XVIII. 1777. Every effort was made to gain recruits for the CHAP. army and navy. Threats and promises were used to induce captive American sailors to enlist in the British service. "Hang me, if you will, to the yard-arm of your ship, but do not ask me to become a traitor to my country," was the answer of Nathan Coffin, and it expressed the spirit of them all.2 In February, Franklin and Deane proposed to Stormont, at Paris, to exchange a hundred British seamen, taken by Wickes, of the "Reprisal," for an equal number of the American prisoners in England. To this first application Stormont was silent; to a more earnest remonstrance, in April, he answered: "The king's ambassador receives no applications from rebels unless they come to implore his majesty's mercy." For land forces, the hopes of the ministers rested mainly on the kinglings of Germany. The petty prince of Waldeck collected for the British service twenty men from his own territory and its neighborhood, twenty-three from Suabia, near fifty elsewhere, in all eighty-nine; and to prevent their desertion, locked them up in the Hanoverian fortress of Hameln. It was the cue of the hereditary prince of Cassel to talk of difficulties and impossibilities, that he might gain a still greater claim on British gratitude and treasure for exceeding all expectations. He had a troublesome competitor in his own father, whose agents were busy in all the environs of Hanau; nevertheless he furnished ninetyone recruits, and four hundred and sixty-eight ad 1 MS. communication from C. H. Marshall of New York. VOL. IX. 27 2 Noailles to Vergennes, 14 February, 1777. MS. XVIII. CHAP. ditional yagers, which was fifty-six more than he had bargained for. 1777. In Hesse-Cassel the favor of Schlieffen, the minister, was secured by repeated gifts of money; after which the recall of Heister was peremptorily demanded. "The king is determined upon it," were Suffolk's words. No reasons were given, but the British government had feared that foreign generals might be too "regardful of the preservation of the troops under their command," and in advance had offered rewards in money to such of them as should be found compliant;1 Howe had wished for no foreign officers, except captains and subalterns, and failing in this, he had pledged himself at any rate, "to gain all the service he could from troops who might avoid the loss of men."2 Heister was a meritorious veteran officer, anxious in his responsibility for the troops under his charge, and unapt to favor a disproportionate consumption of them. For no better reason, he was superseded by Knyphausen; and he returned to his country only to die of the wound inflicted on his military pride. The land whose sons he would have spared, was drained of men, and extraneous recruits were obtained slowly; yet in the course of the year, by force, impressment, theft of foreigners, and other means, it furnished of recruits and yagers fourteen hundred and forty-nine. But this number, of which more than half were yagers, barely made good the losses in the campaign and at Trenton; a putrid epidemic, which at the end of the winter broke out 1 Suffolk to Faucitt, 12 February, 1776. MS. 2 General Howe to Lord George Germain, 25 April, 1776. MS. XVIII. among the Hessian grenadiers at Brunswick, in CHAP. eight weeks swept away more than three hundred as able men as ever stood in the ranks of an army, and their places were not supplied. The duke of Brunswick behaved the most shabbily of all. Of the men whom he offered, Faucitt writes: "I hardly remember to have ever seen such a parcel of miserable, ill-looking fellows collected together." Two hundred and twenty-two were with difficulty culled out and accepted; and even these were far from being wholly fit for service. The margrave of Brandenburg-Anspach, nephew of Frederic of Prussia, a kinsman of George the Third of England, expressed his eager desire to enter into the trade in soldiers; and on very moderate terms he furnished two regiments of twelve hundred men, beside a company of eighty-five ya gers, all of the best quality, unsurpassed in any service, tall, neatly clad, handling their bright and faultless arms with dexterity, spirit, and exactness. The margrave readily promised that they should receive the full British pay, and kept his engagements with exceptional scrupulousness. In the former year a free passage had everywhere been allowed to the subsidized troops; the enlightened mind of Germany, its scholars, its philosophers, its poets, had not yet openly revolted at the hiring of its sons to recruit armies for a war waged against the rights of man; but the universal feeling of its common people was a perpetual persuasion against enlistments, and an incentive to desertion. The subsidized princes sought for men outside of their own lands, and forced into the 1777. CHAP. service not merely vagabonds and loose fellows of XVIII. all kinds, but any unprotected traveller or hind 1777. on whom they could lay their hands. The British agents became sensitive to the stories that were told of them, and to "the excessive defamation " which they encountered. The rulers of the larger states felt the dignity of the empire insulted. Frederic of Prussia never disguised his disgust. The court of Vienna concerted with the elector of Mentz and the elector of Treves to throw a slur on the system. At Mentz, the yagers of Hanau who came first down the Rhine were stopped, and eight of them rescued by the elector's order as his subjects or soldiers. From the troops of the landgrave of Hesse eighteen were removed by the commissaries of the ecclesiastical prince of Treves. At Coblentz, Metternich, the active young representative of the court of Vienna, in the name of Maria Theresa and Joseph the Second, reclaimed their subjects and deserters. Still more formidable was the rankling discontent of the enlisted men. The regiments of Anspach could not be trusted to carry ammunition or arms, but were driven on by a company of trusty yagers well provided with both, and ready to nip a mutiny in the bud. Yet eighteen or twenty succeeded in deserting. When the rest reached their place of embarkation at Ochsenfurt on the Main, the regiment of Bayreuth began to march away and hide themselves in some vineyards. The yagers, who were all picked marksmen, were ordered to fire among them, by which some of them were killed. They avenged them XVIII. 1777. selves by putting a yager to death. The mar- CHAP. grave of Anspach, summoned by express, rode to the scene in the greatest haste, leaving his watch on his table, and without a shirt to change. He who by the superstitions of childhood and hallowed traditions was their land's father stood before them. The sight overawed them. They acknowledged their fault, and submitted to his severe reprimands. Four of them he threw into irons, and ordered all to the boats. Instead of the yagers, he in person assumed the office of driver; marched them through Mentz in defiance of the elector; administered the oath of fidelity to the king of England at Nymwegen; and the land's father never left his post till, at the end of March, in the presence of Sir Joseph Yorke, his children, whose service he had sold,1 were delivered by him in person on board the British transports at S'cravendell. "The margrave went through every detail, brought the men on board himself, went through the ships with them, marked their beds, gave out every order which was recommended to him, and saw it executed, with but little assistance, indeed, from his own officers in the beginning, though they soon grew better reconciled." The whole number of recruits and reënforcements obtained from Germany amounted to no more than thirty-five hundred and ninety-six. It is noticeable, that they all came from Protestant 1 Rainsford to Secretary Suffolk, 28 March, 1777: "The margrave accompanied them from Ochsenfurt. It is impossible to express the zeal and personal trouble his serene highness has shown, without which |