"Cats and Hessians are born with their eyes closed" goes an old adage commonly heard in neighboring German states. Judging from the performance of the Hessians in the American Revolution, there is some truth in it, for the placid, somewhat slow witted Hessian Grenadier has become an important fixture in our colonial lore.

In the following series of articles, we will examine these stolid heroes in some detail, blending history, anecdote, uniform information and organization, and appending the usual bibliography and survey of available miniatures.

But, for this first installment, we must settle for a bit of trivia. To begin with, the term "Hessian" is misleading. Mercenaries from six different German principalities served in North America during the Revolution.

They were as varied a lot as the petty tyrants who ruled them. From tiny Anhalt-Zerbst, with a population of only twenty thousand souls, came a white- coated infantry regiment. Their govereign lord, Friedrich August, was the semi- demented brother of that remarkable, insatiable lady, Catherine the Great. But while his sister specialized in lust, Friedrich August's preoccupation was whimsical lost causes. He seems to have sided with the losers in every conflict be became involved in.

During the Seven Year's War, he boldly came out for Maria Theresa and Austria. Within a matter of days, Prussian troops occupied his principality, and he and his mother (whose appetites equalled Catherine's, but whose mentality was more on a par with her son's) were sent packing, leaving their musty old Schloss in the hands of the enemy. Mother settled in Paris and ran up a mountainous heap of unpaid bills. Friedrich August bustled off to Vienna and commanded a regiment for the Hapsburgs.

A few years later, when the dust had settled after the Seven Years War and a then obscure young Scotsman named James Boswell was passing through Germany on his grand tour, he made the mistake of visiting Coswig, a dingy little town in the now restored Friedrich August's domain.

Friedrich, after his unpleasant eviction by the Prussians, had decided to rule in absentia after his restoration, but he did manage to instil a measure of his own absurdity in his little standing army, for when Boswell asked a town sentry how many troops the Prince commanded, he was arrested and nearly shot as a spy! Only the intervention of the Burgermeister, and the translating of a runaway student who conversed with Boswell in broken Latin saved the day.

By the time the American Revolution rolled around, Friedrich August was itching for something to do with his idle forces.

Lowell, the American historian whose book on the Hessians and other mercenaries in the Revolution remains the only serious work on the subject, has chronicled the pathetic misadventures which plagued the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment which finally was "leased" to George III.

Passing through a number of neighboring principalities on their march to the coast and the awaiting transports, the ranks of the Princely Regiment were decimated by desertion, impressment and at least one major riot along the line of march. 828 men began the march. Of the, 334 deserted before they caught sight of the water.

Even worse, when storm-tossed, weary and more than a little depressed, they finally sailed into the harbor of Quebec, the commandant, who had received no advance notice of their coming, refused them permission to land. For three more months they rotted in the holds, staring across the placid waters of the Lt. Laurence and, no doubt, thinking of home, sweethearts, the Mad Prince, and the general futility of things.

Once ashore, they did not give a bad accounting of themselves, and with time, reinforcements from Zerbst brought them up to strength. A total of 1,152 men made the unpleasant journey from Zerbst to Quebec before the war ended, and, curiously, although Anhalt-Zerbst was the wretchedest of all the, principalities sending mercenaries, its contingent suffered the fewest casualties. Only 168 of the men who reached America failed to return home after the war. This is easier to understand when we realize that the war was virtually over in the Canadian theatre by the time the first fuddled Zerbster began to regain his land-legs after his extended stay aboard the transports in 1778.

The Anhalt-Zerbst troops, who were, incidentally, recruited in large numbers from outside the principality, in Thuringia, Saxony and various Imperial Free Cities, were divided into the following units:

Two "White Grenadier" companies
Two "Green Grenadier" companies
Four "White Musketeer" companies

Some artillerists and jagers may have attended the group too. The color of the artillerists' coats being light blue, those of the jagers, green; both faced in red.

As to the "Green Grenadiers", there is some doubt about just who they were and what they wore. Colonel Faucitt, King George's emissary and chief negotiator with the German princelings, appears to have raised some objections to these men and their gear, but they embarked with the rest, and before enough time had elapsed for any drastic improvements to have been made. A modern German authority describes these two companies as wearing green coats faced with red while in Canada.

What sort of headgear all four grenadier companies wore is also open to some conjecture. I can remember seeing a mid-eighteenth century print of an Anhalt-Zerbst grenadier wearing a bearskin cap with hanging red bag in the back (the style worn by the Austrian Army at the time, and imitated by many Austrian sympathizers in the Reich). Koch, Schirmer and Wacher, in Die Deutschen Hilfstruppen Im Amerikanischen UNABHANGIGKEITSKRIEG describe an identical "fur grenadier cap ... around the time of the Seven Years War ... a black brown fur cap with red bag, without metal front shield." They go on to say that it was "with great probability" worn in the American Revolution, although a 1790 print in the collection of Mrs. John Nicholas Brown, showing a Zerbst Grenadier in a typical tall grenadier cap with brass metal shield is also mentioned in passing.

The late Lt. Col. Lawson, whose account of the uniforms of the German mercenaries was drawn mainly from reliable sources on the continent (with the exception of the section on the Hesse-Cassel troops, which contains several serious errors), has left us a useful description of the dress of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment in Volume III of his work on the British Army.

Their white coats were cuffed, faced and lined in red. There were seven brass buttons on each lapel, two on each cuff and three on each pocket. The vest was also red, but the breeches were white. Musketeers wore the usual black tricorne with a white and black plume and a cockade of green-white-black. As happened with most German troops serving in Canada, when the first issue breeches and vests wore out, they were replaced by whatever was at hand, usually cast-off ticken overalls from naval slop chests or other choice sources. Lawson has the Zerbsters clad in trousers and waistcoats of plain white linen, and further cites a change in headgear, reported in a description penned in 1781:

"The Anhalt Zerbst troops look more like Dragoons than Infantry. They are clothed in white, faced red, falt caps s a la Hussard, boots and a red cloak. Their arms are a musket, bayonet, and a short sword; over their waist belts, which are buckled over their coats, they wear a kind of sash of red and yellow worsted. They are good-looking, well sized men."

From this, it seems likely that Friedrich August, ever the Hapsburg enthusiast, had ordered his men to change their uniform pattern in imitation of the new Austrian pattern, which this description mirrors in several respects-the waistbelt over instead of under the coat, the cavalry style cap replacing the tricorne, and the white coat. Our illustration depicts the more orthodox, earlier uniform. Braver souls may wish to assay their own reconstruction of Prince Freddy's sartorial follies. As for Fred himself, he continued to live abroad, bolstered somewhat by the subsidies received from England.

Alas, the American Revolution was not the last time he picked a losing cause to become involved in. Tradition has it that he became so emotionally involved in the disturbances in France after 1789 that when news of Louis XVI's execution reached him, he refused all food and drink and pined away. His subjects must have sighed with relief. liaving started this study of the "Hessians et al." with the most insignificant of the subsidy troops, we will continue it, in the next issue, with the most important of them: the Hesse Cassel contingent. Until then, auf wiedersehen!