November 25, 2013 • 40 mins
If you've only seen the Hessians referenced in movies or TV, you probably don't have a clear picture of who these very capable soldiers actually were. Hessian troops were skilled, disciplined armies for hire, and a huge economic boon for their homeland.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy and I'm Holly Fry. Holly, do you know
what I've been exceptionally enjoying on television this fall? I do,
but tell me anyway, Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is from
(00:25):
a historical standpoint, quite ridiculous. It is in many other
ways quite ridiculous. It's kind of a good reminder to
me to sometimes just shut all of that analytical, critical
brain off and just enjoy the ride. Yeah, I I extremely,
extremely enjoy the ridiculous ride of Sleepy Hollow. I enjoy
the fact that we've got a guy that's been walking
(00:45):
around in multi hundred year old clothing that somehow is
not falling apartner stinking enjoy the ride, Tracy so great.
If you have ever watched the show, you know that
they take some just absurd liberties with actual history. But
the reason that we're talking about it right now is
that they also keep talking about the headless Horseman as
(01:05):
a Hessian right. But this is not something that the
show just made up out of whole cloth. In the
legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington. Irving describes Sleepy Hollow this way.
The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region and
seems to be commander in chief of all the powers
of air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback
(01:29):
without a head. It is said by some to be
the ghost of a Hessian trooper whose head had been
carried away by a cannonball in some nameless battle during
the Revolutionary War, and who has ever and anon by
seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom
of night, as if on the wings of the wind.
(01:50):
So the TV show is not a cannonball. No, it's
a sword, because in truth, the headless horseman is not
only a Hessian soldier but also one of the four
horsemen of the Acalypse, and therefore kind of immortal. Yeah,
they actually in the show, didn't They hit him? And
they shot him first, Ichabod Crane shoots him and he
doesn't die. So then he cuts his head off and
(02:12):
he appears to die, but then comes back later along
with Ichabod. Uh So, Matt, of course, as as things
do when I'm watching TV, made me think, how can
we talk about this in the podcast? And I really
got curious about who these Hessians were, Right, I know
the same basic description as many people who have studied
(02:34):
the American Revolution, which is sort of mercenaries hired by
Britain during the Revolutionary War. And that is not even
an accurate description really, Or when we were first talking
about it, I said, Christopher Walking was filed down teeth
right because he placed said the Sportsman in the tim
Burton sleepy Hollow, which is the exposure that most people,
(02:56):
I think get They know the word Hessian because of
that story, and a lot of them, I know, even
talking to my husband about it when he asked what
we were recording this coming week, and I said, oh,
the Hessians, and he goes, I don't know anything about that. Yeah,
I pretty much know that one sentence that I just
said about about mercenaries hired by Britain during the Revolutionary
War not really accurate. Um, we're gonna talk about that.
(03:17):
We're gonna talk about who these guys were, where they
came from, why they were participating in the Revolutionary War
in the first place, and we're also going to talk
about their most famous altercation with the Army of George Washington. Um.
So there is so much other history that you can
talk about with the Hessians, but that's a're gonna keep
to today so that this podcast is not four hours
(03:39):
and or eight parts long. So we have to start
in Germany. Kind of Germany. Germany at the time of
the American Revolutionary War was not this unified nation that
we know it as today. Was more like a collection
of about three hundred little principalities, and they all shared
a common German language and culture. They're basically little city states.
