its sensible Elector,
Hesse was spared a renewal of the horrors of the Seven Years' War, which
its unquiet neighbor would have gladly invited, to its own great injury.

The contrast between the two cousins and namesakes was a very marked one,
for Elector Frederick was an orthodox Christian, King Frederick a follower
of Voltaire. The Swiss historian, Mueller, republican as he was, wrote from
Cassel to his Swiss home in terms of strong praise of the Hessian corps of
officers, of their scientific and social culture; the Hessians, he said,
are sound, honest folk, warlike and courageous,--all the peasants have
served in the army, and in every village the men show the good effects in
their manly strength and love of discipline. Almost every one can speak of
his own or his father's service in Sicily, in the Morea, in Scotland,
Flanders, Hungary, or Germany, under Morisini or Prince Eugene or Maurice
of Saxony or Ferdinand of Brunswick.

And now in the New World the Hessians showed their old valor and
discipline,--one regiment surrounded in a forest by eight thousand
Americans fought its way out. After a march of five hundred miles, without
bread or wine or brandy, almost barefooted, in burning heat, after fording
seven streams, often up to the neck in water, the Hessians fought so well
that Lord Cornwallis praised them beyond all his other troops; and such a
preference from the British commander reconciled his Hessians to all their
trials. Mueller, as a faithful historian, loved to record their brave
deeds. He says the country is poor, but that is due to the never ending
German wars. The Seven Years' War had left the country waste to a degree
that the Swiss, always living in peace, could hardly realize. But the
Hessians are industrious, and the country flourished in 1781 under the
Elector Frederick, a man of kindly nature and the best intentions, and yet
many foreigners criticise him unfairly. Why should a Swiss object to a
crowned head? The government is as well suited to the country as a
republic to Switzerland, and even there no one has more personal freedom
than the Hessian citizen. People and country are unusually attractive. No
men were ever finer than the Hessian soldiers; they are worthy of their
ancestors, made famous by Tacitus. It is thus that a republican describes
the country of this excellent prince, who had healed the wounds inflicted
by the Seven Years' War, encouraged arts and sciences, and supported, when
he