Benedict Arnold

Oh Those Hessians!
But it Could Have Been
The Russkies Or the Dutch Instead

by J. Michael Flynn, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

After Lexington and Concord General Gage, the Commanding British officer in America, first became concerned and that he did not have sufficient forces to subdue the rebels if they became united. By the time he experienced the fifty percent loss of his troops at Breed's (Bunker Hill) he needed no statistician to extrapolate the total losses in quelling the rebellion and openly doubted that England had enough troops under arms to suppress an uprising over the territory the size of the American Colonies concerns he forwarded to London. The mandarins in London on reading Gage's message reached the same conclusion.

At once they began a frantic search for foreign mercenaries to fill the needed ranks. King George first offered his gold to Catherine, Empress of Russia, to rent her troops to fight his war. Her unexpected rebuff was direct and bordered on the insulting:

    It would be embarrassing that two monarchs would have to join forces to crush a simple rebellion not supported by a foreign power.

Translating the diplomatic language she was telling George "you don't deserve your colonies if you can't keep them in check by yourself."

Britain's ministers next turned to Holland with no better result but a politer refusal. The Dutch did offer a brigade but with the stipulation that the men could only serve in Europe. The offer, as expected, was refused.As 1775 drew to a close George III turned to Germany's princes and hired seventeen thousandserfs for about 22 dollars each. The contract stipulated that for each recruit lost through sickness or combat the respective prince would receive a fixed termination payment.

The majority of the seventeen thousand recruits were dragged from the workshops, fields, and churches men to the barracks with little regard for their families or their Frederick the Great, king of Prussia expressed his contempt for this impressment by assessing the German princes the same tariff for each of these "recruits" passing through his domain as he would a head of cattle, since he reasoned "they had been sold as such" The Hessians found themselves reviled by the colonials. At the same time, Benjamin Franklin knowing how the poor Germans had been "volunteered" into service designed a secret plan to induce them to desert. Franklin had passes guaranteeing safe passage along with offers of land and money to anyone wishing to change sides. The passes were printed on the inside of paper tobacco packets.

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© Copyright 1998 by David W. Tschanz.
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