Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/80

 rather than fear. It always takes them a quarter of an hour to load, and meanwhile they feel our balls and bayonets.” Among the prisoners taken by the Hessians were two generals—Sullivan and Stirling. Nothing can be more characteristic of the hatred and contempt felt at this time by the Hessian officers for the undisciplined troop of rebels to whom they were opposed, than Von Heeringen's account of these generals and of other officers of the American army. “John Sullivan was a lawyer, and previously a domestic servant, but a man of genius, whom the rebels will much regret. Among the prisoners are many so-called colonels, lieutenant-colonels, majors, and other officers, who, however, are nothing but mechanics, tailors, shoe-makers, wig-makers, barbers, etc. Some of them were soundly beaten by our people, who would by no means let such persons pass for officers. Sullivan was brought to me. I had him searched and found the original orders of General Washington on him; from which it appears that he had the best troops under his command, that everything depended on his holding the wood, and that he was eight thousand men strong. The English have one hundred and fifty killed and wounded” [three hundred and eighteen, says Sir William Howe]. “This they owe more to their disorderly attack than to the valor of the enemy. It looked horrible in the wood, as at least two thousand killed and wounded lay there. Colonel John, of the rebels, is dead. A grenadier took him prisoner and generously gave him his life, only telling him to go back to the battalion which was following, for the grenadier was a skirmisher. The colonel wanted to murder him, slyly,