Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/63

 Rh with the eagerness of some German princes to sacrifice their troops in a quarrel which does not concern them. My astonishment increases when I remember in ancient history the wise and general aversion of our ancestors to wasting German blood for the defence of foreign rights, which even became a law in the German state.

“But I perceive that my patriotism is running away with me; and I return to your Most Serene Highness's letter of the 14th, which excited it so strongly. You ask for free passage for the recruits and baggage which you wish to send to the corps of your troops in the service of Great Britain, and I take the liberty of observing that if you wish them to go to England, they will not even have to pass through my states, and that you can send them a shorter way to be embarked. I submit this idea to the judgment of your Most Serene Highness, and am none the less, with all the tenderness I owe you. Monsieur my Nephew, your Most Serene Highness's good uncle, 1em

The ministers were perplexed. They thought it too late to keep back the troops, and hoped to gain their end by negotiation. In this they did not succeed. The soldiers were stopped on their passage down the Rhine, and after spending a month in their boats, lying, for the most part, off the little town of Bendorf, which belonged to the Margrave of Anspach, were finally brought back to winter at Hanau. Their sufferings while crowded on board the boats in the months of November and December, and only allowed occasional exercise on shore, must have been great; but there were but few desertions, for a cordon of troops lined the bank to prevent them. About two hundred and fifty recruits from Hanau lay alongside of the Anspachers, similarly detained, and these suffered much from fever. The whole party of five hundred and thirty-four men marched in February and March, 1778, overland to the coast, and was shipped in April for England and America. The passage was a long one, and these