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Title: A Defence of the Hessians

Author: Joseph George Rosengarten

Release Date: July 23, 2010 [EBook #33235]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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A DEFENCE OF THE HESSIANS.

CONTRIBUTED BY
JOSEPH G. ROSENGARTEN.

_Reprinted from
"The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography."
July, 1899._

PHILADELPHIA:
1899.

A DEFENCE OF THE HESSIANS.

[In a pamphlet printed in Melsungen and published in Cassel in 1879
under the title of "Frederick the Second and Modern History, a
Contribution to the Denial of the Fairy Stories as to the Pretended
Sale of Soldiers by Hessian Princes, with a New View of Seume's
Statements," there is quite a full defence of the Hessians and their
service in America under the British flag. As it is a second and
enlarged edition, it must have found readers, although I do not think
I have ever seen any notice of this somewhat novel view. It may not
be without interest to students of history to have a brief summary
and statement of the defence of the Hessians and their princes, who
ever since our Revolutionary War have been the subjects of obloquy
and treated with lofty scorn and contempt.]

The Seven Years' War had enlisted England's rich help in men and money. A
powerful army of one hundred thousand men, composed of English soldiers,
of twenty-four thousand Hessians, of Hanoverians and Brunswickers, enabled
Frederick of Prussia to continue a resistance which otherwise he could not
have maintained for two years. The North German states were not Prussian
vassals, but allies of England for a hundred years, on the basis of common
political aims. Hesse, as the stronghold of the Protestants of North
Germany, had been in close alliance with England at a time when