tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[1] letter, it is on technical and not moral grounds that he relieves the Elector of the disgraceful charge of dealing in the blood and bones of his subjects out of avarice. He does not contradict Mirabeau’s appeal to the Hessians, full as it is of party hostility. Kapp repeats the false charge that the Elector made money by false lists, so as to draw pay for more soldiers than were really in service, overlooking the fact that the annual and semi-annual muster-rolls made this impossible. He says the expenses of fitting the soldiers for the field were not paid by the Elector, although the money was taken from their pay. He charges the German princes whose soldiers were in the English army with cheating the contractors for supplies. He accepts the apocryphal story told by Seume of the illegal violence with which men were forced into the service, yet in all of these and many other matters Kapp is altogether wrong.

No less an authority than Moser, the historian, long ago pointed out that the Americans, with Franklin at their head, had perjured themselves. The Hessians wrote home their contempt for the leaders and the people of America from actual personal observation. From Washington down the greatest unfairness was shown to the “Loyalists,” who were driven into exile, stripped of all their property. He it was who tried to tempt the Hessians to desert, who proposed to burn New York, who ordered the execution of Andre, who wanted Aspill [Asgill], an entirely innocent man, put to death, and connived at the robbery of the Hessian prisoners of their English pay, prevented their exchange, and kept the stores and clothing sent for them. In Schlözer’s “Letters” are found the unfavorable opinions of the Americans written home by Captain Wagner, wounded at the side of Count Donop; in Wiederhold’s “Diary,” Philadelphia is described as a “confluenz canaillorum,” as bad as Sodom and Gomorrha, those who had escaped the gallows in Europe being warmly welcomed in the New World. Ewald warned the people of a suburb of Philadelphia that there was no honor among them; and Bauermeister, a British adjutant-general, was equally emphatic. Pfister, in his “History of the American Revolutionary War,” gives many details of the bad conduct of the leaders and people of the young republic.

Dr. Kapp’s false charges relate to (1) the enlistment and service of Hessian troops; (2) the frauds practised on them on their discharge; (3) the approval by the Hessian Parliament of the treaty with Great Britain; (4) the payment by England of the amount claimed on account of the Seven Years’ War; (5) the distribution of English pay among Hessian soldiers; (6) the relief of Hessian taxes; (7) the charge that the Elector received for troops enlisted in the British service some 60,000,000 thalers; (8) and “blood” money for the wounded. Much of our [the pamphleteer’s] information is of a confidential kind, but there are plenty of printed books, etc., that, he says, bear him out—biographies of the Elector, sermons on his death, by Raffius, Roques, Rommel, and Pfister, the resolutions of the Guilds on the accession of his successor, all expressing grief for the death of his father; Schlieffen’s “Memoirs,” “Ephemera” of 1785, with Lith’s “Campaigns of the Hessians,” Schlözer’s “Correspondence and Annals,” John Müller’s “Letters,” the “Military Library of 1789,” Ewald’s “Life” in Manvillon’s Military Journal for 1821, Pfister’s “North American War of Independence,” Eelking’s “History,” the Hessian papers of the time, the papers of the Hessian Historical Society, v. Och’s “Observations,” Valentini’s “Recollections,” “Debates of the Parliament of Hesse,” the treaties with England, the rewards and honors paid by the King of England to German officers and soldiers, even Kapp’s writings. There are many unpublished documents, diaries of officers and enlisted men, of pay and quarter-masters, and journals in the archives and offices of Hesse, public and private.

Kapp charges that the Elector reserved the right, forbidden, it is true, to his officers, of filling the ranks of his regiments going to America by compulsory enlistment, and that his subjects fled to Hanover to escape it. Schlieffen and Faucit, the former the Hessian, the latter the English agent, and Suffolk, the English minister of war, had a long correspondence on the subject. The answer to this is that Hesse had passed stringent laws on this subject as far back as 1733, renewed them with increased penalties in 1762, and they were enforced in one case by punishment which included loss of rank and imprisonment and exile. Again, 1767 and 1773 saw republication of these regulations. Losses by desertion or irregular discharge were so small that only thirty out of twelve thousand were so reported, and these cases all took place near Hanover, where it was easy to take refuge and find shelter. Enlistment of foreigners,—that is, other than the subjects of the Elector, who were all liable to be called into service, was introduced by him solely and openly in order to relieve his own people and to fill their places with volunteers. Even the desertions in America were due to the temptations offered by the fruitful farms and the ease with which the Hessian soldier was made an American citizen, the husband of an American wife, and the father of American children. Captain von der Lith, in a pamphlet on the “Campaign of the Hessians in America,” says the soldiers welcomed the news of the departure for that land of promise. Lieutenant-Colonel Grebe says that young men left school and college and office and trade to go to America with the Hessian army. Faucit was surprised at the readiness with which the men went on board ship, singing and hurrahing for the Elector. He reported to the Elector that he could do anything with such men. Some regiments did not lose a single man. So, too, with the Anspach troops; their Lieutenant-Colonels von Gall and von Kreuzburg and other officers were surprised at the light-hearted soldiers, who acted as if they were on a pleasure tour. The Prussian General von Gaudi wrote to the Elector that by order of his King he had sent clever recruiting officers to try to tempt the Hessian soldiers to leave and go into the Prussian service, but he did not succeed in getting a single man. Not a Hessian would leave his colors, for under them they were satisfied, got high pay, and were going to America. Another Prussian, General Valentini, says the Hessian troops learned much that was of value in their campaign in America, and helped to renew the prosperity of their native country and improve its condition.

Prince Charles of Hesse reported that in the war of the Bavarian Succession he lost out of his Prussian division ten thousand men in two months by desertion. The Hessian army lost only eight per cent. in ten years. It is utterly untrue that when the Hessian troops were under orders to go to America, desertion by crowds fleeing into Hungary and Poland was prevented only by threatening the fathers with chains and the mothers with prison, as Kapp seriously writes.

Kapp says that the Hessian soldiers who returned home at the end of their service received as a reward half a month’s pay, but the Elector received from England a whole month’s pay. Did he put the other half in his own pocket, or did he pay it all, as well as the extra half month’s pay out of his own pocket, over to his soldiers? The answer is, that there is a great difference between the allowance of a year’s subsidy after the peace to the treasury of Hesse as compensation, and the voluntary gift, by the Elector, to the foreign soldiers who had enlisted in his service, of extra pay as reward for good conduct. They had no claim,