LVII. CHAP. quish. It was still a nation of soldiers, whose valor had been proved in all the battlefields of Europe. In the former century the republic of Venice had employed them against the Turks, and they had taken part in the siege of Athens. The landgrave, Frederic the Second, was at that time about fifty six, and had ruled for nearly sixteen years. He had been carefully educated; but his nature was coarse and brutish and obstinate. The wife of his youth, a daughter of George the Second, was the mildest and gentlest of her race; yet she was forced to fly from his inhumanity to his own father for protection. At the age of fifty three he married again, but lived with his second consort on no better terms than with his first. The landgrave had been scrupulously educated in the Reformed church, of which the house of Hesse had ever proudly regarded itself as a bulwark; but he piqued himself on having disburdened his mind of the prejudices of the vulgar; sought to win Voltaire's esteem by doubting various narratives in the Bible; and scoffed alike at the Old Testament and the New. In his view, Calvinism had died out even in Geneva; and Luther, though commendable for having loved wine and women, was but an ordinary man; he therefore turned Catholic in 1749, from dislike to the plebeian simplicity of the established worship of his people. He had learnt to favor toleration, to abolish the use of torture, and to make capital punishments exceedingly rare; at the same time he was the coarse representative of the worst licentiousness of his age; fond of splendor and luxurious living; parading his vices publicly, with shameless indecorum. Having LVII. no nationality, he sought to introduce French modes CHAP. of life had his opera, ballet-dancers, masquerades during the carnival, his French playhouse, a cast-off French coquette for his principal mistress, a French superintendent of theatres for his librarian. But nothing could be less like France than his court; life in Cassel was spiritless; "nobody here reads," said Forster; "the different ranks are stiffly separated," said the historian, Müller. Birth or wealth alone had influence: merit could not command respect, nor talent hope for fostering care. To this man Faucitt delivered a letter from the British king. General Schlieffen, the minister with whom he was to conduct the negotiation, prepared him for unconditional acquiescence in every demand, by dwelling on the hazard of finding the landgrave in an unfavorable turn of mind, and describing him "as most exceedingly whimsical and uncertain in his humors and disposition;" at the same time he undertook to promise twelve thousand foot soldiers for service in America. The prince, who would not confess even to his own mind that he sold his subjects from avarice, professed a strong desire to force the rebels back to their duty, and grew so warm and so sanguine that he seemed inclined, in the cause of monarchy, to head his troops in person. This zeal augured immoderate demands: his first extortion was a sum of more than forty thousand pounds for hospital disbursements during the last war. The demand was scandalous; the account had been liquidated, paid, and closed; but the distress of the government compelled a reconsideration of the claim, and the tribute was enforced. CHAP. In conducting the bargain, the landgrave insisted on adhering to the beaten track of former conventions; and this predilection for precedents was not confined to mere formalities, but in every essential point was attended with an anxiety to collect and accumulate in the new treaty every favorable stipulation that had separately found its way into any of the old ones. The levy money appeared to be the same that was agreed upon with Brunswick; but as it was to be paid for the officers as well as for the men, the Hessian contract had an advantage of twenty per cent. The master stroke of Schlieffen was the settlement of the subsidy. In no former convention had that condition extended over a less period than four years; the British minister objected to a demand for six, believing that one campaign would terminate the war; the Hessian, therefore, with seeming moderation, accepted a double subsidy, to be paid from the signature of the treaty to its expiration. Precedents were also found for stipulating that the subsidy should be paid not as by the treaty with Brunswick in German crowns, but in crowns banco, which made a further considerable gain to the landgrave; and as the engagement actually continued in force for about ten years, it proved very far more onerous than any which England had ever before negotiated, affording a clear net profit to the landgrave on this item alone of five mil lions of our dollars. The taxes paid by the Hessians were sufficient to defray the pay rolls and all the expenses of the Hessian army; these taxes it had not been the custom to reduce; but on the present occasion, the landgrave, to give his faithful subjects proof of his paternal in LVII. clinations, most graciously suspended, from July to the CHAP. time of the return of his troops, one half of the ordinary contribution to his military chest. The other half was rigorously exacted. It was stipulated that the British pay, which was higher than the Hessian, should be paid into the treasury of Hesse; and this afforded an opportunity for peculation in various ways. The pay rolls, after the first month, invariably included more persons than were in the service; with Brunswick, the price to be paid for the killed and wounded was fixed; the landgrave introduced no such covenant, and seemed left with the right to exact full pay for every man who had ever once been mustered into the British service, whether active or dead. The British minister urged the indispensable necessity that the Hessian soldiers should be allowed as ample and extensive enjoyment of their pay as the British; "I dare not agree to any express or limited stipulation on this head," answered Schlieffen, "for fear of giving offence to the landgrave." "They are my fellow-soldiers," said the landgrave; “and do I not mean to treat them well?" The sick and the wounded of the Brunswick troops were to be taken care of in the British hospitals; for the Hessians, the landgrave claimed the benefit of providing a hospital of his own. The British ministers would gladly have clothed the mercenary troops in British manufactures; but the landgrave would not allow this branch of his profits to be impaired. It had been thought in England that the landgrave could furnish no more than five thousand foot; LVII. CHAP. but the price was so high, that, after contracting for twelve thousand, he further bargained to supply four hundred Hessian chasseurs, armed with rifle barrelled guns; and then three hundred dismounted dragoons; and then three corps of artillery; taking care for every addition to make a corresponding increase in the double subsidy. To escape impressment, his subjects fled into Hanover; King George, who was also elector of Hanover, was therefore called upon "to discourage the elopement of Hessian subjects into that country, when the demand for men to enable the landgrave to fulfil his engagement with Great Britain was so pressing." It was also thought essential to march the troops through the electorate to their place of embarkation, for it was not doubted, "if the Hessians were to march along the left bank of the Weser, through the territories of Prussia and perhaps half a score of petty princes, one half of them would be lost on the way by desertion." The other half went willingly, having been made to believe that America was the land of golden spoils, where they would have free license to plunder, and the unrestrained indulgence of their pas sions. Every point in dispute having been decided according to the categorical demands of the landgrave, the treaty was signed on the thirty first day of January. This would have seemed definitive; but the payment of the double subsidy was to begin from the day of the signature of the treaty; the landgrave, therefore, put back the date of the instrument to January the fifteenth. His troops were among the best in Europe; their |