Foreign Troops Hired by the British
FAILING to procure "barbarians" from Russia, the British monarch asked Holland for the loan of a brigade of troops. Deputies said: "A commercial State should avoid quarrels if possible;" and Van der Capellan, the greatest statesman of the Netherlands at that time, remarked: "A republic should never assist in making war on a free people." Unwilling to offend England, the brigade was offered on the condition that it should not serve out of Europe. This was a polite and adroit denial of the request, and the troops were not accepted.
While these negotiations were going on, bargains were made by the British government with some of the less scrupulous German rulers for the hire of the required number of soldiers. The bargains were perfected at the close of 1775, and early in 1776. The contracting parties were the reigning governors of Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-Hanau, Brunswick, Anhalt, Anspach, and Waldeck, and the King of Great Britain. They were governed in the negotiations by the common law of trade expressed by supply and demand. England needed troops; the German rulers needed money. The former had the money and the latter the troops, which, in time of peace, were a heavy burden upon the resources of the princes. The bargain was a natural one on business principles; the morality of the transaction was quite another affair.
About seventeen thousand German troops, most of them well-disciplined, were hired. Their masters were to receive for each soldier a bounty of twenty-two dollars and a half, besides an annual subsidy, the whole amounting to a large sum. The British government also agreed to make restitution for all soldiers who might perish from contagious diseases; while being transported in ships; in engagements, and during sieges; and they were all to take an oath of allegiance to the British monarch, without its interfering with their oaths of allegiance to their respective rulers. They were, according to the agreement, to constitute a corps made up of four battalions of grenadiers, each four companies; fifteen battalions of infantry of five companies each, and two companies of Yagers (riflemen), all to be well equipped with the implements of war. The chief commanders of these troops, best known to Americans, were General Baron de Riedesel, General Baron Knyphausen, and General De Heister. The name of Hessians was given to them all, and because they were mercenaries (men fighting only for pay), they were particularly detested by the Americans. The employment of them was a disgrace to the British government, and the method used in forcing many of them was a crime against humanity. Laborers were seized in the fields, mechanics in the workshops and worshippers in the churches, and hurried to the barracks without being allowed a parting embrace with their families. The king of Great Britain, to avoid complicity in the horrid work, refused to give commissions to German recruiting officers (who, it was known to the British ministry, intended to impress men), saying: "It, in plain English, amounts to making me a kidnapper, which I cannot think a very honorable occupation." All Europe cried "Shame!" and Frederick the Great of Prussia took every occasion to express his contempt for "the scandalous man-traffic" of his neighbors. Whenever any of these troops were compelled to pass through any part of his dominions, he claimed the usual toll for so many head of cattle, since, as he said, they had been sold as such. Of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, he remarked in a letter to Voltaire: "The sordid passion for gain is the only motive of his vile proceeding."
Without these troops the war would have been short; with them the British were not successful. A part of them under Riedesel went to Canada in the spring of 1776, to assist in driving the republicans out of that province. Another part under Knyphausen and De Heister joined the British army under General Howe before New York, in the summer, and had their first encounter with the patriots on Long Island.