an Revolution was but another outbreak of the same
hostility to England, and if Hessian troops had not served in America, it
would have been a missing link in the chain of the wise, real German
policy of close alliance with old England. The story of the American
Revolution that ended in the independence of the American Colonies is
largely drawn from French writers, yet they never seem to regret their own
loss of Canada. American writers attack the German allies of England,
forgetting or ignoring the fact that this was no new relation, but one
that had existed for two centuries, and that England and all European
states paid for the foreign troops in their service. The Yankees, used to
making money by hook and crook, could not but look on the subsidies
provided by regular treaties as a sale and bargain of the soldiers of one
country to another which paid for them at so much a head. The Yankee fairy
stories about the superiority of their native troops may be easily
answered, for the famous Virginia cavalry were completely defeated and
driven from the field by Hessian foot yaegers, mounted for the occasion,
and not cavalry at all. In good old times no German would have falsified
the facts as to his own countrymen when he could have verified them from
the official records. These show that at one time it was proposed to
surrender the subsidies in exchange for a large stretch of land in Canada,
where a Hessian settlement was to be established. If that had been carried
out, Hesse might have been spared the sorrows of 1806 and 1866.

For many years all of the charges discreditable to the Hessians have been
drawn from the "Autobiography" of Seume. Much of it was invented by his
friend and editor Clodius. It is from beginning to end a false and
libellous production. Seume became a friend and admirer of the French
Jacobins and repented his service against the Yankees, so he invented the
story that he had been forced into the ranks against his will. The fact is
that no such compulsion could have been exercised in the face of the
orders of the Elector, nor could any young man of Seume's intelligence
have failed to know and exercise his rights.

Seume tells another falsehood in reference to affairs at Ziegenhain. There
was a garrison at that place of two companies of infantry and some
artillerymen, and four hundred recruits, part of the Eighth Division, on
its way from Cassel to America, and a handful of yaegers under instruction.
Som