ugly job, a damned affair
indeed." The population of the colonies--some 2,500,000--was about
one-third that of the United Kingdom; and for the British the war was
remote from the base of supply. In those days, considering the means
of transport, America was as far from England as at the present day is
Australia. Sometimes the voyage across the sea occupied two and even
three months, and, with the relatively small ships of the time, it
required a vast array of transports to carry an army of twenty or
thirty thousand men. In the spring of 1776 Great Britain had found it
impossible to raise at home an army of even twenty thousand men for
service in America, and she was forced to rely in large part upon
mercenary soldiers. This was nothing new. Her island people did not like
service abroad and this unwillingness was intensified in regard to
war in remote America. Moreover Whig leaders in England discouraged
enlistment. They were bitterly hostile to the war which they regarded as
an attack not less on their own liberties than on those of America. It
would be too much to ascribe to the ignorant British common soldier of
the time any deep conviction as to the merits or demerits of the cause
for which he fought. There is no evidence that, once in the army, he
was less ready to attack the Americans than any other foe. Certainly the
Americans did not think he was half-hearted.

The British soldier fought indeed with more resolute determination
than did the hired auxiliary at his side. These German troops played
a notable part in the war. The despotic princes of the lesser German
states were accustomed to sell the services of their troops. Despotic
Russia, too, was a likely field for such enterprise. When, however, it
was proposed to the Empress Catherine II that she should furnish twenty
thousand men for service in America she retorted with the sage advice
that it was England's true interest to settle the quarrel in America
without war. Germany was left as the recruiting field. British efforts
to enlist Germans as volunteers in her own army were promptly checked by
the German rulers and it was necessary literally to buy the troops from
their princes. One-fourth of the able-bodied men of Hesse-Cassel were
shipped to America. They received four times the rate of pay at home and
their ruler received in addition some half million dollars a year. The
men suffered terribly and some died of sickness for the homes to which
thousands of t