Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/30

 18 notice, as it has excited the well-warranted indignation of all who have execrated these bargains for the sale of human blood. It runs: “According to custom, three wounded men shall be reckoned as one killed; a man killed shall be paid for at the rate of levy-money.” This clause, which does not appear in the subsequent treaty with Hesse-Cassel, stands in the Brunswick treaty in the same article with, and immediately before, the provision for making good any extraordinary loss from battle, pestilence, or shipwreck. It may be taken to mean that the King of England undertook to bear the expense of a recruit to fill the place of a Brunswick soldier actually killed in battle, but that the Duke must replace at his own cost one who deserted from the ranks or died of sickness, unless in case of an “uncommon contagious malady.” Yet if this be the interpretation, what is the meaning of the “three wounded men.” Kapp, moreover, rejects this explanation, and asserts that new recruits were paid for by levy-money in addition to the 30 crowns received for the killed and wounded, and that this blood-money was pocketed by the prince and not by the family of the soldier, nor by himself, if wounded. At any rate, the fact remains that the Duke of Brunswick contracted to receive a sum amounting to about $35 for every one of his soldiers who should be killed in battle, and $11.66 for every one who should be maimed. It is probably now impossible to discover how much England actually paid out on this account. The payments were not entered under their proper heading in the bills sent to Parliament from the War Office. Kapp