Some 37,000 soldiers from six German principalities, collectively remembered as Hessians, entered service as British auxiliaries in the American War of Independence. At times, they constituted a third of the British army in North America, and thousands of them were imprisoned by the Americans. Despite the importance of Germans in the British war effort, historians have largely overlooked these men. Drawing on research in German military records and common soldiers letters and diaries, Daniel Krebs places the prisoners on center stage in "A Generous and Merciful Enemy, "portraying them as...
Some 37,000 soldiers from six German principalities, collectively remembered as Hessians, entered service as British auxiliaries in the American Wa...
