144 ROSENGARTEN—AMERICAN HISTORY. [April 6. 
It was, as Bancroft tells us, a Count Schaumburg who acted as 
the go-between of the British Ministry, who made unsuccessful 
offers of pay for troops to the Duke of Saxe Weimar, dated Nov. 
26, 1777: was that known to Franklin when he wrote his letter in 
the name of Count Schaumburg? No doubt he chose it in full 
consciousness that it would be familiar to his European readers, who 
would thoroughly enjoy seeing the English agent thus serving as a 
thin disguise for the Hessian prince, and the indignation excited 
by this clever and effective bit of satire would be directed alike 
against master and man, against prince and agent, together trading 
for soldiers. 
In the French service under Rochambeau there were many Ger- 
man soldiers, and Ratterman in Der Deutsche Pionter, Vol. xiii, 
1881, gives an account of them, notably the Zweibriicken regi- 
ment, of which two princes or counts of that name were respect- 
ively colonel and lieutenant-colonel. It is worth noting that 
Lafayette wrote to Washington of a visit to them in Zweibriicken 
long after the American war, when he met ‘‘ Old Knyp”’’ and offi- 
cers who had served both with and against him there. There 
was a battalion from Trier in the Saintonge regiment under Cus- 
tine, himself from Lothringen. ‘There were Alsatians and Loth- 
ringers in light companies attached to the Bourbonnais and Sois- 
sonnais regiments. ‘There were many Germans in the Duke de 
Lauzun’s cavalry legion, whose names are printed from the records 
preserved in Harrisburg. In the army that made part of d’Es- 
taing’s expedition against Savannah, in the autumn of 1779, there 
was an ‘‘ Anhalt” regiment, 600 strong; of individual German 
officers with Rochambeau there were Count Fersen, his chief of 
staff, Freiherr Ludwig von Closen Haydenburg, his adjutant, Capt. 
Gau, his chief of artillery, and a Strasburg Professor Lutz, his 
interpreter. The Count of Zwei-Briicken (Deux-Ponts) published 
his American Campaigns in Paris in 1786, and his pamphlet was 
translated and reprinted by Dr. Green, of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society. Count Stedingk and Count Fersen both took ser- 
vice with Sweden, the latter to fall a victim to a popular outbreak, 
the former to take part in the Peace of Paris in 1814. 
Von Closen returned to Europe, became an officer of the house- 
hold of Marie Antoinette, and died in 1830, at Zweibriicken. 
Custine rose to high command in the French Revolution only to 
end his days on the guillotine; his biography has been printed 
