PREFACE.
The history of the German auxiliaries, who fought
for Great Britain in the Revolutionary War, has not
received from American writers the amount of attention
which its importance would seem to deserve.
Much has been made of the fact that seven thousand
French soldiers and nineteen thousand French
seamen assisted the United States in the siege of
Yorktown, but we have forgotten that a force of between
fifteen and twenty thousand Germans served for seven
years against us; that more than twenty-nine thousand
were brought to America for this purpose; that
more than twelve thousand never returned to
Germany. I know of no American historian but
Bancroft, who has made any thorough study of this
subject in the original authorities, and the general nature
of his work does not call on him, and, indeed, would
hardly permit him, to write the history of the
German troops in detail. Doctor George Washington
Greene has published interesting reviews of three of
Kapp's books, and the narrative of Baroness Riedesel
has been translated into English by William L. Stone,
