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Were Hessian auxiliaries paid a wage or bonus while fighting during the Revolutionary War? Were they paid when they returned to Germany ? Were they simply conscripts and not paid at all? (So much contradictory information online)
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Did they rely on plunder for compensation?
3.What percentage of them deserted?
4.Was their reputation for brutality deserved?
I’ve never heard them referred to as “auxiliaries,” although “mercenaries” and “hirelings” were common terms back then, both intended to be insulting.
As I recall from David Hackett Fischer’s excellent Washington’s Crossing (the best book I’ve ever read on the Hessian military role in the American Revolution), the Hessians were paid a wage but no bonus. They were paid while they were still in America. Some were conscripts and some were volunteers. (Not all were Hessians, either, of course - several other Germanic states also provided troops).
They did not rely on plunder for compensation. Desertion rates were relatively low, but quite a few of them either remained in the new United States after the war, or returned not long afterwards. They were not particularly brutal, given the standards of the day, although they did develop a reputation for raping civilian women during the 1776-1777 New Jersey campaign that pro-patriot propagandists exploited.
Thanks Elindil_s_Heir. Conscripts would have been another term I could have used. But they were hired out by Landgrave Frederick III of Hesse-Kassel rather than being free agents or mercenaries. So obviously Hesse-Kassel did well out of the deal. But the confusing element for me was their monthly pay in the hand for their services during the Revolutinary War. Interestngly, you mentioned that some were volunteers. That I didn’t know. It’s difficult to separate objective accounts of Hessians excesses like raping from Patriot propaganda. That a point I wasn’t sure about. I’ll try to get my hands on David Hackett Fischer’s excellent Washington’s Crossing. Thanks for the tip.
They were commonly referred to as mercenaries, and often still are. However, if the British hire a foreigner to go fight in America, that’s a mercenary. If the British go to a German prince and rent part of his army, and those soldiers remain loyal to and employed by that German prince, those are auxiliaries. So auxiliary is technically the correct term in this case.
The British did not have enough troops in the Colonies to deal with the revolution, partly because they were spread too thin all around the world, and partly because they kept a lot of their troops in territories that the British considered to be much more valuable. The British often hired mercenaries and auxiliaries during this time period to make up for the troop shortage. A lot of German principalities also rented out troops during this time period. For them, it was a great way to make money.
I think one of the issues you have with conflicting pay information comes from the fact that the term “Hessian” was given to pretty much any auxiliary force that came from any of the German principalities at the time, not just Hesse-Cassel or Hesse-Hanau. Some were probably paid, others just served because it was their duty to their prince. Different princes, different rules.
The Hessians (I’m just going to call them that for simplicity, but this includes soldiers from other German principalities) were largely a highly disciplined and highly trained group. Many were forced into service, as some princes forced all men into service starting at a fairly young age (14 or 16 or so, IIRC). While you might think that this would cause high desertion rates, it didn’t. Training was harsh and brutal, but the soldiers also bonded together under the brutality and took pride in their units. This high degree of training and discipline made the Hessians desirable as auxiliaries.
Some did volunteer. They weren’t all forced into service. Many principalities were struggling financially. That’s why the princes were eager to rent out their soldiers, and many soldiers were eager to volunteer just because it would give them steady income.
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Pay. I don’t know. Probably varied from principality to principality.
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Plunder. Hessians were paid by their prince. They weren’t the equivalent of privateers, and weren’t expected to plunder for their own survival. That said, I’m sure a fair amount of plundering did occur. Soldiers will be soldiers, after all. There were probably quite a few war crimes that were committed as well. It is difficult to sort out fact from fiction in a lot of these cases due to Patriot propaganda, as you noted.
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Desertion. Since Hessians were such a highly trained and highly disciplined army, desertion rates were fairly low. Hessians that were poorly paid or were not paid at all still had families to support back in Germany. If they deserted, their families would lose their lands and would likely starve to death, so this kept the Hessian soldiers motivated to stay and fight and not to desert. However, once Hessians were taken prisoner, they were often moved to prison camps, and many of those prison camps were located in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Since these camps were further west (away from all of the fighting) they were often located in areas that had been settled by German immigrants. The Hessian prisoners, now surrounded by people who spoke the same language and had a similar cultural background, often found themselves among friends. Desertion rates were higher, and many Hessian prisoners decided to stay where they were after the war and did not return to Germany.
