We Americans tend to think of Hessian mercenaries hired to fight on behalf of King George III in the American War of Independence as automaton auxiliaries in odd brass miter caps with funny upturned mustaches.
They are usually considered a brutal blunt instrument rented by the Crown to hammer the rebellious colonials. Troops were the primary cash crop for several German principalities, in a region that was still nearly a century from political unification. Hesse-Kassel was primary among them, and thus all German soldiers fighting on behalf of the British Empire in the American war were called Hessians. The Hessians are usually called mercenaries — including by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. But that’s not exactly correct. They were members of their states’ militaries, hired out by their state in exchange for subsidy payments by the British. This was not a new practice in Europe, and “Hessians” gained exceptional levels of combat experience fighting all over Europe on behalf of a variety of states and princes in the 18th Century.
For many of the soldiers, military service was simply a job; for a large percentage though, particularly among the officers, war was a profession, and a calling.
Captain Johann Ewald of the Hessian Field Jäger Corps might be thought of in modern terms as a military contractor — a highly professional career soldier with a well-honed expertise in light infantry operations and partisan warfare. In fact, he wrote the book on it. A couple of them.
Ewald was in nearly constant combat through the American Revolution, first seeing action in the Battle of White Plains in 1776, and closing out the war as part of Lord Charles Cornwallis’ command that surrendered at Yorktown in 1781. In between, he led vanguards and rear guards, skirmished repeatedly with American riflemen, protected foraging parties and battled partisans.
Joseph P. Tustin edited and annotated Ewald’s Diary of the American War: A Hessian Journal. He describes Ewald’s command:
Pamela Patrick White’s depiction of Jäger light infantry in action captures the makeup of Ewald’s detachments, supported by regular British or Scottish light infantry armed with muskets and bayonets to protect the slow-loading riflemen. The Jäger on the left is firing a massive wall gun, which would have been used as micro-artillery and to blast barricades and breach doors.
As David Ross wrote in The Journal of the American Revolution:
Unlike the disciplined line of a foot or grenadier regiment, the Jäger fought in a more scattered skirmish formation. Because of this, the Jäger had to be “good shots, agile, intelligent, and self-reliant.” This self-reliance allowed a member of the Jägerkorps the freedom to make decisions on his own during a skirmish, or during battle. Jäger were considered partisan troops. The duty of partisan troops was “to keep the enemy from his own main force…” This was a duty that Jäger would accomplish many times during the early parts of the American Revolution.
Don Troiani depicts Hessian Jägers in action in the 1776 campaign. This is exactly the kind of action Captain Johann Ewald led repeatedly in the American Revolution, chasing and harassing the retreating Continental Army. In fact, I am quite sure that Troiani is depicting Ewald specifically; the German officer had a glass eye (see below) and the left eye on this mounted officer is … off. It’s this kind of detail that makes Don Troiani such a brilliant military artist.
Ewald was a career soldier from his youth. He fought in the Seven Years War and lost his left eye in an admittedly stupid, wine-fueled duel with a fellow soldier. He was tough, highly professional and tactically innovative.
In addition to his American Revolution diary, Ewald wrote A Treatise on Partisan Warfare in 1785, which is highly regarded by military men to this day, and commands many plews at the trading post.
After the American war, Ewald returned to Germany, where he was praised for his service, but passed over for promotion, probably due to a lack of noble pedigree. So, as any good professional would, he took his services elsewhere, becoming a Major General in the Danish Army. His last war was the Napoleonic Wars. He died in 1813, and was buried with honors. The cemetery where his remains lay was blown up in a bombing raid during the World War II. Somehow it seems fitting that his bones were scattered by yet one more war.
A Hessian Jäger rifleman by Don Troiani.
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Prime & Load devoted their July 4 podcast to an exploration of the reality vs. the myth of the Hessians in North America — which is fitting, since the Declaration of Independence called King George III out for hiring them:
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
This is really excellent and I learned a lot from it.
Matthew Ilseman says
Interesting.
A lot of times in movies and such Hessians are portrayed as sorta proto-Nazis. Probably, not fair.
JimC says
Completely unfair and pretty silly.
The Black Tyrone says
examples?
Russ Lucas says
They gave us the headless horseman also
JimC says
Indeed.
The Black Tyrone says
As we get more distant from the Second World War and Germany’s capture by National Socialism, the uninformed largely though not exclusively youth, tend to use terms that had once carried an abhorrence. The Princes of Hesse Cassel sending often forcibly, their male subjects to fight for a king virtually none of them had any knowledge of do not deserve any association with the term Nazi. Keeping it light, I will not dwell on a certain political expediency to throw terms such as fascism and Nazi around which as we agree is absurd and dangerous exposing only their ignorance and cheapening the sacrifice of our “Greatest Generation”.
JimC says
For a long time there was a tendency in both popular and academic history to look for signs of a kind of German exceptionalism that portended the rise of the Nazis. Some people took it all the way back to Roman times. A notion that there has always been some sort of taint of “irrationalism” and authoritarianism in German political culture that created fertile soil. It’s bizarre determinism, but I suppose understandable in the effort to comprehend the catastrophe of the 1930s-40s.
The Black Tyrone says
Jim I agree. The German colonial experience or I should say specifically in German South West Africa now Namibia,involved a particularly brutal campaign and was by many historians even today, claimed as a precursor to Nazi theories of racial superiority embedded in the German psych. True or not the extermination of the Hereros and Nama during 1904-08 was so brutal, Germany could not raise native levies to resist The Union of South Africa’s advance of Botha’s forces. Conversely in East Africa, General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck had no such difficulty, his askaris “worshipped” him. Incidentally Hitler offered Germany’s national hero an ambassador post in 1935. The undefeated and never surrendered WW1 hero told the Fuhrer to go f–k himself. This is true. Incidentally Jim, the Schutruppe wore those wide brim hats you are enamored with. I recall this from your posts on those hard riding Rhodesians against the Metabele. Good to have an intelligent post exchange. Best … Black Tyrone.
JimC says
That’s why we love the campfire.
This post is on point: