1900.] ROSENGARTEN—AMERICAN HISTORY. 147 
public collections. In the meantime efforts could be made to print 
such items of these catalogues as are new, and to enlist the help of 
private owners of papers of the kind in securing copies to use in 
printing in part or in whole for historical students. 
There is no better example of the interest in such material than 
the letters of Mme. Riedesel. Printed in Berlin in 1800, and again 
in 1801, they first became known to English readers through por- 
tions of them printed by Gen. Wilkinson in his J/emoirs, and re- 
printed in Silliman’s Zour in Canada. In Germany they were 
reprinted in 1827, and again in 1881. 
The original edition was intended only for the family, and Gen. 
Riedesel himself died in 1800, before it appeared. His widow 
survived until 1808. Her daughters ‘‘ Canada” and ‘‘ America’’ 
perpetuate in their names their place of birth. The only son died 
in 1854, and with a grandson the last of the family ended. Amer- 
ican readers will always find interest in Mme. Riedesel’s simple 
narrative of her life here. Mme. Riedesel’s Ze¢ters were first 
issued in 1799 in a privately printed edition for the family and 
their friends, and regularly published in 1800; the latest German 
edition is that published in Tiibingen in 1881, in which the letters 
of Riedesel, together with brief biographies of husband and wife, 
and an account of their children are given. It is stated in the 
Preface that of the 4300 Brunswick soldiers led by Riedesel from 
Germany to America only 2600 returned home with him. Of the 
1700 lost to their native country many were of course a gain for 
America. Riedesel died on January 5, 1800, after a harsh expe- 
rience in the Napoleonic wars. His wife died on March 29, 1808; 
their only son died in 1854, and the daughter ‘‘ Canada’’ died in 
childhood ; the daughter ‘‘ America ’’ married and left children. 
General Stryker in the Appendix to his story of the Battle of 
Trenton prints (on pp. 396, etc.) the pretended letter from the 
Landgraf of Hesse, in which there is mention of the losses at 
Trenton, and at p. 401 Gen. Heister’s report of that battle, and on 
p- 403 the real letter written by the Prince of Hesse to Knyphausen, 
dated Cassel, 16th June, 1777, in which he speaks of the painful 
shock of the news, and directs a court of inquiry to investigate 
and a court-martial to try those responsible, and another of April 
23, 1779, insisting on a detailed explanation of the captains and 
others as to the finding of the original court ; these proceedings 
continued and a final verdict was arrived at in New York in Jan- 
