procured are less than we could have expected; the

force will enable us to compel America to submission, perhaps without further effusion of blood." He was answered by Lord John Cavendish: "The measure disgraces Britain, humiliates the king, and, by its extravagance, impoverishes the country." "Our business will be effected within the year," replied Cornwall; "so that the troops are all had on lower terms than ever before." Lord Irnham took a broader view: "The landgrave of Hesse and the duke of Brunswick render Germany vile and dishonored in the eyes of all Europe, as a nursery of men for those who have most money, making them destroy much better and nobler beings than themselves. The landgrave of Hesse has his prototype in Sancho Panza, who said that, if he were a prince, he should wish all his subjects to be blackamoors, so that he could turn them into ready money by selling them." A warning voice was raised by Hartley: "You set the American congress the example of applying to foreign powers; when they intervene, the possibility of reconciliation is totally cut off." "The measures of ministers," said James Luttrell who had served in America, "are death-warrants to thousands of British subjects, not steps toward regaining the colonies." George Grenville, afterward marquis of Buckingham, stated this as the alternative: "Shall we abandon America, or shall we recover our sovereignty over that country? We had better make one effort more." Lord George Germain defended the treaties on the ground of necessity; this Lord Barrington confirmed, saying British recruits could not be procured on any terms, and the bargain was the best that could be made. The ministers were sustained by their usual majority.

Five days later they were equally well supported in the house of lords; but not without a rebuke from the duke of Cumberland, one of the king's brothers, who said: "I lament to see Brunswickers, who once to their great honor were employed in the defence of the liberties of the subject, now sent to subjugate his constitutional liberties in another part of this vast empire."

The whole number of men furnished in the war by Brunswick was equal to one twenty-seventh part of its collective population; by the landgrave of Hesse, to one out of every