(04:03):
They all had their own rulers, they all needed their
own defenses, and consequently, they tended to have pretty sizeable
compared to their size, organized armed forces. Great Britain, on
the other hand, had a hard time recruiting soldiers at
this point in history. Uh. And even if people were
pressed into service, those men still needed training and it
(04:25):
just was not the same level of military organization. Basically,
the British economy at this point was robust enough that
other work was easy to come by, so military recruitment
was not very appealing for the average man, and it
was very challenging for the government to reason army. Yeah,
Britain also had the advantage of being separated from the
rest of Europe by the English Channel, so it didn't
(04:46):
need to have an enormous standing army to really defend
itself constantly. This was not true on the continent, where
a lot of times nations had long borders with one
another that didn't necessarily have any kind of natural old
features to deter invasions. So on the continent of Europe,
(05:06):
people nations were a lot more likely to have bigger
armed forces than Britain had at the point. At that point, yeah,
it makes sense. But on top of that, George the
Third was the elector of the German Principality of Hanover,
and this effectively made George the Third a German prince
in addition to being the King of Great Britain and Ireland. Uh,
he was automatically considered to be a German ally. So
(05:27):
when George the Third needed troops to fight for him
in the American Revolution, German princes were pretty eager to
help him. He was their ally and they kind of
wanted to show off their military strength. And Britain only
had about fifty five thousand troops to send to fight
in the American Revolution. About thirty thousand additional soldiers came
from hess Castle Braunch fig hess Han now on spark Behout,
(05:51):
Valdeck and Anhabs ups to fight for George the third
twelve thousand of them, the overmwhelming majority from any one
place from hess Castle. Yes, so today Hessian has come
to encompass all of these troops. But from here on
out we're pretty much going to be talking about the
troops specifically from hess Castle for a couple of reasons.
(06:13):
One is that hess Castle was the biggest participant in
the industry of armies for hire that existed at that
time that came to be known as so Dotton Handle
in seventy seven. The other is that troops from hess
Castle were the ones who were occupying Trenton in seventeen
seventy six. That is a particularly famous Revolutionary War battle
(06:35):
that we'll talk about a little bit later in the episode. So,
at the time of the American Revolution, military had become
hess Castle's dominant industry, and this was partly a necessity.
It was a middle size collection of villages that otherwise
survived through subsistence farming. It's position was also, unfortunately between
(06:56):
two parts of Prussia, so hess Castle was often in
the line of fighter or more accurately the line of
marching troops on their way from one place to another.
By the mid sixteen hundreds, the army there was kind
of flagging, and recovery from attacks or just being kind
of caught in the crossfire in the way of these
travels of enemy of other armies was really slow for
(07:17):
the little principality. But in sixteen eighty seven, Hescastle decided
to lease some military forces to Venice. Basically, Venice was
paying hes Castle money, Hescastle was sending troops their way
to fight for them. Uh. And this is kind of
a mixed success. Almost eighty percent of the thousand men
that they sent were killed, But those men fought well
(07:40):
enough that they earned a reputation for being good, reliable soldiers.
And so the next year Hescastle sent thirty four hundred
men to serve William of Orange under a similar agreement.
Their performance was so highly valued that suddenly Hessian troops
were in demand from other governments, and hes Castle realized
(08:01):
that it could maybe make this into a bigger industry
and turn a profit over maintaining and leasing an army
for other governments to use. So I could see where
the appeal for subsistence farmers would be really high. There
was a lot appeel there. And as hess Castle's efforts grew,
and we're joined by other German principalities, they eventually crowded
(08:22):
out the existing private army for higher industry that had
been in place before that point. Yeah. So there were
already people who were raising armies and basically selling them
to other people, but there was pretty much a private enterprise,
and you know, the Hessian troops were higher quality than
other options. Yeah. Well, and these these little principalities got
so good at it that the private enterprises couldn't compete.
(08:47):
And also people started to view private armies as being
a pretty shady business to be in, so that that
faded away as all these various German principalities started making
their own army. The focus on the military also trickled
down to the rest of hess Castle. Passions generally used
(09:09):
their own weapons and uniforms in battle, and so having
this big army going on create created more work for
crafts people. The income that came into the government allowed
them to bring in experts to improve farming and husbandry methods,
and with these improvements, rural families got bigger. They provided
a bigger pool of recruits for the military. Um some
(09:31):
of the revenue from the operation also went into things
like hospitals and schools, And thanks to all of this
income that came in from leasing armies out, taxes for
the rest of the citizens were lower. So lacing armies
to other nations was obviously a major economic boon that
lifted hess Castle out of maybe not exactly what you
would categorize as poverty, but at least pretty austere circumstances.
(09:55):
They were getting by, but as we said, subsistence farming,
and they started the more prosper and then the became yeah, more,
much more prosperous. It wasn't always pretty though. When your
country basically becomes a factory for making soldiers, there are
going to be some repercussions when battles go badly or
when battles come to your own doorstep. So it did
take an immense toll, and even even with those downsides,
(10:17):
hess Castle became the most militarized state in Europe. At
the height of this industry, there was a soldier for
every fifteen civilians, and a quarter of all families had
at least one member who was in the military. Boys
were registered for service when they turned seven, and men
had to present themselves to an official every year to
(10:37):
determine if they were going to be inducted into service.
