historian,) with the highest degree of moral turpitude for quitting their homes in the Old World to butcher a people in the New World from whom they never had received the smallest injury; but who, on the contrary, had for a century past afforded an asylum to their harassed and oppressed countrymen, when they fled across the seas in multitudes to enjoy the blessings of a liberty most generously held out to them.1 When it became known that Great Britain was hiring Hessians and Brunswickers to suppress freedom in her colonies, the Americans loudly condemned what they regarded as German ingratitude; and their anger had since then been exacerbated by the plunder and devastation of New Jersey. Washington's soldiers, on the western bank of the Delaware, had waited in a state of white rage for an opportunity to get at the throats of those who had perpetrated the outrages; but, when the fight ended, and the delinquents were at their mercy, their wrath cooled down, and their good nature reasserted itself in all its plenitude. Their commander set the example of generosity. Going even beyond the promise which he had given to his dying foe, Washington ordered that the portmanteaus of the Hessian officers, and the knapsacks of the soldiers, should be made over to them unsearched and unopened. As soon as a dinner could be cooked, he entertained the colonels and majors at his quarters; while captains and lieutenants were turned over to the care of Lord Stirling. Retaining a pleasant recollection of General von Heister's courtesy when he himself had been a prisoner after the battle of Long Island, Stirling surpassed his own reputation as a bountiful host, and promptly repressed a sour-visaged Lutheran pastor from Hanover who thought fit to harangue the company, in their own tongue, about the

1 "History of Europe" in the Annual Register for 1777; chapter i. That argument went strongly home to the Pennsylvanian emigrants of German descent; upon whom the Revolution, as the earliest of its boons, had conferred the enjoyment of full political freedom; and who were, almost to a man, devoted adherents of the popular party.

iniquities of George the Third, and the justice of the American case as put forward in the Declaration of Independence.1 After having given their parole, the Hessian officers were conveyed to Philadelphia in comfortable equipages, were driven to the sign of The Indian Queen, and there set down to "a grand supper, with plenty of punch and wine, at the expense of Congress." These official attentions were liberally supplemented by private hospitality in the cities which they successively visited. They respectfully admired the beauty, the elegance, and the joyous unembarrassed bearing of Virginian ladies; and some of them noted with satisfaction that their own musical accomplishments, which were not rated highly in Germany, procured them much social consideration in America.2

The rank and file of Rall's brigade acquired the good will of the captors by their docility, their mild and even tempers, and their freedom from political bitterness, -a virtue which was based on the solid foundation of absolute and entire political ignorance. They had been poor soldiers at Trenton; but they made most excellent prisoners. When they were passed southwards across the Pennsylvanian border, a difficulty occurred about the provision of an escort; and the officer in command trusted the Hessians to find their own way up the Shenandoah valley by themselves. Three stages onwards, and at the appointed hour, each one answered to

1 "I had the honour," (so Stirling told Governor Livingston,) "to make two regiments of them surrender prisoners of war, and to treat them in such a style as will make the rest of them more willing to surrender than to fight."

2 At Fredericksburg sixteen ladies organised a surprise party, which visited the Hessian officers at their quarters, and stayed from half past three till ten o'clock in the evening. The Germans regaled their guests, who included Washington's niece and his sister, - with coffee, chocolate, cakes, claret, and even with tea; and gave them an entertainment of vocal and instrumental music. "In Europe," said Wiederhold, “we should not have got much honour; but here we passed for masters." Such amenities, in time of war, have often been deprecated on the ground that women should not consort with those who have slain their countrymen in battle. American ladies probably held that that consideration did not apply in the case of the Hessians who fought at Trenton.

his name in the roll-call, and was rewarded with a glass of brandy. They were scattered in detachments among the townships on either bank of the Potomac, where they lived peaceable and contented, with no desire whatever to go back to the war, and not impatient even for their return to Germany. Their minds were at ease; for their pay was running up on the books of the British War Office; and, as far as they were concerned, that was the one and only object for which they had come to America. They were on friendly and familiar terms with the inhabitants of the country, assisting them in their industries, sharing their festivities, and most certainly abstaining from all obtrusive manifestations of Tory sentiment. Those among them who had an aptitude for mechanics were allowed to take service with an ironmaster of Hessian birth who owned a large forge and foundry in New Jersey, where they helped to make gun-carriages and cannon-balls for General Washington's artillery. Colonel Rall's bandsmen remained in Philadelphia, and they must have got their clarionets and hautboys back; for they are stated to have performed at the Fourth of July celebration which followed six months after the date of Trenton.

