Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/81

 Rh from behind; secretly drew out a pistol, but only hit the grenadier in the arm, whereupon the latter treated him to three or four bayonet strokes.”

“Among the officers taken I did not find a single one who had been in foreign service. They are nothing but rebels and citizens settled here. Tailor Graul would play a considerable part here.” Colonel von Heeringen clearly considers it far more honorable to fight in other people's quarrels than in one's own. A man who had once been a mercenary could be more readily forgiven for being a rebel. “My Lord Stirling himself is only an échappé de famille, and does not pass for a lord in England. He looks as much like my Lord Granby as one egg does like another. General Putnam is a butcher by profession. I imagine him to be like Butcher Fischer at Rinteln. The rebels desert in great numbers, and it is nothing to see colonels, lieutenant-colonels, and majors come in with whole troops of men. The captured flag, which is made of red damask, with the motto, ‘Liberty,’ appeared with sixty men before Rall's regiment. They had all shouldered their guns upside down, and had their hats under their arms. They fell on their knees and begged piteously for their lives. No regiment is properly uniformed or armed. Every man has a common gun, such as the citizens in Hesse march out with at Whitsuntide. Stirling's regiment, however, was uniformed in blue and red, three battalions strong, and mostly composed of Germans recruited in Pennsylvania. They were tall, fine-looking fellows, and had extremely good English guns, with bayonets. This regiment met the English, and as the latter took them