and Capt. Munro is sanguine in the belief we shall make a prize of her. Get everything in readiness to board her. There seems something awful in the preparation for an attack, and the immediate prospect of an action. She hauls up her courses and hoists English Colours. I take my station in the Cabin; where, remain not long before I hear the Huzza on deck in consequence of her striking. Send our boat for the Captain & his papers. She sailed from Kingston, Jamaica, upwards of 40 days since, in a fleet, and was bound to New York: Capt. William Small, Commander. She has ten men on board and four excellent four pounders. Her Cargo consists of 149 Puncheons, 23 Hogsheads, 3 Quarter Casks and 9 Barrels of Rum, and 20 Hogsheads Muscovado Sugar. Send two prize Masters and ten men on board, get the prisoners on board our Vessel, and taking the prize in tow, stand towards Egg Harbour. We hardly know what to do with the prize: the wind shifting a little we stand to the eastward. About 16th Keep an eastern course, to try to get her into our harbour if possible. Now we are terribly apprehensive of seeing a sail. sunset a sail seen from mast-head, which excites no small anxiety. off the Snow's hawser, &c.— however night coming on and seeing no more of said sail, pursue our course. Sound, 42 fathoms of water. . . 19th. The Snow in sight this morning; run along side and take her in tow again.... Lat. 40. 30. At this rate the West Indies will bring us up sooner than Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket. 49 fathoms. Have our Pistols hung up in the Cabin, to be in readiness for the prisoners, should they take it into their heads to rise upon the watch in the night.. 22nd. Sunday. Very foggy. What wind there is, ahead. — Weigh Anchor, and out oars. - A fair gentle breeze springs from the South. Pass through Bristol Ferry way with hard tugging about the middle of the afternoon: come to Anchor in the Bay, but where rendered uncertain by the fog having come up again. 23rd. Early, after breakfast, we set off again in the boat, with the Compass, being still surrounded with an excessive fog. Run ashore to the Eastward of Nayat Point, and mistake it for Connimicut: however, arrive at Providence about 11 o'clock, it having cleared off very pleasant. Thus ends our short, but tedious cruise. At sunset the Sloop and Snow arrive, firing 13 cannon each. Solomon Drowne, Journal of a Cruise in the Fall of 1780 in the PrivateSloop of War, Hope (Analectic press, New York, 1872), 3-18 passim. CHAPTER XXIX-THE BRITISH FORCES 66 178. Appeal to the Hessians sold by their Princes" (1776) BY HONORÉ GABRIEL RIQUETTI, COUNT DE MIRABEAU (TRANSLATED BY GEORGE N. HENNING, 1897) This spirited protest, by the French pamphleteer and later statesman of the French Revolution, reflects the opinion of thinking men in Europe on the English purchase of mercenary troops. - Bibliography of the Hessian question: Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, VII, 75-76; Lowell, Hessians in the Revolution; Channing and Hart, Guide, § 138. Quis furor iste novus? quo nunc, quo tenditis?— VIRG. RAVE Germans, what a brand of shame you allow to be marked on BRAVE your noble brows! What! can it be at the end of the eighteenth century that the nations of central Europe are the mercenary satellites of an odious despotism! What! those valorous Germans, who so fiercely defended their liberty against the conquerors of the world and braved the Roman armies, now, like the base Africans, are sold and hasten to shed their blood in the cause of tyrants! They suffer the SLAVE-TRADE to be carried on amongst them, their cities to be depopulated, their fields to be ravaged, so as to help overbearing rulers to lay waste another hemisphere. Will you share much longer in the stupid. blindness of your masters? - You, honorable soldiers, faithful and formidable maintainers of their power, of that power which was trusted to them only to protect their subjects, you are bartered away!-Ah! for what an employment, just gods !-Huddled together like flocks of sheep in the ships of foreigners, you cross the seas; you hasten through reefs and storms, to attack a people who have done you no harm, who are defending the most just of causes, who are setting you the noblest of examples. Ah! why do you not imitate that brave people, instead of striving to destroy them! They are breaking their fetters; they are fighting to maintain their natural rights and to guarantee their liberty; they are stretching out their arms to you; they are your brothers; they are doubly so nature made them such, and social ties have strengthened these sacred claims; more than half of this people is composed of your fellow-countrymen, of your friends, of your relatives. They have fled from tyranny to the uttermost parts of the world, and tyranny has pursued them even there; oppressors, equally avaricious and ungrateful, have forged fetters for them, and the worthy Americans have welded these fetters into swords to drive back their oppressors. — The New World then is going to count you in the number of the monsters hungering for gold and blood, who have ravaged it!— Germans, you whose most marked characteristic has always been fairness, do you not shudder at such a reproach? To these motives, of a nature to touch men, must one join the motives of an interest affecting equally slaves and free citizens? Do you know what nation you are going to attack? Do you realize the power of the fanaticism of liberty? It is the only fanaticism which is not odious, it is the only one which is worthy; but it is also the most powerful of all. You do not know it, O blind peoples, you who think yourselves free, while grovelling under the most hateful of all despotisms, the despotism which forces men to commit crimes! You do not know it, you whom the whim or the cupidity of a despot may arm against men who deserve well of all mankind, since they are defending its cause, and preparing a refuge for it!