The German Tapestry

Our previous article explored the subsidy treaties that Great Britain signed with six German principalities to rent roughly 30,000 German soldiers for service in North America. When those men arrived, many Americans viewed them as bloodthirsty mercenaries hired to do King George’s dirty work and crush ideas of liberty and independence. 

But was that image accurate? Why would an ordinary German risk his life to fight over 3,000 miles from home, in a country he had never seen, for a king who was not his own? This article will answer those questions.  

For many, it was not a hatred of American people and ideas that drove them to enlist. While some did volunteer enthusiastically, recruiting men for service in North America was a messy process of persuasion, local politics, coercion,  incentives, economic necessity, and resistance. Behind the familiar image of a ferocious Hessian mercenary is a very human story, one much deeper than Americans at the time could have possibly imagined. 

The Race to Recruit Begins

Once the subsidy treaties between Great Britain and German rulers were signed, speed was of the essence. The British wanted troops in America quickly in order to crush the rebellion before it gained momentum. While German rulers maintained standing armies in peacetime, they were small and mostly used for defense, garrison duty, and policing. When the British suddenly requested an initial total of 20,000 soldiers, German rulers did not have nearly that many men in uniform. Maintaining such a force would have been prohibitively expensive. So when the treaties were signed, it triggered a frantic race to recruit and fill the ranks.²

None of the German principalities used drafts or conscription, and they instead relied on the efforts of government recruiters to find, persuade, and enlist enough men to meet their quotas. How German recruiters accomplished that, and how prospective soldiers responded, tells us a lot about the German experience during the American Revolution. 

In Search of a Few Dispensable Men

The first task facing German recruiters was to find men who were considered  abkömmlich (dispensable), meaning men whose departure, and potential death, would have little effect on the local economy.

Even among those considered abkömmlich, not everyone was eligible. Recruits were generally expected to be healthy men between the ages of 17-45, at least 164 centimeters tall (5 feet 4 inches) in order to properly load a musket, have enough teeth to tear open a musket cartridge, and either be single or married without children. At the same time, there were also several exemptions from military service. Property owners, sons who were needed for work, men employed in essential trades (which varied by principality), and students were often excluded from military service.³ 

This mixture of requirements and exemptions left recruiters with a very limited pool of eligible men. To fill the ranks, they would have to rely on far more than going into a village and simply asking for volunteers.

A Patchwork of Recruits

Although the German rulers had agreed to provide troops for Britain, they were understandably reluctant to strip their own territories of working-age men. Every recruit sent to America meant one less farmer, laborer, or craftsman supporting the local economy, and also one less taxpayer. The government of Braunschweig voiced this concern explicitly, warning that the departure of so many men would significantly reduce revenue from beer and liquor taxes.⁴ 

To avoid these economic losses, recruiters were instructed to enlist foreigners whenever possible. In eighteenth-century Germany, however, a “foreigner” did not necessarily mean someone from another country. More often, it referred to men from neighboring German principalities. If a recruiter from Hessen-Kassel could persuade a young man from Hanover or Mainz to enlist, Hessen-Kassel would fulfill its treaty obligations while preserving one of its own subjects at home.⁵

Not surprisingly, this practice created friction. The rulers of neighboring territories had no desire to lose their own working-age men, especially when they had not signed subsidy treaties with Britain. As a result, recruiting across territorial borders often met with resistance, forcing recruiters to rely increasingly on native recruits (known as Landeskinder) as the war continued and the demand for replacement soldiers grew.⁶ 

This meant that German regiments in North America were not homogenous. A regiment from Braunschweig might include men from that principality alongside recruits from dozens of other German territories, many of whom spoke different regional and local dialects. Each regiment was, in many respects, a patchwork tapestry of men from across the German-speaking world.

Incentives for Service in North America

It would have been impossible to rely entirely on foreign recruits, so recruiters also had to persuade their own Landeskinder to enlist. One of the biggest incentives was money. Each subsidy treaty guaranteed German enlisted soldiers the same rate of pay as British soldiers, which was more than many laborers could ever expect to earn at home.⁸ 

To make military service even more attractive, soldiers could send a portion of their earnings directly home, thus helping their families and supporting the local economy. They were allowed to change the amount of money and the recipients at any time. For example, one soldier from Waldeck changed the recipient of his wages from his wife to their child after he discovered she had become pregnant while he was away.⁹ 

Some men simply sought adventure, a chance to leave home, or the opportunity for a fresh start. Adolph Schulze of Sachsen-Weimar was one such recruit. At forty-five years old, he enlisted as a foreigner in the Braunschweig contingent, serving as a surgeon. Because he was older, owned a small house, and possessed valuable medical skills, he would not have been targeted by recruiters. Yet Schulze volunteered anyway, explaining that he “could not tolerate his wife and son-in-law.” Before departing for North America, he transferred ownership of his house to his daughter.¹⁰

Because of the high demand for men, some recruits were able to extract personal financial benefits for their service. In Braunschweig, several soldiers offered to serve only if the government waived the usual marriage fee so they could marry before departing for America. Another recruit from Waldeck negotiated a guarantee that his siblings be raised in an orphanage while he was serving. ¹¹

Governments also tried to ease the burden on soldiers’ families by offering a variety of benefits, including tax exemptions, free schooling, housing assistance, and gifts of firewood, corn, wheat, and grain. Even so, these measures rarely compensated for the loss of an able-bodied worker.¹² For many families, enlistment meant sacrificing an important source of income, and if a soldier never returned from America, that loss became permanent.

