Brandenburg was little thought of. The ancient military glory of Hesse
during the Thirty Years' War was so great that Gustavus Adolphus on
landing in Germany had asked for a Hessian, Colonel Falkenburg, as
military governor of Magdeburg. For a century and a half Hessian soldiers
fought shoulder to shoulder with the English troops, mainly against
France. That they should again act together in America was not more
surprising than that the Sardinian Italians should cooeperate with the
French in the Crimea. The same statesmanlike wisdom was shown in Cassel
and in Turin, and led to a like result. The little Hesse of 1866 must not
be confused with the old Hesse, which was an important factor in German
politics. In almost every war of the last century Hesse had taken part
with its army of twenty-four thousand men,--an important contingent at
that time and one that made Hesse the object of many invitations to close
alliance. In the Seven Years' War, England joined Frederick the Great, so,
too, did the Hessians and the other German allies. It fared badly with
Hesse,--repeatedly it was overrun and often held by the French, while its
army was serving in Westphalia and Hanover; the Elector died away from his
home and was succeeded by his son; none of the eastern provinces of
Prussia suffered like Hesse.

The Elector Frederick had been educated on the Rhine, and shortly before
the outbreak of the Seven Years' War was the guest of the Archbishop
Elector of Cologne. Political honors have been made the reason of the
Elector of Saxony's change of his Protestant faith--that he might secure
the throne of Catholic Poland. Vanity and want of patriotic pride have led
German princesses to win Russian husbands at the sacrifice of their
Protestant faith, while no Russian princess has ever given up her church
for the sake of a foreign husband. Frederick of Hesse changed his religion
from purely personal reasons and in perfect honesty. It was long concealed
from his father, a strong Protestant, ruling the church in the spirit of
his ancestor Maurice. An accident revealed the secret, and violent was the
anger of the sturdy Protestant father. At first he wanted to exclude his
son from the succession, but this required an appeal to the Emperor, who
naturally would refuse. The elder prince then, with the approval of his
Parliament, made a close alliance with England, and this added to the
security of his son's English marriage. The eldest son of that m