more than three hundred of the ablest men, and their places were not supplied.

Of the men whom the duke of Brunswick offered, Faucitt writes: "I hardly remember to have ever seen such a parcel of miserable, ill-looking fellows collected together." Only two hundred and twenty-two of them were accepted.

To clear himself from debts bequeathed him by his ancestors, the margrave of Brandenburg-Anspach, on moderate terms, furnished two regiments of twelve hundred men, beside a company of eighty-five yagers, all of the best quality, and kept his engagement with exceptional scrupulousness.

In the former year a passage had everywhere been allowed to the subsidized troops. The enlightened mind of Germany, its philosophers, its poets, began to revolt at the hiring of its sons for armies waging war against the rights of man; the universal feeling of its common people was a perpetual persuasion against enlistments, and an incentive to desertion. Throughout Germany "the news of the capture of German troops by Washington in 1776 excited a universal jubilee.”* The subsidized princes forced into the service not merely vagabonds and loose fellows of all kinds, but any unprotected traveller or hind on whom they could lay their hands. The British agents became sensitive to the stories that were told of them. The rulers of the larger states felt the dignity of the empire insulted. Frederic of Prussia showed his disgust as openly as possible. The court of Vienna concerted with the elector of Mentz and the elector of Treves "to throw a slur" on the system. At Mentz, the yagers of Hanau who came first down the Rhine were stopped, and eight of them rescued by the elector's order as his subjects or soldiers. From the troops of the landgrave of Hesse eighteen were removed by the commissaries of the ecclesiastical prince of Treves. At Coblentz, Metternich, the active young representative of the court of Vienna, in the name of Maria Theresa and Joseph II., reclaimed their subjects and deserters.

The regiments of Anspach could not be trusted to carry ammunition or arms, but were driven by a company of yagers well provided with both, and ready to nip a mutiny in the

* Niebuhr's Geschichte des Zeitalters der Revolution, i., 75 and 76.

bud. Yet eighteen or twenty succeeded in deserting. When the rest reached their place of embarkation at Ochsenfurt on the Main, the regiment of Bayreuth began to hide themselves in some vineyards. The yagers, who were picked marksmen, were ordered to fire among them, by which some of them were killed. They avenged themselves by putting a yager to death. The margrave of Anspach, summoned by express, rode to the scene in the greatest haste, leaving his watch on his table, and without a shirt to change. The presence of their "land's father" overawed them; they acknowledged their fault, and submitted to his reprimands. Four of them he threw into irons, and ordered all to the boats. Assuming in person the office of driver, he marched them through Mentz in defiance of the elector, administered the oath of fidelity to the king of England at Nymwegen, and never left his post till, at the end of March, in the presence of Sir Joseph Yorke, he in person delivered at S'cravendell his children, whose service he had sold. There "the margrave brought the men on board himself, went through the ships with them, marked their beds, gave out every order which was recommended to him, and saw it executed, with but little assistance, indeed, from his own officers." The number of recruits and reinforcements obtained in these ways amounted to no more than thirty-five hundred and ninety-six.

Three thousand men had been expected from the duke of Würtemberg, who had been in England in search of a contract. "But the inability of the duke to supply any troops was soon discovered, and the idea, though not without great disappointment, laid aside." The "Catholic princes of the empire discouraged the service." The young profligate, who was prince of Anhalt-Zerbst, alone caught at the overture, which found him engaged with three other princes of his family on a hunting expedition. They had billeted six hundred dogs upon the citizens of Dessau; entranced by the occasion, he wrote in strange French: "At the first crack of the huntsman's whip or note of his hunting-horn, the dogs came together like troops at the beat of the drum, and they began to run down the beasts of the forest; it would not be bad if we could run down the Americans like that." He did not know that

the wild huntsman of revolution was soon to wind his bugle, and run down these princely dealers in men.

In narrating these events, I have followed exclusively the letters and papers of the princes and ministers who took part in the transactions. They prove the law, which all induction confirms, that the transmission of uncontrolled power, visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, inevitably develops corruptness and depravity. The despotism of man over man brings a curse on whatever family receives it.

The new German levies, except the Brunswick and Hanau recruits and four companies of Hanau yagers which went to Quebec, were used to reinforce the army under Howe. From Great Britain and Ireland, the number of men who sailed for New York before the end of the year was three thousand two hundred and fifty-two; for Canada, was seven hundred and twenty-six.