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Brutality. Again, they were a highly trained and brutal fighting force. They also had a tendency to give no quarter. When they had Patriot troops surrounded, instead of accepting their surrender, the Hessians were known to just bayonet the Patriots and leave no survivors. In that sense, their reputation for brutality was indeed deserved.
When the Hessians won, the British praised them for their brutality and their fierce fighting. When they lost, the British played the blame game, and blamed the loss not on poor British strategy, but on the Hessians being drunken and unprofessional. Win or lose, the British always looked down on the Hessians, because they were “inferior” foreigners.
Thanks engineer_comp_geek for that very comprehensive response. There are some accounts of duels were held between the British and Hessian soldiers or officers. German boys were trained as soldiers from as young as seven. Tinhe voluntees contingent among the Hessians interests me. I would have thought that some of these German polities (principalities, bishoprics, landgraviates etc) would have forbidden their subjdcts from volunteering to figth in foreign wars. I know the French did on the American side to further their military promotion back home. Did the Germans get promoted based on their adventurism against the Patriots or perhaps on the side of the Patriots ?
How would they know? Once a German left his home, nobody kept track of where he went. He could just walk over to a principality where volunteering was allowed and sign up.
Perhaps. I don’t know how well these polities controlled their borders. How easy was it to walk across borders in those days?
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kIhUQYXVNcUJ:https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/70579&cd=17&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=tw&client=safari
Luca Scholz charts this contentious ordering of movement through the lens of safe conduct, an institution that was common throughout the early modern world but became a key framework for negotiating freedom of movement and its restriction in the Empire. Borders and Freedom of Movement in the Holy Roman Empire draws on sources discovered in twenty archives, from newly unearthed drawings to first-hand accounts by peasants, princes, and prisoners. Scholz’s maps shift the focus from the border to the thoroughfare to show that controls of moving goods and people were rarely concentrated at borders before the mid-eighteenth century.
Nowadays a key point about mercenaries versus outsiders fighting for one side is that an auxiliary gets paid no more than local members of the military. Get paid more and the rules (ie Geneva convention and successor treaties) don’t protect you in the same way.
Of course in the context of the OP, this isn’t quite so cut and dried. But true mercenaries have never been well thought of.
Is it just me? ”Auxiliary Hessian” made me think this was a question about numerical optimisation.
Very easy. Remember that in those days, many German principalities were tiny. You could easily walk out of one village across a field into the next village and be in a different territory subject to another ruler. The city in Germany in which I live has neighbourhoods within the city that used to belong to a different territory than the central parts.
There might be guard posts at city gates questioning people who wanted to enter, but that was mostly for tax reasons, to collect import duties on products brought into town. Migration control was not a factor.
Thanks Schnitte.
Not quite a hijack, but the main difference between an auxiliary force and a mercenary one is basically who they serve?
So for example, the Gurkha regiments in the British Army are composed of mercenaries, because they’re recruited in Nepal, but are British regiments?
But if they were Nepalese regiments contracted out to the British Army, they’d be auxiliaries and not mercenaries, because they’re regiments in the service of another sovereign state?
So something like a private military company is going to be mercenaries because they’re not part of a sovereign state’s military?
That’s how I read the distinction.
A mercenary’s chain of command ends within the corporate organization, whereas a regular military member is ultimately commanded by the head of their State.
Auxiliaries nominally serve the head of the State that “loaned them out” (e.g., the Landgraf of Hesse-Cassel), but are attached to the receiving State’s formations (e.g. Great Britain) and accept operational commands from that chain.
The Gurkhas, and those who admire and support them, are quite emphatic that they aren’t mercenaries IME.
Gurkhas are not mercenaries. Protocol 1 of 1977 Additional to the 1949 Geneva Conventions is the only source of an internationally agreed definition of a “mercenary”. The Protocol definition excludes anyone who “is a member of the Armed Forces of a party to the conflict”. Therefore, the Gurkhas cannot be classified as mercenaries for they are an integral part of the British, Indian and Nepalese armies, having the same duties as other personnel. Lastly, the Nepalese Government do not see the Gurkhas as mercenaries, and the Tripartite Agreement rejects the term.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-and-the-gurkhas-an-enduring-partnership/
There is a tripartite agreement between Britain and India and Pakistan which sets it out. They aren’t.
(Nepal was at the time a dependency of British India so it wasn’t represented directly).