—O mercenary warriors, O satellites of tyrants, O enervate Europeans, you are going to fight men stronger, more industrious, more courageous, more active than you can be: they are inspired by a strong interest, you are led on by vile lucre; they are defending their property, and are fighting for their hearths; you are leaving yours, and are not fighting for yourselves. It is in the bosom of their country, in their native clime, aided by all the resources of home, that they are making war against hordes which the Ocean spewed forth, after having prepared their defeat: the most powerful and the most sacred motives urge on their valor, and summon victory in their train. Chiefs who scorn you while making use of you, will oppose in vain their harangues to the irresistible eloquence of liberty, of need, of necessity. In short, and to say all in one word, the cause of the Americans is just : heaven and earth condemn the one which you do not blush to uphold. O Germans, who can have infused in you this thirst of combat, this barbarous frenzy, this odious devotion to tyranny?—No, I will not compare you to those fanatical Spaniards, who destroyed for the sake of destroying, who bathed in blood, when nature, utterly drained, forced their insatiable cupidity to give way to a more atrocious passion; nobler sentiments, more excusable errors lead you astray. That faithfulness to your chiefs, which distinguished the Germans your ancestors, that habit of obeying, without stopping to reflect that there are duties more sacred than obedience and taking precedence of all oaths, that credulity which makes men yield to the influence of a small number of madmen or of the ambitious, those are your wrongs; but they will be crimes, if you do not check yourselves on the brink of the abyss. — Already those of your fellow-countrymen who have preceded you recognize their blindness; they are deserting, and the acts of kindness from those people whom they were recently slaughtering, and who treat them like brothers, now that they no longer see in their hands the executioner's sword, aggravate their remorse and double their repentance. Profit by their example, O soldiers; think of your honor, think of your rights. Have you not indeed some rights as well as your chiefs? — Yes, undoubtedly: it can not be repeated too often, men take precedence of princes, who, for the most part, are not worthy of such a name; leave to infamous courtiers, to impious blasphemers, the task of vaunting the royal prerogative, and its unbounded rights; but do not forget that all men were not made for one man; that there is an authority superior to all authorities; that he who orders a crime must not be obeyed, and that thus your conscience is the first of your chiefs. — Question that conscience; it will tell you that your blood should flow only for your fatherland, that it is atrocious to receive money to go to slaughter, several thousand leagues away, men who have no other relations with you than those which ought to win them your good will. She pretends to be carrying on a just war, this mother-country which is straining every nerve to destroy her children! She claims her rights, and will discuss them only with the thunderbolt of battle! But even if these rights were real, have you examined them? Is it for you to judge this dispute? Is it for you to pronounce the sentence? Is it for you to carry it out? Ah, after all, what matter these idle claims, so problematical and so contested? Man, in every country of the world, has the right to be happy. That is the first of laws, that is the first of claims: the founders of colonies do not go forth to make uncultivated lands fertile, to augment the glory and power of the mother-country, in order to be oppressed by her. Are they oppressed? then they have the right to shake off the yoke, because the YOKE is not made for man. But who has told you that the English had signed the decree of outlawry launched against the Americans? Brave Germans, you have been deceived; do not degrade by such a suspicion a nation which has produced great men and fine laws, which long nourished in her bosom the sacred fire of liberty, and which deserves, from these claims, consideration and respect. Alas! in the British Isles, as in the rest of the world, a small number of ambitious men stir up the people, and produce public calamities. The critical moment has arrived: England, unhappy nation, is at war with her brothers only because despotism, for several years, has been waging there a successful contest against liberty. Do not believe therefore that you are defending the cause of the English; you are fighting to increase the authority of a few ministers whom they abhor and scorn. Do you wish to know the true motives which put arms in your hands? Vain luxury, despicable expenditures have ruined the finances of the princes who govern you; their extortions have utterly drained their resources; they have too often deceived the confidence of their neighbors to be able to have recourse to them again. They would therefore have to give up that excessive luxury, those every-recurring whims, which are their most important occupation; they can not make up their minds to it, they will not do so. England, drained of men and money, is purchasing at great expense money and men; your princes seize eagerly this temporary and ruinous resource; they levy soldiers, they sell them, they deliver them: that is the employment of your arms; that is for what you are destined. Your blood will be the price of corruption and the plaything of ambition. This money which has just been acquired by trafficking in your lives, will pay shameful debts. or help to contract new ones. An avaricious usurer, a vile courtesan, a base actor, are going to receive these guineas given in exchange for your existence. O blind spendthrifts, who gamble with men's lives, and waste the fruits of their toil, of their sweat, of their substance, a tardy repentance, heart-rending remorse, will be your executioners, but will not relieve those nations which you trample upon; you will regret your husbandmen and their crops, your soldiers, your subjects; you will weep over the misfortunes which you will have wrought with your own hands, and which will involve you together with all your people. A formidable neighbor smiles at your blindness, and is preparing to take advantage of it; he is already forging the fetters with which he plans to load you; |