From the tiny turned sixteen until they hit thirty uh,
so called quote expendable people, which were the shiftless, idol, unemployed, etcetera,
could be pressed into service at any time. On the
other hand, people who had more crucial roles, including roles
like keeping the army dressed and fed, would be exempt
(10:59):
from this practice. Yeah, it's the modern side of me
thinks that this sounds sort of like a dreadful circumstance
to be in. But wages were good. Military families got
tax benefits, The pay was better than being a servant
or a farm laborer, and while discipline was strict within
the military, if you were a person who behaved yourself,
(11:22):
it was not really a problem. So it was an
attractive proposition, and there was also some other attractive stuff
booty and plunder. Yes, on the military side of things,
Hessians had a reputation for being really sharp and skilled,
but two civilians, they were viewed often as plunderers and looters,
(11:43):
taking whatever they wanted from the lands where they fought,
and often this was not actively endorsed by the command,
but it wasn't exactly discouraged either. They kind of let
the soldiers do their plundering without much repercussion in terms
of being punished or dissuaded. Right, So, with the pay
and the plunder and the stability, becoming a Hessian soldier
(12:05):
was a pretty popular career career move um. Also it
was you know, it was an army of intense training
and strict discipline, but at the same time one that
instilled a lot of pride and its forces. Its leaders
were generally educated men who were promoted from within according
to merit um see a lot of military history where
(12:27):
the officers were basically coming from the aristocracy, and they
were they were officers because they were aristocrats the aristocracy
and hes Castle was not big enough to be doing
that for this whole army, so they had to instead
promote men based on their skill and merit, which meant
that most of the time people were in units where
they had a good boss. Having a good boss is
(12:48):
a good thing, does you know, even when your job
is maybe one that might be particularly hard and take
you away from your family for a long time. Men
who had and served also told their sons about what
an honorable and rewarding service it was. UH. And the
principality as a whole was also a Calvinist society with
(13:09):
a really strong sense of duty. So there were a
lot of social factors going into the popularity of being
in the military. And while many nations, including Britain, often
hired soldiers from Germany, this was not really viewed favorably
by the founding fathers here in the US UH. In
the Declaration of Independence, among the lists of grievances against
(13:31):
the King, one of them is quote he is at
this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete
the works of death, desolation and tyranny already begun, with
circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most
barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
(13:51):
Not popular moon the scathing review of that practice, yes, UH,
and later on the rest of the world would start
to view it's sort of the same way. But at
the point that yeah, the the colonies were extremely displeased
about this idea. But even though today a lot of
people call Hessian's merchant mercenaries, and they were referred to
(14:12):
as mercenaries and the Declaration of Independence. They weren't really mercenaries.
What they were was auxiliaries. So mercenaries were individual people
who served in foreign armies for pay. There were mercenaries
in both the British and Hessian armies. Um. And these
are people that like had their own negotiated terms and
rates of working and like a length of time that
(14:34):
they would serve. Auxiliaries, though, were armies that served on
behalf of governments, with subsidies being paid at the national
level instead of the personal level. And this is a
difference that was recognized by international law. Uh. And at
this point in history, the hiring of auxiliaries was an
extremely common and pretty well accepted practice, except for in
(14:58):
the colony, where it was not favored at all. So
these were really well trained soldiers who were paid to fight,
So not really that different from military service today, except
that they had been kind of contracted on maths through
a government agency. Yeah. So as soon as Britain decided
(15:19):
to use force against the American revolutionaries, it was pretty
much a given that they were going to have to
use a hired army as part of the package. Brittain,
as we said earlier, just did not have a big
enough army on its own, and German Principality started offering
troops to the British in August of seventeen seventy five,
just a couple of months after the Battle of Bunker Hill,
(15:40):
and once Britain agreed, they set a date for troops
from Hescastle to be ready to march, and that date
was February fifteenth of seventeen seventy six. This was meant
to put Hessians in America in time for a summer campaign.
