186 ROSENGARTEN—AMERICAN HISTORY. [April 6, 
ous regiments to America, and twelve of them were heads of fami- 
lies. Reuber’s diary shows that of these thirty only two died here 
and one remained in America, A large proportion of the so-called 
Hessians were volunteers from other parts of Germany, attracted 
by the high pay and the good care given by the British to their 
soldiers. In those days of distress and need, Germans were only 
too glad to escape compulsory military service in Prussia and other 
German States by volunteering in the regiments raised for the 
American war and its prospect of a new home. 
Ditfiirth demonstrates the utter falsity of the pretended letter of 
the Prince of Hesse Cassel, dated Rome, February 8, 1778, now 
accepted as one of Franklin’s characteristic and clever bits of 
satire directed against Great Britain and its allies. It seems to have 
been revived in the German press in 1847 through an American 
‘‘historian,’’ Eugene Regnauld, of the St. Louis Reveille, and 
printed by Dr. Franz Léher, Professor and Member of the Royal 
Bavarian Academy of Sciences, in his A/story of Germans in 
America, Leipsic and Cincinnati, 1847, as an interesting, if doubt- 
ful, contribution to the contemporary documents of the American 
Revolution. A careful answer was supplied in the Grenzboten. of 
1858 (No. 29) by the Keeper of the Archives at Cassel, in copies or 
extracts from the MS. correspondence of the Landgraf Frederick 
II with Heister and Knyphausen in reference to the Hessian losses 
at Trenton. In fact, the regiments that suffered most there now 
make that battle part of their record of honor. It is one of their 
traditions that Ewald first threw aside the powdered queues and 
heavy boots of the Hessians, clothing his Yager battalion in a fash- 
ion suited to American climate and conditions, and thus set the 
example followed with great advantage in the Napoleonic wars. 
Other Hessian officers who had served here, notably Miinchhausen, 
Wiederhold, Ochs, Emmerich, Ewald and others, applied the les- 
sons they had learned here and became distinguished among the 
soldiers who showed great ability in restoring to Germany its inde- 
pendence of French mastery. ‘The reputation brought home by 
the Hessians who served in America led Frederick the Great of 
Prussia to try to secure for his army the services of their officers, 
particularly of the Light Infantry and Yagers. Many of them won 
distinction in the wars with Napoleon against the French officers 
who had also served against them in America. The army lists of 
France, Germany and England are full of the names of those who 
