Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/20

 8 have remitted no taxes except to the wives and parents of soldiers with the expedition, or such taxes as were levied on the property of these soldiers themselves, where they had no wives or parents. As for the princes to be mentioned hereafter, I do not learn that they remitted any taxes at all, but my sources of information may be defective.

Duke Charles I. reigned over Brunswick-Luneburg, and the hereditary Prince Charles William Ferdinand was associated with him in the government. The latter had married a sister of King George III. The land had but one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, and the princes were deeply in debt. Charles was extravagant and the Seven Years' War had been expensive. Attempts had been made to help out the finances by alchemy, but the gold had all flown up the chimney or made its way into the pockets of the alchemists, and none was found in the melting-pots. An Italian theatrical director received a salary of 30,000 thalers a year, while Lessing, already the author of "Emilia Gallotti" and "Minna von Barnhelm," served as librarian for a pittance. Prince Charles William Ferdinand was a better economist than his father. The lottery, a fashionable means of raising money at that time, was established under the direction of a minister of state, and made to bring in a good income, and, although the Duke of Brunswick received less per head in the shape of subsidy for the soldiers sent to America than any other of the princes, he was able, for his corps of forty-three hundred men, to pocket more than £160,000 before the end of the war.

The little territories of Anspach and Bayreuth,