Time was so much of the essence in this whole
plan that this deadline was actually set earlier than the
agreement between the two nations was going to be ratified.
(16:04):
Once it was actually signed, Britain's then back They did
the pay for their service by a month to January.
And for American units, the Hessians include yeager or hunter companies. Uh.
These were foresters and huntsmen, and their role was sort
of like elite rangers. They had better field skills and
we're better marksmen than average recruits, and the younger got
(16:26):
better pay and really spiffy uniforms that were green so
that they could blend into the woods, and also in
the mix were for grenadier battalions and fifteen infantry battalions
which included field and garrison regiments, and those troops were
dark blue. The agreement between Britain and Hescastle outlined the pay,
(16:47):
the removal of injured Hessians back to Germany, medical care,
and free passage for the troops mail. The medical care
was similar to the care that was going to be
provided for British troops, but it was going to be
given German doctors who would travel with the units, and
the Hessian troops that came with this agreement could only
serve in Europe and America. Hescastle had to pay for
(17:09):
replacement soldiers who were killed or injured too badly to
return to the field. On the other hand, if illness
or a shipwreck or some other disaster wiped out a
whole unit, that was then on Britain to pay for
that was their responsibility. Even though a Hessian army seemed
to like a given from this point, like we said,
hiring a foreign army was pretty standard and how warfare
(17:32):
went at this point, there were some really big worries
within Britain about what the results of this action would be.
One part of this was that a lot of people
had the just the justifiable fear that if they started
a full scale military action with hired troops and everything,
that was going to irreparably damage the relationship between the
(17:53):
colonies and Britain, so that no matter how the war went,
it would not ever be repaired from having Star did
with Okay, we're gonna have a big military action with
you guys. And there were also to consider a hundred
and fifty thousand Germans that were living in the colonies,
and British leadership worried that a German army was going
to be convinced to desert and resettle by these existing colonists,
(18:15):
and there were in fact some desertions along the way. Yeah,
there was even some talk that maybe they should use
troops from Russia instead, because there were fewer people in
the colonies who spoke Russian, so there would be less
of a temptation to lure people away from their units
to this sort of idealistic dream of what the founding
fathers were shooting for with UH. With the founding of
(18:37):
the nation UH, these troops started to move out a
little bit later than was originally planned, and a lot
of it just had to do with the logistics of
moving so many people. The Vision started leaving their garrisons
in Germany in February and March, and they continued to
to depart until the spring. They moved from their garrisons
(18:58):
in cycles of marching and rest, thing, with the so
called rest days really involving a lot of training and
exercise we would call the active rest day. Hessian troops
embarked for America in April and June of seventeen seventy six,
so several months after the initial plan, and their first
stop was Portsmouth, where they got more food and additional
ships so the voyage would be more comfortable. Otherwise they
(19:20):
really would not have been in any sort of condition
to fight when they arrived. It was a very long trip.
The first ships were sighted at Long Island almost three
months after they had departed, on August twelve. Yeah, the
idea was that they were supposed to arrive ready to fight,
so while it was still a long and difficult sea voyage,
it was a long and difficult sea voyage with more
(19:41):
comforts than you might ordinarily see better amenities. Everybody had
a pillow and two blankets and a place to sleep,
and and pretty nice allotments of rations, at least until
later in the voyage when a lot of that was
spoiled and gross. Even with those amenities and the relatively
acious and comfortable transport, about eight hundred Hessians in that
(20:04):
first convoy were sick once they arrived. Scurvy and diarrhea
were two of the big complaints. They also because they
had not seen fresh fruit for months while they were
on their way. A lot of them made themselves ill
on unripe apples after they landed um and also exhausted
themselves in the manual effort of setting up camps once
(20:27):
they got off the ships. Once on American soil, they
had a number of compensations to make. So the Hessians
had a reputation for being exceedingly competent soldiers really well disciplined,
but their training in Germany really didn't always translate to
combat skills in America. There had been a lot of
focus on marching and very precise formations, and that didn't
(20:48):
work well when mixed in with British formations or in
skirmishes with small bands of revolutionaries who were fighting in
more of a guerrilla combat style. Yeah. I can't of
imagine a well trained army the very focused on maneuvers
and on precision in in marching and formation and things
like that, and and being harried by little bands of
(21:09):
scrappy guys with guns taking pot shots at them from
the woods. Not really compatible. Yeah. The colonists had also
gotten word that Hessians were on their way, and they
had made their own recruitment and training efforts to try
to compensate um these though as we as we just said,
they were scrappier, raggedier forces than these professionally trained and
(21:31):
dressed troops from Britain and Germany. So the American troops
looked like they were just going to be easily overwhelmed
by the Hessians. In the British they did not look
like trained, competent soldiers. They looked like ragamuffins. Really like
I'm sort of imagining them as grown up street urchins
(21:52):
with rocks m from a Dickens novel. They just went
through time to the battlefield. Yeah their faces so yeah,
And for a while, um, the the American forces faced
a lot of defeat In the late summer, fall and
(22:13):
early winter of seventeen seventy six, the colonial forces met
the Hessians again and again, and they saw what seemed
like just an endless string of defeats. This really cemented
the idea in the in the you know, minds of
the Hessian troops that the Americans were not good soldiers,
but they would be easily defeated and this overconfidence would
(22:34):
turn out to be a problem, as over confidence often does.