Resistance Against Service in North America

For some men, no incentive was great enough to convince them to serve, and they actively resisted attempts to get them to enlist. While governments and recruiters did not actively force men into service, they did use other tools of coercion, pressure, and intimidation when voluntary enlistment failed. 

When recruiters came into towns and villages looking for eligible young men, families would often hide their sons and claim ignorance as to their whereabouts. In response local officials sometimes arrested the father of the family until a missing son reappeared. Governments also confiscated property or withheld inheritances from families whose sons could not be found, hoping that financial pressure would accomplish what persuasion could not.¹³ 

As the war dragged on and replacement troops became increasingly difficult to find, recruiters also lowered their standards. Height requirements were among the first to disappear, and before long recruiters were accepting almost anyone willing to enlist. British inspectors stationed at the North Sea ports frequently rejected recruits before they embarked for America. Some men were missing an eye or even a nose, while others were mentally ill, blind, elderly, or physically incapable of enduring military service.¹⁴  Recruiters also sought out men who were not wanted in town. Many convicted criminals were offered the choice of military service in lieu of a prison sentence.

Women also played a large role in helping recruiters fill the ranks, largely by petitioning rulers to get rid of troublesome men by sending them to America. One such petition came from Anne Catrine Quidde of Braunschweig, who claimed her son-in-law was “a disgusting godless man, who had learned something but did not use it due to his laziness.” She asked the duke to “free us from this evil man,” and the duke obliged. The son-in-law was sent for service in America.¹⁵

In another example, Catharina Maria Hossbach petitioned the landgrave to send her husband, Johannes Hossbach, to America for military service. She detailed his drinking, physical abuse, and refusal to attend church services, arguing that military service would reform him. However, several neighbors informed the landgrave that Johannes was the only wigmaker in town. He was therefore deemed  unabkömmlich (indispensable), and Catharina’s request was denied.¹⁶  

More Than Mercenaries

The complexity of recruitment, wide range of motivations to serve, and the many efforts to avoid military service, all reveal that the German auxiliaries in America were anything but a monolithic group. One could argue that since there were 30,000 individual soldiers that crossed the Atlantic, then there were also 30,000 individual stories. They came from all across what is today Germany, and had a myriad of motivations for signing up to serve in North America. Many enlisted for pay, others sought personal opportunities or a fresh start. Many were pressured by their governments or communities, and in several cases their wives wanted them out of the house. Put together, these stories are a mixture of hopes, fears, ambitions, and sacrifices, and they speak against the American view of these men as bloodthirsty villains.  

Despite their many differences, one thing was common among all of these soldiers. Every man expected to be home within one or two years. When they sailed across the Atlantic in 1776, none of them could have possibly imagined they would not see their homes or loved ones for almost nine years. 

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Achtung! Feuerbereit!

What was it like for German soldiers, many of whom had never seen the ocean and could not swim, to cross the Atlantic? How did they experience the long months at sea?

Stay tuned for our next article!

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Sources

1. The British landing at Kip’s Bay, New York Island, 15 September 1776
   Robert Cleveley, 1777 ↩︎
2. Atwood, Rodney. The Hessians. Cambridge University Press, 1980. 44 ↩︎
3. Baer, Friederike. Hessians. Oxford University Press, New York. 2022. 40-41 ↩︎
4. Huck, Stephan. Soldaten gegen Nordamerika. Oldenburg Verlag München, 2011. 37-38 ↩︎
5. Krebs, Daniel. A Generous and Merciful Enemy. University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. 41-43 ↩︎
6. Atwood, 219 ↩︎
7. Berichte vom dritten englisch-waldeckischen Regiment an den Fürsten und Frensdorff. HStAM, 118 a, 972/1. Page 16. Accessible here. ↩︎
8. Lowell, Edward. The Hessians. 2016 Edition. 14 ↩︎
9. Baer, 34 ↩︎
10. Huck, 82 ↩︎
11. Ibid, 43-44 ↩︎
12. Ingrao, Charles. The Hessian Mercenary State. Cambridge University Press, 2002. 147 & Baer, 52-53 ↩︎
13. Baer, 48-49 ↩︎
14. Ibid, 43 ↩︎
15. Ibid, 53 ↩︎
16. Ibid, 54 ↩︎
17. A View from the Gun Wharf at Portsmout. Serres, Dominic. 1769.
    National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, Macpherson Collection. ↩︎