Page:The Hessians and the other German auxiliaries of Great Britain in the revolutionary war.djvu/317

might have been expected. It was proportionally large among the prisoners of war. The army that surrendered at Saratoga in October, 1777, numbered five thousand seven hundred and ninety-one men, of whom two thousand four hundred and thirty-one were Germans. From this army six hundred and fifty-five Englishmen and one hundred and sixty Germans had deserted by the 1st of April, 1778. There is no doubt that continual efforts were made to induce these and other prisoners to desert and enlist in the American army. Washington was very much opposed to this system. On the 27th of November, 1776, he writes to the President of Congress: “By a letter from the Board of War on the subject of an exchange, they mention that several of the prisoners in our hands have enlisted. It is a measure, I think, that cannot be justified, though the precedent is furnished on the side of the enemy; nor do I conceive it good in point of policy. But as it has been done, I shall leave it with Congress to order them to be returned or not, as they shall judge fit.”^[1] And again, on the 30th, he expresses the same opinion to the Board of War, and adds: “Before I had the honor of yours on this subject, I had determined to remonstrate to General Howe on this head. As to those few, who have already enlisted, I would not have them again withdrawn and sent in, because they might be subjected to punishment; but I would have the practice discontinued in future.”^[2]

1. This letter is not given by Sparks, from whose edition the other quotations from Washington's writings are made. This is from an old London edition of “Washington's Official Letters.”
2. Washington, vol. iv. p. 196.