Do you want to pause for just a second before
we get to the meaty story of battle, Yes, and
take a word from our sponsors. Yes, And now let's
get back to the most famous battle that the Hessians
were involved in in the American Revolution. This is the
one that followed George Washington's famous crossing of the Delaware
(22:57):
River on Christmas night seventeen seventy six, and that happened
at Trenton. So the brief version, the war had been
going very very poorly for Washington's army, with many defeats
and retreats and trouncings by the Hessians. Desertion had become
a huge problem, and new recruits were getting more and
more difficult to come by. The mood of both the
(23:19):
army and the leadership was pretty seriously demoralized, and it
was basically fraught with pessimism. Yeah, listen started out as
a very idealistic attempt to become independent and to start
a new, pretty groundbreaking system of government, and then as
the fighting went on, it was just like being kicked
(23:42):
over and over. It was not going well. You could
see how that would break their spirits. Yes, at this point,
the wise thing to do, from many people's perspective, would
have been for the colonists to spend the winter regrouping
for a spring campaign. And that's really what the main
portion of the British army had done, leaving the Hessians
(24:04):
to hold some of the key ground. But many of
Washington's men had not re enlisted. He was going to
lose some as soldiers at the end of the year.
There was no guarantee of getting them to change their
minds or being able to replace them with fresh troops.
So he decided to make a really extraordinarily risky combat
move in the hope that it would be successful and
(24:25):
reinvigorate the effort for independence. Yeah, he basically he had
to do something or he was not going to have
much of an army anymore. So on Christmas night of
seventeen seventy six, Washington led his army across the Delaware
River from Pennsylvania to New Jersey. Uh, this is inordinately treacherous.
The river was close to flood stage, and because it
was winter, it had frozen over in many places. This
(24:48):
was a river that would like it would freeze in
big sheets, and then the sheets would break up and
these giant pieces of ice would float down the river.
So these giant ice flows were constantly threatening the boats
that were trying to cross the river that was already flooding.
On top of that, while they were crossing, a storm
started up and pelted them with rain and sleet and
(25:09):
blinding snow. So like this was already just daring and dramatic,
and it was immortalized in the famous although in many
ways not representative of what actually happened, painting by Emmanuel
Louts which was made in eight one, and that is
the famous Washington crossing the Delaware painting, which makes it
flows with like icebergs, and it also seems to be
(25:30):
happening in the daytime, like there are some things that
they're not right. Everybody looks beautiful, they're pelted with misery.
Washington and his troops did make it across the river,
but two other units that were supposed to be supporting
him could not. The weather in the river were simply
too treacherous, and because the river crossing had taken so long,
(25:51):
Washington had really given up the element of surprise that
he had been counting on, since they'd no longer be
able to reach Trenton before dawn of Things were not
looking very good for them at this point, and their
attack plan, which started out kind of like far of
a wild card plan, the Hail Mary even more of
a long shot that this was the Hail Mary Pass
(26:13):
of George Washington. So even though they had just had
this treacherous river crossing that was exhausting and blinding and
put them way behind schedule, Washington attacked Trenton anyway with
a two pronged attack and spoiler alert, and under an
hour they had taken the city along with nine nineteen
Hessian prisoners. It's pretty impressive. It is the hail Mary work,
(26:36):
and that made be one of the reasons why the
legend goes that all of this went so amazingly well
for George Washington, because the Hessians were drunk because they
partied too late into the night for Christmas the night before.
