LVII. should get a little better into train. Moreover the CHAP. prince bishop of Liege and the elector of Cologne consented to shut their eyes to the presence of English agents, who also had recruiting stations in Neuwied and at Frankfort. The undertaking was prohibited by the laws of nations and of the empire; the British ministers therefore instructed their diplomatic representative at the small courts to give all possible aid to the execution of the service, but not officially to implicate his government. In this way thousands of levies were obtained to fill up British regiments, which had been thinned by battle, sickness, and desertion. But the wants of the ministry required more considerable negotiations with German princes. It was hoped that the duke of Brunswick, if well disposed, could supply at least three thousand men, and the landgrave of Hesse Cassel five thousand; in November, 1775, Suffolk thus instructed Colonel Faucitt, the British agent: "Your point is to get as many as you can; I own to you my own hopes are not very sanguine in the business you are going upon; therefore the less you act ministerially before you see a reasonable prospect of succeeding, the better. Get as many men as you can; it will be much to your credit to procure the most moderate terms, though expense is not so much the object in the present emergency as in ordinary cases. Great activity is necessary, as the king is extremely anxious; and you are to send one of two messengers from each place, Brunswick and Cassel, the moment you know whether troops can be procured or not, without waiting for the proposal of terms." There was no occasion for anxiety; more than LVII. CHAP. one little prince hurried to offer troops. "I shall regard it as a favor," wrote the Prince of Waldeck, "if the king will accept a regiment of six hundred men, composed of officers and soldiers, who, like their prince, will certainly demand nothing better than to find an opportunity of sacrificing themselves for his majesty." The offer was eagerly accepted. On the twenty fourth of November, Faucitt, having received his instructions at Stade, set off on his mission; but the nights were so dark and the roads so bad, that it required five days to reach Brunswick. Charles, the reigning duke, was at that time about sixty three. During the forty years of his rule, the spendthrift had squandered a loan of twelve millions. of thalers, beside the millions of his revenue, on his Italian opera, his corps of French dancers, his theatre, journeys, mistresses, and gaming, his experiments in alchemy, but most of all on his little army, which now, in his decrepit age, it was his chief pride to review. Within the last three years, a new prime minister had improved the condition of his finances; at the same time Prince Ferdinand, the heir apparent, had been admitted as co-regent. In 1764 Ferdinand had married Augusta, a sister of George the Third, receiving with her a dowry of eighty thousand pounds beside an annuity of eight thousand more, chargeable on the revenues of Ireland and Hanover. His educa tion had been in part confided to Jerusalem, a clergyman who neither had the old fashioned faith, nor the modern want of it; and his governor had been indulgent to the vices of his youth. From Frederic of Prussia, his uncle, he adopted not disinterested nationality, but scepticism, with which he mixed LVII. up enough of philanthropic sentiment to pass for a CHAP. free thinker with ideas of liberalism and humanity. Stately in his appearance, a student of gestures and attitudes before the glass, he was profuse of bows and compliments, and affectedly polite. The color of his eye was a most beautiful blue, and its expression friendly and winning. He himself and those about him professed the strongest sense of the omnipotence of legitimate princes; he loved to rule, and required obedience; his wish was a command. Indif ferent to his English wife, he was excessively sensual; keeping a succession of mistresses from the second year of his marriage to his death. He had courage, and just too much ability to be called insignificant; it was his pride to do his day's work properly; and he introduced economy into the public administration. Devoted to pleasure, yet indefatigable in labor, neither prodigal, nor despotic, nor ambitious, his great defect was that he had no heart, so that he was not capable of gratitude or love, nor true to his word, nor fixed in his principles, nor gifted with insight into character, nor possessed of discernment of military worth. He was a good secondary officer, priggishly exact in the mechanism of a regiment, but wholly unfit to plan a campaign or lead an army. On the evening of Faucitt's arrival, he sought a conference with the hereditary prince, to whom he bore from the king a special letter. Ferdinand gave unreservedly his most cordial approbation to the British proposal, and promised his interposition with his father in its favor. The reigning duke, although he regretted to part with troops which were the only amusement of his old age, in the distressed state of CHAP. his finances, gave his concurrence with all imaginable facility. LVII. It now remained for Faucitt to chaffer with Ferrance, the Brunswick minister, on the price of the troops, which were to be ready early in the spring, to the number of four thousand infantry and three hundred light dragoons. These last were not wanted, but Faucitt accepted them, "rather than appear difficult." Sixty German dollars for each man was demanded as levy money; but thirty crowns banco, or about thirty four and a half of our dollars, was agreed upon. Every soldier who should be killed, was to be paid for at the rate of the levy money; and three wounded were to be reckoned as one killed. The date of the English pay was the next subject in dispute: Brunswick demanded that it should begin three months before the march of the troops, but acquiesced in the advance of two months pay. On the question of the annual subsidy a wrangling was kept up for two days; when it was settled at sixty four thousand five hundred German crowns from the date of the signature of the treaty, and twice that sum for two years after the return of the troops to their own country. Von Riedesel, a colonel in the duke's service, was selected for the command, and received the rank of a major general. He was a man of uprightness, honor, and activity, enterprising, and full of resources; fond of his profession, of which he had spared no pains to make himself master. During the war, Brunswick furnished altogether five thousand seven hundred and twenty three mercenaries; a number equal to more than one sixth of the LVII. able-bodied men in the principality. As a conse- CHAP. quence, two of the battalions destined for the British service were a regular force; the rest, in disregard of promises, were eked out by undisciplined levies, old men, raw boys, and recruits kidnapped out of remote countries. It is just to inquire if conduct like that of Ferdinand was followed by a happy life and an honorable death. His oldest son died two years before him; his two other sons were idiotic and blind; his oldest daughter was married to the brutal prince of Würtemberg, and perished in 1788. The same intimate relations, which led George the Third to begin the purchase of mercenary troops with his brother-in-law, made him select Ferdinand's younger daughter Caroline,—a woman brought up in the lewd atmosphere of her father's palace, accustomed to the company of his mistresses, and environed by licentiousness from her childhood, to become, at the ripe age of twenty seven, the wife of the prince of Wales, and eventually a queen of Great Britain. As to the prince himself, in a battle where his incompetence as a commander assisted to bring upon Prussia a most disastrous defeat, his eyes were shot away; a fugitive, deserted by mistress and friends, he refused to take food, and so died. From Brunswick Faucitt hurried to Cassel, where his coming was expected by one who knew well the strait to which the British ministry was reduced. The town rises beautifully at the foot of a well wooded hill and overlooks a fertile plain. The people of Hesse preserve the hardy and warlike character of its ancestral tribe, which the Romans could never van |