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Hessian Soldiers

It was just business: Hessian soldiers were the sole asset of a nation in the military-for-hire trade. No account of the American Revolution is complete without reference to the Hessians. They are vilified in the Declaration of Independence as “foreign Mercenaries” imported to complete Britain’s work of “death, desolation and tyranny.” They are the garrison of Trenton, celebrating Christmas not wisely, but too well, until George Washington and his men rudely interrupt their revels. A Hessian ghost is implicated as the Headless Horseman in Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. They are the villains in D.W. Griffith’s 1909 film The Hessian Renegades, one of the earliest war movies. A Hessian (Yosemite) Sam Von Schmamm even serves as a cartoon foil for Bugs Bunny, finally collapsing in frustrated exhaustion with the memorable line, “I’m a Hessian without no aggression.”

Recent research is revising those traditional impressions. Hessians made up only about half of the German troops that served in North America during the Revolution, and scholars point out that almost half of these settled here after the war, intermarrying along classic immigrant lines. Military historians have even vindicated the Hessians at Trenton, demonstrating they were in fact alert and ready—just outfought by the Ameri­cans. The Hessian image nevertheless remains incomplete: They appear on the American stage without context, then vanish with little explanation. What’s missing is a clear sense of who they were, where they originated, and why they came to America to fight, kill and die in a war that was not their own.

To begin with, the Declaration of Independence was wrong: Hessians were not mercenaries in the generally accepted sense of the term—men serving the British as individuals under specified conditions of enlistment. Instead, they were classified under international law as “auxiliaries,” subjects of a ruler who assisted another by providing soldiers in return for money. In a modified form this process remains recognized in law and practice.

The 18th century, however, is generally and correctly understood as the great age of subsidy armies. Dubbed Soldatenhandel (the “soldier business”), it centered on Germany, and the principality of Hesse-Kassel was its archetype. The roots of the trade are best sought in the Thirty Years’ War, as states sought to pay their bills by recruiting and leasing soldiers to the highest bidder. That practice was easy to legitimize once the Treaty of Westphalia recognized the sovereignty of Germany’s lesser rulers. Instead of authorizing the enlistment of mercenaries in the traditional way, through contractors and taking a cut of the profits, the new states went into the army business for themselves, raising men, organizing regiments and negotiating contracts with larger, richer countries—rather like state-run military temp agencies.

Hesse-Kassel had always been poor—a midsize land of villages shaped by subsistence agriculture. At the same time, it lay between two parts of Prussia and athwart some of the regular routes of the contending armies. The result was catastrophe on all levels: the countryside wasted and the government deprived of its usual sources of revenue. Military service was not particularly popular as Hesse slowly recovered from its bruising. And that recovery was limited—so limited it was difficult to sustain a force sufficient to protect Hesse’s political sovereignty and territorial integrity. In 1676 its army totaled a mere 23 companies.

The following year, the Hessian Landgraf Karl leased 10 of those companies to Denmark for a total sum of 3,200 thalers. In 1687 Karl rented 1,000 men to Venice for 50 thalers apiece. Fewer than 200 returned home, but the Hessians had fought well enough to attract a more generous paymaster. The Estates of Holland had a full treasury and a long history of hiring fighting men from outside their borders. In 1688 Karl sent 3,400 of his subjects to serve William of Orange. They took no part in the invasion of England, but did so well on the continent that the Dutch wanted more of them for longer periods. In the War of the League of Augsburg (1688–1697) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), Hessian troops established a solid reputation for discipline in the field, steadiness under fire and willingness to endure the high casualties characteristic of flintlock-and-saber battles. Britain’s Duke of Marlborough praised their valor. Prince Eugene of Austria, also no mean judge of fighting men, took 10,000 Hessians into Italy in 1706 and led another contingent against the Turks in Hungary.

At this stage of its development, the Hessian army was recruited in more or less traditional fashion from society’s expendables, including a strong infusion of men from other small German states. Karl saw it as a means of maintaining sovereignty, not a source of profit. Honor was also involved. Five of Karl’s sons served under arms; two were killed in action. And despite generous French offers, Karl, ruler of a Calvinist state, refused to do business with any but Protestant employers.

The pattern began to change after 1715, when the Stuarts incited rebellion in Scotland. That year Britain’s George I sought the services of no fewer than 12,000 Hessians. In 1726, when Britain reasserted a continental commitment by joining the Grand Alliance of Austria, Bavaria, Spain and other entities, it paid Hesse an annual retainer of £125,000 for first call on its army. Five years later, with no war on the horizon, Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole convinced Parliament to vote £240,000 to keep 12,000 Hessians ready for British service.

Reluctant to depend on a single connection, successive electors sought to expand their clientele. Results were not always positive. In 1744 a treaty with Bavaria briefly put Hessians on both sides in the War of the Austrian Succession. That same treaty for the first time included a blood money clause providing extra compensation for dead and wounded. In battle, however, the Hessians sustained and enhanced their reputation for rock steadiness. In 1745 and again in 1756, Hessian regiments shipped out to a Britain fearful of invasion by French and Scots. Landgrave William VIII had a defensible case when he declared: “These troops are our Peru. In losing them, we would forfeit all our resources.”

In 1762, as casualties mounted, keeping thousands of men under arms became an immense human burden for a state whose population was no more than 275,000. Frederick II responded by dividing Hesse-Kassel into cantons, each responsible for maintaining a field regiment for the subsidy army and a garrison regiment for home defense. Some towns were exempt. So was a spectrum of what similar American legislation a century later called “deferred occupations.” In practice, those owning more than 250 thalers in property fulfilled their obligation with money instead of blood. Craftsmen, apprentices and servants, workers in military-related industries and men essential to the prosperity of their farms or the support of their families were also exempt. All other men between 16 and 30, over 5-foot-6 when fully grown, were listed as available for military service, to be inducted and assigned as needed.

Hesse-Kassel thus became, in numbers and percentages, the most militarized state in Europe. Its army stabilized at a strength of 24,000 men: a 1-to-15 soldier-civilian ratio, twice that of Prussia. In contrast to Prussia, while foreigners could enlist in the Hessian army, it consisted overwhelmingly of native sons. One household out of four was represented in its ranks. In Prussia the ratio was 1-to-14. Both travelers and military inspectors consistently remarked on the size and fitness of the Hessian regulars, qualities frequently credited to their austere upbringing on hardscrabble smallholdings. No less remarkable was their apparent acceptance of military life, despite a term of service totaling 24 years.

Again this was frequently ascribed to nurture, with young men hearing from fathers and uncles tales of adventure in far places while omitting the negatives. Moral factors were involved as well. The Hessian countryside was still strongly Calvinist in practice. Children were inculcated at an early age with fundamental concepts of duty and calling. Enhanced by secular indoctrination of loyalty to the ruler, concretized by rigid discipline in field and garrison, they produced soldiers worthy of their hire.

Hessian regiments served in Ireland against the 1798 Revolution, with more success than their predecessors in North America. Hessians continued to fight across Europe under foreign colors, this time French ones. But the Hessian mercenary state had passed into history—and into myth.

Dennis Showalter. Hessians: The Best Armies Money Could Buy. . October 2007.

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