Americans were the less vindictive in their feeling towards the Hessians because they had ceased to be afraid of them. The Seven Years' War had exalted to a very high point the military reputation of those who had been engaged in it; and it was currently believed that German strategists and tacticians possessed certain tricks of their trade which lay beyond the reach of citizen soldiers. "Our officers," John Adams wrote, "do not seem sufficiently sensible of the importance of an observation of the King of Prussia, that stratagem, ambuscade, and ambush are the sublimest chapters in the art of war. Regular forces are never surprised. They are masters of rules for guarding themselves in every situation and contingency. The old officers among them are full of resources, wiles, artifices, and strata

gems, to deceive, decoy, and over-reach their adversaries." That exaggerated estimate of German craft and subtlety did not survive Trenton. It thenceforward was evident that Hessian and Hanoverian colonels, without a Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, or a Prince Henry of Prussia, to command them, and when opposed to an Anglo-Saxon enemy, were not all of them so many Möllendorfs and Seidlitzes. The German grenadier had hitherto been a terrible bugbear in the imagination of ordinary Americans. Coarse engravings had been widely circulated representing him with long mustachios, an enormous pigtail, and a head-dress closely resembling an episcopal mitre, cocked forward at a minatory angle over his beetling brows; and the vast panoply of war, which encumbered his person on march and in action, was popularly regarded as an indication of his superhuman strength. After the close of the campaign, however, the employers, as well as the antagonists, of the German mercenary had begun to perceive that the secret of being formidable in battle depends not on looking ferocious, but on aiming correctly. That all-important truth at last penetrated the convictions of the British War Office. When it was ascertained that at Fort Washington, where they behaved well, the Hessians had killed very few Americans,

and that at Trenton, where they behaved ill, they had killed no Americans at all, the authorities in Whitehall directed their agents on the Continent of Europe to enrol recruits, if such could be found, who knew something about the use of the musket which they carried. The Americans, on their part, who were a practical people, had mastered the fact that they ran no great danger to life or limb even within a few score yards of the Hessian muzzles. They still treated with respect a foreign regiment, when it stood in the line of battle, flanked and backed by an array of British bayonets. But, whether they were Continental regulars, or minute-men, or armed farmers in their shirt1 John Adams to William Tudor; Philadelphia, August 29, 1776.

sleeves, they advanced to the attack, wherever they got a German force by itself, in disdainful and assured anticipation of an easy victory.

The ruler of Hesse Cassel was deeply mortified. He could entertain no illusion as to the conduct of his soldiers. Under the treaties made with the British Government the German princes were paid a fixed sum for each of their subjects who was killed outright, while three wounded men reckoned as one dead;1 and the Landgrave, therefore, needed only to glance at the credit side of his account-books in order to learn that his troops had laid down their arms after losing only six per cent. of their strength in battle. He recalled General von Heister; and he ordered the officer next in command not to rest until a long series of brave acts had expunged the memory of a most unfortunate affair.2 The guilty regiments, (so their sovereign declared,) should never receive any flags again until the day when they captured from the enemy as many standards as they had surrendered in such a disgraceful manner. That day never came. In the course of the succeeding autumn Colonel von Donop, intent on wiping off the disgrace of Trenton, obtained leave to assault Fort Mercer at the head of a force composed exclusively of Hessians; but the attempt failed, and the brave German fell mortally wounded amid a great carnage of his followers. Earlier in the same year, at Bennington in the Hampshire Grants, Colonel Stark hastily mustered the inhabitants of the country-side, routed Burgoyne's Brunswickers, and captured them by many hundreds in a battle which proved to be the turning-point of the

1 In the Treaties made by His Majesty the King of Great Britain with the Duke of Brunswick, and the Hereditary Prince of Hesse Cassel, Reigning Count of Hanau, it was expressly stipulated that for every footsoldier killed there should be paid "thirty crowns Banco, the crown reckoned at fifty three sols of Holland." In the Treaty with the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel the principle was asserted, but the details were left unspecified.

The Landgrave of Hesse Cassel to Lieutenant General von Knyphausen; Cassel, April 7, 1777. Von Heister, two months after his return, died of sorrow and disappointment.