On September 23,  Friederike Baer, Ph.D., was the guest speaker for VCU’s Society of the Cincinnati lecture. This annual lecture focuses on the economic, political and military history of the American Revolution. This year, Baer presented a lecture titled “Incomprehensible Friends and Rebellious Enemies: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War.” Although we have long known that approximately one-third of troops fighting for Great Britain came from the independent German states, Baer’s intention with her research was to go beyond the numbers and capture the larger story of the German soldiers.

In the spring of 1775, Britain was facing the challenging task of raising a substantial military force that could quickly be dispatched to the American colonies. The commanding officer at this time in Boston believed that 20-25,000 troops would be needed to stop the rebellion. King George III determined that he would not be able to raise a sufficient number of troops from Great Britain or other parts of the Empire. After he failed to hire Russians, the king turned to several German states for support as he had done before. 

Between 1776 and 1783, Great Britain hired an estimated 30,000 German soldiers in its war against the American rebels. These soldiers made up a significant portion of the British military, an estimated one-third by 1781.  Foreign soldiers were not an unusual thing for the British or other European powers, as it fought most of its wars between the 17th-18th centuries with the help of foreign auxiliaries. By the summer of 1775, several German rulers offered their troops after already knowing what was to come. In the end, six territories agreed to hire out their troops. Two of the states, Hesse-Cassel and Hesse-Hanau, sent more than 20,000 troops combined. Since the 1770s, despite coming from a variety of principalities, all German soldiers came to be known as Hessians. 

Baer emphasized that the German soldiers were not mercenaries, contrary to popular belief, as mercenaries are soldiers who fight in a foreign army for personal profit. The appropriate term to refer to these German soldiers would be auxiliary or subsidy troops.

The first treaties with Hesse-Cassel, Hesse-Hanau and Braunschweig were formally concluded in January of 1776. The German rulers had just a few weeks to assemble and outfit the substantial numbers of troops. None had any troops ready to go, certainly not thousands of them, so they faced the challenge of building up these troops to send to America. 

All of the units were to be led by German officers, although with very rare exceptions, the overall commander was always a British officer, as these troops were going into British service. In general, the regiments hired out to Britain ultimately consisted of a combination of experienced soldiers and new recruits. Many of the German soldiers were young men who had been specifically recruited for the war in America. They were not necessarily more experienced in warfare than their American counterparts; some had never fired a gun, and many had never fought in a battle.

Once sent to America, German troops ended up widely dispersed along the eastern seaboard of North America, from Canada to Florida, and even to Cuba. At least 18,000 troops arrived in the colonies in the summer and fall of 1776. Between 1776 and 1783 members of the corps participated in every major and minor military battles and skirmishes. They spent extended periods of time as prisoners of war, on garrison duty, deserted or settled somewhere in America. Many got married, divorced, had children, were discharged, sent back home, experienced diseases, accidents or died. 

Baer argued that when one thinks of Hessians, they think of the events of Christmas Day in 1776, when General George Washington led the Continental Army across the Delaware River. This event led to the Battle of Trenton, where Washington’s army won after they had led a surprise attack on the Hessians, almost 1,000 became prisoners of war. She also mentioned the Battle of Saratoga, an American victory that resulted in the capture of 2,400 Hessians. The Battle of Yorktown also resulted in the capture of 1,000 Hessians.

“I think it would be a mistake to reduce the experience of these soldiers to these three events alone,” Baer argued. “We need to remember that they also participated in many other campaigns and battles, including successful ones like the New York campaign in the fall of 1776, and the occupation of Philadelphia.”

The Germans realized fairly early on that this war was unlike any other military conflict they had known for a few reasons, with a significant issue being the language barrier. This was a war that was fought in a predominantly English-speaking environment. None of the Germans had served in North America before and only a handful had learned English from previous British service. The soldiers struggled learning commands, as almost all commanding officers spoke in English. Nor did they know who they were fighting against. Major Carl Leopold Bauermeister captured the sense of incomprehension in his very first journal entry, “To fight the war with an incomprehensible friend and the rebellious enemy.”

“So how does all of this broaden our understanding of the Revolutionary War?” Baer asked. “I would suggest that this examination of German authored records offers a fresh perspective of the American land, people and the war as it was seen and experienced by people that can be described as participants or observers.” Baer argued that these kinds of stories help humanize the story of the war, a war that one Hessian described as a “war that went against all of humanity.”