Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/78

 64 still more taken prisoners. I did not lose a single man, so much had the rebels come to be afraid of the chasseurs. Things went equally well on the other wing. We lost few men, and, except one chasseur, who was shot in the village, not a single one was killed. On the other hand, we made on the first day more than five hundred prisoners, among whom were General Stirling and one other general, and Colonel Johnson was shot. General Stirling is one of the most important rebels, who, sword in hand, forced the people to fight against their king. As long as we had no horses, the prisoners were harnessed in front of the cannon, and they were afterwards sent aboard the ships of war. In two days we had taken eleven hundred men. The rebels looked ragged, and had no shirts on. Our Hessians marched like Hessians; they marched incorrigibly, and the English like the bravest and best of soldiers. They, therefore, lost more men than we. This was a lucky day for us. The rebels had a very advantageous position in the wood, and we had a very bad one in the village of Flatbush. At first they made good use of their position, burned down a house and set fire to the barns upon our outposts. But when we attacked them courageously in their hiding-places, they ran, as all mobs do.”

The editor of the Frankfort magazine, who publishes the above, remarks that many letters from Hessian officers have appeared in the newspapers; that