In America recruiting stations for the British army were established. In a few months Delancey of New York enlisted about six hundred, and Cortland Skinner of New Jersey more than five hundred men. In the course of the winter commissions were issued for imbodying six thousand five hundred men in thirteen battalions; and before the end of May more than half that number was obtained; but only a small proportion of them were natives of America. The service of two thousand French Canadians was called for and expected.

The deficiency was to be supplied by the employment of the largest possible number of savages, for which Germain issued his instructions with almost ludicrous minuteness of detail; and "the king, after considering every information that could be furnished, gave particular directions for every part of the disposition of the forces in Canada." It was their hope to employ bands of wild warriors along all the frontier. The king's peremptory orders were sent to the north-west to "extend operations;" and among those whose "inclination for hostilities" was no more to be restrained were enumerated "the Ottawas, the Chippeways, the Wyandots, the Shawnees, the Senecas, the Delawares, and the Pottawatomies." Joseph Brant, the Mohawk, roused his countrymen to clamor for war under leaders of their own, who would indulge them in their

excesses and take them wherever they wished to go. Humane British and German officers in Canada foresaw that their cruelty would be unrestrained, and from such allies augured no good to the service.* But the policy of Germain was unexpectedly promoted by the release of La Corne Saint-Luc, the most ruthless of partisans, now in his sixty-sixth year, but full of vigor and more relentless from age. He had vowed eternal vengeance on "the beggars" who had kept him captive; and Germain extended favor to the leader who above all others was notorious for brutal inhumanity. †

Relying on Indian mercenaries to break up the communication between Albany and Lake George by the terror of their raids, the secretary drew out the plan of the northern campaign in concert with Burgoyne, who was seeking his patronage and friendship" by assurances of "a solid respect and sincere personal attachment." Neither of them would admit a doubt of the triumphant march of the army from Canada to Albany. To extend the success through all New York, Saint-Leger was selected by the king to conduct an expedition by way of Lake Ontario for the capture of Fort Stanwix and the Mohawk valley; and orders were given to rally at Niagara the thousand savages who were to be of the party. These preparations, Germain assured the house of commons, would be sufficient to finish the war in the approaching campaign.

Parliament in February authorized the grant of letters to private ships to make prizes of American vessels; and, by an act which described American privateersmen as pirates, suspended the writ of habeas corpus with regard to prisoners taken on the high seas. The congress of the United States, after talking of a lottery and a loan in Europe, fell back upon issues of paper money. Lord North found ample resources in new taxes, exchequer bills, and excise duties, a profitable lottery, a floating debt of five millions sterling, and a loan of five millions more. In a sermon before the Society for Propagating the Gospel, Markham, the archbishop of York, not doubting the conquest of the colonies, reflected on their "ideas of savage liberty," and recommended a reconstruction

* Riedesel's journal, written for the duke of Brunswick. MS.

Tryon to Germain, 8 May 1777.

of their governments on the principle of complete subordination to Great Britain. "These," cried Chatham, "are the doctrines of Atterbury and Sacheverell." They were the doctrines of James II., and yet they were adopted by Thurlow, as the fit rule for governing British colonies in America.

Some voices in England pleaded for the Americans. The war with them, so wrote Edmund Burke to the sheriffs of Bristol, is "fruitless, hopeless, and unnatural;" the earl of Abingdon added, "on the part of Great Britain, cruel and unjust." "Our force," replied Fox to Lord North, "is not equal to conquest; and America cannot be brought over by fair means while we insist on taxing her." Burke harbored a wish to cross the channel and seek an interview with Franklin; but the friends of Rockingham refused their approval. Near the end of April, Hartley went to Paris to speak with Franklin of peace and reunion, and received for answer that England could never conciliate the Americans but by conceding their independence. "We are the aggressors," said Chatham, on the thirtieth of May, in the house of lords; "instead of exacting unconditional submission from the colonies, we ought to grant them unconditional redress. Now is the crisis, before France is a party. Whenever France or Spain enter into a treaty of any sort with America, Great Britain must immediately declare war against them, even if we have but five ships of the line in our ports; and such a treaty must and will shortly take place, if pacification be delayed."

The advice of Chatham was rejected by the vote of nearly four fifths of the house; but, with all her resources, England labored under insuperable disadvantages. She had involved herself in a violation of the essential principle of English liberty; her chief minister wronged his own convictions in continuing the war; and it began to be apparent that France would join with America.