prince sold them
to fight the battles of others. It is in this last transaction that her
history, almost in the moment when she ceased to have a history of her
own, links to that of the modern world, and that it came home to the
Marches in their national character; for two thousand of those poor
Ansbach mercenaries were bought up by England and sent to put down a
rebellion in her American colonies.

Humanly, they were more concerned for the Last Margrave, because of
certain qualities which made him the Best Margrave, in spite of the
defects of his qualities. He was the son of the Wild Margrave, equally
known in the Ansbach annals, who may not have been the Worst Margrave,
but who had certainly a bad trick of putting his subjects to death
without trial, and in cases where there was special haste, with his own
hand. He sent his son to the university at Utrecht because he believed
that the republican influences in Holland would be wholesome for him,
and then he sent him to travel in Italy; but when the boy came
home looking frail and sick, the Wild Margrave charged his official
travelling companion with neglect, and had the unhappy Hofrath Meyer
hanged without process for this crime. One of the gentlemen of his
realm, for a pasquinade on the Margrave, was brought to the scaffold; he
had, at various times, twenty-two of his soldiers shot with arrows
and bullets or hanged for desertion, besides many whose penalties his
clemency commuted to the loss of an ear or a nose; a Hungarian who
killed his hunting-dog, he had broken alive on the wheel. A soldier's
wife was hanged for complicity in a case of desertion; a young soldier
who eloped with the girl he loved was brought to Ansbach from a
neighboring town, and hanged with her on the same gallows. A sentry
at the door of one of the Margrave's castles amiably complied with the
Margrave's request to let him take his gun for a moment, on the pretence
of wishing to look at it. For this breach of discipline the prince
covered him with abuse and gave him over to his hussars, who bound him
to a horse's tail and dragged him through the streets; he died of his
injuries. The kennel-master who had charge of the Margrave's dogs was
accused of neglecting them: without further inquiry the Margrave rode to
the man's house and shot him down on his own threshold. A shepherd who
met the Margrave on a shying horse did not get his flock out of the way
quickly enough; the Margrave demanded the pisto