Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Note on German ranks and currency
- Introduction
- 1 The German soldier trade
- 2 The Hessians go to America
- 3 The victories of 1776
- 4 The Battle of Trenton
- 5 The campaigns of 1777–81
- 6 Anglo-Hessian relations
- 7 The Hessian view of the American Revolution
- 8 Hessian plundering
- 9 Hessian desertion
- 10 Recruiting in Germany
- 11 The impact of the war on Hessen
- 12 Conclusion
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The German soldier trade
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Note on German ranks and currency
- Introduction
- 1 The German soldier trade
- 2 The Hessians go to America
- 3 The victories of 1776
- 4 The Battle of Trenton
- 5 The campaigns of 1777–81
- 6 Anglo-Hessian relations
- 7 The Hessian view of the American Revolution
- 8 Hessian plundering
- 9 Hessian desertion
- 10 Recruiting in Germany
- 11 The impact of the war on Hessen
- 12 Conclusion
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
By the late eighteenth century, German writers had long boasted of the warlike character of their people. A Hessian officer returned from America wrote:
Historians of all ages and peoples combine on this very point, that they portray the Germans as a very pugnacious and warloving people. Even envy of the meanest sort has never disputed their reputation for valour; it is woven into the spirit of the nation and stems from its very origin. … This warlike spirit still prevails amongst the people into our present age; it is the distinguishing feature of their character.
Non-Germans were not quite so flattering of the role Teutonic arms played in the wars of the time. The French military writer Guibert was not alone when he spoke of the ‘mania of all these little [German] sovereigns to have battlements and troops’. A contemporary English travel book described Germany as ‘the qfficina gentium, the great nursery of the North, from which swarms of men have been drawn in all ages’. This warlike character took the form, not of a German bid for European domination, for Germany itself was divided into a multiplicity of states; but of Germans providing trained contingents for the armies of the great powers, in return for pay.
This commerce in soldiers went back to the break up of the Mediaeval German Empire. The feudal levy had ceased to turn out, but there was no bureaucratic state apparatus for raising, equipping, paying, and maintaining men, nor for collecting taxes to support them.
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- Information
- The Hessians , pp. 7 - 21Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1980