The Hessian soldiers, composed of a larger proportion of
natives than the armies of most German princes, was as good as any other of its
time. Karl VII of Bavaria, visiting Hessians in his service in October, 1744,
noted in his diary, 'The fine appearance and smartness of these troops cannot
be surpassed . . . one could not see better.' On many battlefields the Hessians
'held the sum of things for pay': at Rocoux (11 October 1746) against the
French 'the Hessian Regiment of Mansbach, having stood their ground to the
last… refused quarter, so that few of them escaped'. In both 1745 and 1756
Hessian troops were brought to Britain to repel threatened French and Scottish
invasions. Guibert, seeing Hessians and Hannoverians garrisoned at Hanau in
1773 wrote, 'Le bataillon Hessois, surtout, m'a paru beau et bien tenu.'
In the Seven Years War the British alliance cost Hessen
dearly. In 1756 the French army under Richelieu broke into Germany, and,
defeating the Duke of Cumberland at Hastenbeck, occupied Hessen, making it a
theatre of war for the succeeding five campaigns. The French imposed heavy
contributions. A tribute of 850,000 talers was demanded in 1757 in an attempt
to break the alliance with Britain. Since this failed of its purpose, 500,000
more were demanded each year from 1759 to 1761. A smaller sum was levied in 1762.
In addition the French requisitioned grain for their soldiers and hay for their
animals. Both the main towns, Kassel and Marburg, were besieged, taken, and
retaken many times. Marburg's famous Elisabethkirche, a centre of pilgrimage
before the Reformation, was used as a granary by the occupying French army. The
ancient town changed hands fifteen times, the castle on the heights above,
seven times.
The effect of a prolonged war in Hessen, with French levies
and British subsidies, was to make the Landgraf more independent of the Hessian
Parliament (or, more accurately, Estates), the Landstände, which was burdened with
making good the losses to the country out of its own sources of revenue. The
subsidies, however, flowed into the war treasury (Kriegskasse), which the
Landgraf s officials controlled and administered. Thus the Landgraf became rich
while the Landstände lost the traditional power of the purse over their
sovereign. A British military historian notes, it was a curious fact that the
British Parliament in its reluctance to create a large British army, for fear
of military power in the hands of the monarch, helped German princes in their
struggle against their own Parliaments by making it possible and profitable for
the princes to maintain large forces on hire to the British.'
The Hessian corps fought throughout the campaigns of the Seven
Years War. Ferdinand of Brunswick, commander of 'His Britannic Majesty's Army
in Germany', regarded them as more able to withstand the hardships of war than
any other contingent. Despite its name this army contained more Hannoverians
and Hessians than British troops, who only appeared in September, 1758. Of
total strength in 1760 of 90,000, some 37,800 were Hannoverians, 24,400
Hessians, 22,000 British, 9,500 Brunswickers, and there were some lesser
contingents. Yet it succeeded in tying down double its number of French troops,
a service of inestimable value both to British conquests overseas and to
Frederick of Prussia in his struggle against a European coalition. When
Frederick heard of the conclusion of an Anglo-Hessian subsidy treaty for
additional men in early 1759 he wrote to his minister in London, 'C'est avec
bien de la satisfaction que j'ai appris par votre rapport ordinaire du 16 de ce
mois la conclusion du nouveau traite de subside avec le cour de Hesse.' In both
1759 and 1778 Frederick regarded Hessen-Kassel as having an essential role in
the defence of his western flank.
With the fighting going on in Hessen, Hessian soldiers were
sorely tempted to make off home to see how wives and sweethearts, or livestock
and crops, were faring. In 1762 some 111 cavalry and 2,196 infantrymen deserted
out of a contingent of 24,000. The strain of maintaining this large corps fell
heavily on the small state. By August 1761 the Landgraf informed Colonel
Clavering, British representative at his court, that it would be impracticable
to get more recruits if the war continued for another year. Recruiting officers
sent to Hamburg, Lübeck and Bremen picked up only deserters and vagabonds,
who were no sooner enlisted than they deserted again. The corps could hardly be
kept up to strength until the Landgraf was once again master of his own
country. Hessian subalterns and rank and file for the last campaign were
sixteen- and seven teen-year-olds.
