arriage,
later on Elector William, was to rule in Hanau, free from any influence of
his Catholic father, under the protection of an English garrison, so that
his home was temporarily separated from Hesse, and put under strict
protection of its church rights. Parliament, people, and army all took an
oath to abide by this, and Elector Frederick always kept his Catholic
predilections strictly personal, never influencing the old Protestant
rule; indeed, out of his own purse he completed the Reformed church in
Cassel begun by his father, and endowed it.

In 1762 Elector Frederick returned home at the head of the Hessian army,
and Hessian administration replaced that of the foreign invaders; but the
treasury was empty, the resources of the state exhausted, and the
population reduced one-half. The country had been laid waste. The Elector
declined all show, and quietly reoccupied his ancestral castle on January
2, 1763. The Parliament was summoned, and again exercised its
constitutional rights to examine and criticise the financial statements of
the government. These showed that the only resource for the needs of the
army was the claim against England for unpaid subsidies, amounting to
10,143,286 thalers. The government was authorized to reduce the army and
to apply any saving thus effected for pressing civil needs. The
representative in London was instructed to urge the prompt payment of the
debt due for Hessian forces in English service. The matter was warmly
discussed in Parliament, and only in 1775 was the debt discharged in part
to the amount of 7,923,283 thalers. In 1772 a short supply of food led to
the establishment of public warehouses, where flour bought abroad was sold
at cost price.

The agricultural condition, however, was a very unfavorable one, and in
1775 England first broached a renewal of the old alliance, with a view to
the employment of Hessian troops in the case of war in America. The
project of American independence was heartily disapproved of in Germany
and even in republican Switzerland. It was turning colonies into rival
states. Then, too, in seeking an alliance with France and Spain, America
was turning to the hereditary enemies of Germany. The course of the
English Whigs in endorsing the American rebels was condemned as a mere
party move against the Tory ministry, crippling the government. Moser, the
historian, represented the current opinion of Germany when he described
the Yankees as perjured subje