sequence of the delay in receiving fifteen hundred
men, and of the abandonment of a scheme for obtaining
a few thousands more from Würtemberg, seems
to me too remote for serious consideration. Is there
any reason to suppose that Sir William would have
made a better use of the fifteen hundred German
soldiers he expected than of the twelve or fifteen thousand
he had already? The great king, as we have
seen, confined himself to small annoyances. One
authoritative word from him might probably have
sufficed to put a stop to the whole disgraceful
business.[1]
The march of the auxiliaries from their national headquarters to the sea can have been, at least after the first year, no cheerful or martial spectacle. The poor fellows travelled partially armed, escorted by picked men. The villages in which they slept were surrounded by a double chain of sentries.[2] If they went by the river Weser, a certain number of them had at most times, even when Prussia was not unusually troublesome, to march round her territory at Minden. We have seen how they were treated on the Rhine. For it was a peculiarity of these troops, that a regiment of them could hardly pass through any part
- ↑ Kapp's “Soldatenhandel,” pp. 147-177; Kapp's "Friedrich der Grosse und die Vereinigten Staaten,” part i. passim. Frederick subsequently encouraged the French court to enter into the American alliance, “Bancroft,” vol. x. chap. iii. In January, 1778, Schulenberg, Frederick's minister, wrote to Arthur Lee that the King of Prussia would not delay to acknowledge the independence of the United States so soon as France should have done so (Kapp, “Friedrich,” etc., p. 52). This promise was not fulfilled.
- ↑ MSS. of Regiment von Mirbach, in the Cassel Library.
