20 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



especially the destruction of a church and burying-ground in the 

 construction of a fort near Huntington, where the tombstones were 

 used for ovens and stamped the bread with their inscriptions. 



Upon his return to England after the disbandment of the 

 British forces, Thompson was made Colonel on half-pay for life, 

 but there was no chance to make use of his military talents in 

 the British service. Accordingly he determined to seek his fortune 

 elsewhere and September 17, 1783, embarked at Dover for the 

 continent. Upon the same boat happened to be Henry Laurens, 

 a former President of the American Congress, recently released 

 from the Tower, and the historian Gibbon who in his letters com- 

 plains that the three spirited horses of "Mr. Secretary, Colonel, 

 Admiral, Philosopher Thompson," added to the distress of the 

 Channel passage. 



He intended to go to Vienna to volunteer in the Austrian army 

 against the Turks, but a curious chance diverted him to Bavaria 

 where he spent much of his life and rose to the highest attain- 

 able position. Here again, as in New Hampshire, he owed the 

 beginning of his good fortune to his handsome appearance on 

 horseback at a military parade. At Strasburg, Prince Maximilian 

 of Deux-Ponts, afterwards Elector and King of Bavaria, but 

 then major-general in the French service, while reviewing the 

 troops noticed among the spectators an officer in a foreign uni- 

 form, mounted on a fine English horse, and spoke to him. When 

 Thompson told him that he came from serving in the American 

 war, the Prince replied that some of the French officers in his 

 suite must have fought against him, pointing to the French of- 

 ficers who had been in the American Army at Yorktown. Be- 

 coming interested in his conversation, the Prince invited Colonel 

 Thompson to dine with him and to meet his late foes. At the table 

 maps were produced and they discussed the campaign until late, 

 and the talk was resumed on the following day. The Prince was 

 so taken with him that he gave him a cordial letter to his uncle, 

 the Elector Palatine, Reigning Duke of Bavaria. He spent five 

 days in Munich with the Elector who offered him such induce- 

 ments to establish himself in Bavaria that, after visiting Vienna 



