Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/24

 12 the Margrave received more than £100,000 sterling. Charles Alexander was the last Margrave of Anspach and Bayreuth. In 1791 he sold both countries to Prussia, for a pension, on which he afterwards lived in England, where he died in 1806.

Beside the Margraves of Anspach, the Princes of Waldeck seem almost respectable. To be sure, they used their little country (it lies westward from Cassel) principally as a stock-farm to raise men for the Dutch market, but they themselves fought with distinction for the same country. The fitting-out of troops for America was merely a side speculation, and the whole number sent was only one thousand two hundred and twenty-five soldiers.

Frederick Augustus, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, may be looked on as the caricature of the little German princes of his day. He reigned over some twenty thousand subjects, but he cannot be said to have governed them, for the last thirty years of his life were spent in Basle and in Luxemburg. Even there did he find that his subjects could be troublesome, and he forbade, by a formal printed order, that any one of his servants should trouble him with the affairs of his principality, under pain of dismissal. He was not above being severe, however, for he had a gallows erected on the Island of Wangeroge for the terror of oyster stealers. His army of two thousand men, and these, I think, mostly on paper, numbered no less than eleven colonels, yet when it came to sending six hundred men to America he had to go out of his own dominions to find not only soldiers but officers. The little principality was, so to speak, in commission, and governed