This mainly German army, by tying down French strength,
enabled Britain to conquer her first empire overseas. British subsidies were
well spent. By contrast the French who paid for the Duke of Württemberg's
corps to serve with the Imperial Army against Prussia got a rabble. Duke Karl
Eugen had introduced Prussian recruiting methods to enlist his troops, and in
spring and summer of 1757 thousands of young men were forcibly pressed into
service. Badly trained and brutally treated, they deserted in droves and were
routed by Frederick of Prussia at Leuthen. Only about 1,900 of some 6,000
returned to Württemberg months later.
The hardiness of the Hessian folk fitted them to endure the
rigours of military service. A young German traveller noted in the 1780s that
the men were stout and strongly built, and matched the country, which was rough
and wild, abounding in woods and hills. The air was cold but wholesome, the
food not luxurious but nourishing. Not only were the young Hessians of sturdy
limb, but from early years they were mentally prepared for the soldier's life:
to the use of formidable
weapons; so when he has reached the size necessary to take a place in the
valiant ranks, he is quickly formed into a soldier.
Proportionately the Hessian army was the largest in Germany.
In 1730, in peacetime, some 14,000 men were under arms, roughly one in every
nineteen of the population of a quarter million. Prussia had only one of every
twenty-three of her people under arms. One commentator felt this was too many:
The people of this
country are numerous and warlike, being disciplin'd and train'd, perhaps more
than what is for the good of the Country. The Prince might employ them a great
deal better in making them labour the ground, and take to useful trades.
The Landgrafs would have denied this. The army was the
country's greatest source of revenue, its 'Peru' as Wilhelm VIII called it.
Although the chief tax in Hessen was the military Kontribution, internal
revenues alone could not pay for such forces. Kriegskasse accounts for 1742, a
good year for subsidies but one in which a corps had to be maintained in the
field, show that without subsidies from Britain of 933,000 talers, the state
would have had a deficit of 445,000. With those subsidies it had a surplus even
greater, 488,000 talers. In the years from 1730 to. 1750 the subsidy payments totalled
some 8.3 million talers (£1.25 millions). The total revenue in taxes in that
period was not much over 20 million talers.
Despite the country's warlike constitution, the transition
from the old-fashioned levy of armed men to a modern state army, financed by
taxes collected by bureaucrats and recruited systematically, was only gradual.
Throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, the old duties of the
Hessian farmer to quarter both horse and man and to provide them with
sustenance were commuted into cash payments which were used to build barracks.
The requirement to provide horses and wagons for the army's train also became a
cash duty called Heerwagengelder. The obligation to provide haulage for the
transport, Vorspanndienst, was only reckoned as a set payment after it proved
too much of a burden in the Seven Years War. After this war Hessian troops were
supplied for the first time, not directly by farmers in kind, but by magazines
erected on the model of the French ones seen in Hessen.
The feudal obligation of certain parties to provide horse
and weapons became submerged in the more universal requirement of military
service. In 1762 the new Landgraf Friedrich II divided Hessen on the Prussian
model into recruiting cantons, one for each regiment. Recruiting by violence
was forbidden and large elements of the population were exempted, either by
paying taxes or by profession, from being called up. Certain towns like Kassel,
Marburg, and Ziegenhain were exempt from the cantons, although the artillery
and the Guards regiments could draw volunteers from them. Propertied farmers,
apprentices, salt workers, miners, domestic servants, students, and other
important workers and taxpayers were also exempt, very much in accord with
mercantilist principles of preserving vital elements of the population.
Otherwise the names of all 'strong and straight-limbed' young men aged sixteen
to thirty, not under 5 feet 6 inches, or 5 feet 4 inches if still growing, were
enrolled on lists, kept by the local bailiffs, as available recruits for
military service. The young men were to present themselves yearly at Easter and
the lists kept up to date. Thus by the end of the Seven Years War the Landgraf,
by converting the traditional duties of his subjects, had obliged everyone to
support the army, either by actual service or by paying taxes. When the Swiss
historian Müller
visited Kassel, he wrote, 'Before I came to Hessen, I scarce knew what a
military people were. Nearly all peasants have served: thus in every village
there are men of fine stature, manly form and bearing, and everywhere they talk
of war: for in this century the Hessians have not only fought against the
French in Germany, but even in Sicily and the Peloponnesus, and in Hungary
under the great Eugene, and now in the New World.'
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