Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/312



surrender at Yorktown decided the fate of the Revolutionary War. The armies remained quiet through the winter, and in the spring of 1782 General Clinton and General von Knyphausen returned to Europe. Sir Guy Carleton assumed the command in New York, and Lieutenant-general von Lossberg became chief of the Hessian division. On the 14th of December, 1782, Charleston was evacuated, and on the 25th of November, 1783, two years after the fall of Yorktown, the last Hessians sailed down the Bay of New York. “About two in the afternoon we weighed anchor,” says the journal of the Jäger Corps, “and as the fleet fell down to Staten Island we saw the American flag hoisted on several houses. None was raised on Fort George, however. At sunset we passed Sandy Hook, and at nightfall the land disappeared from our sight.”

The force of German mercenaries which England maintained in America from 1776 to 1783 averaged not very far from twenty thousand men. In the course of that time about thirty thousand soldiers were brought over, and seventeen thousand three hundred and thirteen returned to Germany when the war was ended. For the services of these men England paid in levy-money and subsidies to the princes more than