That's not true. No, maybe it's one of those things
where it strange credulity so much that people have to
come up with a reason that the Hessians could be
(26:57):
taken down. Surely they must all have been. They were hammered.
That's the only way this could have worked. One of
them was kind of hammered. But uh, but the greater
proportion of the men we're going to talk about now,
why it is not that they were drunk, Although in
my head there's a very funny version of this now
playing out where Washington's troops basically walk into like a
(27:20):
herd of you know, jolly stumblinas who were just slashed.
But that's not real. That didn't happen, But in my
head it's very funny, and I wish I could share it. Yea.
So these were trained and disciplined men. They had been
forewarned that Washington might attack them, and there had been
a number of skirmishes in the surrounding area leading up
to this attack. There were three Hessian regiments staying in Trenton,
(27:44):
and every night one of them would sleep in their
uniforms with their weapons just in case they were attacked
in the night. Their commanding officer, UH, Colonel Johann Rawl,
he had definitely overindulged himself on Christmas. He didn't set
a really awesome example. But the fighting men were on
the whole sober. So you must have been kind of
(28:06):
an outlier, since it sounds like that's not really the
way most of them would have conducted themselves. No, but
the problem was that while they may not have been drunk,
and they were however sick, they were exhausted. They were
short on men. Uh and in the days before the battle,
Colonel Rawl had written to Hessian Colonel Carl von Dannup
to say that they were undermanned and that they were exhausted.
(28:28):
Von Donop had passed this up to General James Grant,
a British general who was commanding a number of scattered garrisons,
and General Grant had simply not taken this information seriously.
He wrote off the idea that Washington would have ever
dared across the Delaware at this time of year, and
he described the rebels as having quote neither shoes nor stockings,
are in fact almost naked, starving for cold without blankets
(28:51):
and very ill supplied with provisions. So he thought there
was no way they would even if they were going
to try it, they weren't going to make it. Yeah.
But but even though he had pretty much been like,
this is not an actual problem, uh, he did right
to Rawle on Christmas Eve with this kind of blithe
note that said, Washington has been informed that our troops
(29:13):
have been marched into winter quarters and has been told
that we are weak at Trenton and Princeton, and Lord
Sterling expressed a wish to make an attack upon these
two places. I don't believe he will attempt it, but
be assured that my information is undoubtedly true. So I
need not advise you to be on your guard against
an unexpected attack at Trenton. So even though he had
(29:37):
pretty much said like, you guys don't need more men's fine,
don't worry about it, then literally Christmas Eve, worry about
it a little, but don't worry about it. Maybe you
do need to actually worry about this, but not really. Yeah.
And it's unclear whether rawl ever read this note. It's
possible that he mistook a skirmish the night before as
the sneak attack that he'd been forewarned of. He canceled
(29:59):
the dawn patrol outside trenton the day after Christmas due
to miserable weather and the aforementioned sickness and exhaustion of
the troops. Yeah, but it really might not have helped
them much if they had done this dawn patrol and
gotten a little bit more advanced warning that the that
George Washington troops were incoming, that it was their overconfidence
(30:21):
and their German military training that was really their undoing. Yeah,
the Hessians formed up in ranks outside of town. They
were ready to meet Washington's army as they'd been taught. Uh,
And it was snowing and their muskets got wet and
they could not fire. Yeah. Meanwhile, the Americans came in
behind them, took the town that immediately gave them shelter
(30:44):
in a place where they could easily dry out their
own weapons, And they took the bridge under ass and
Pink Creek, and that cut off the Hessian's easiest way
to escape. So when the Hessians did try to escape,
their soldiers were pretty quickly bogged down in ice and mud.
So basically the Hessian army had followed their military training
to go meet out in the field where their weapons
(31:07):
became water logged and they couldn't really defend themselves, while
Washington was like, now we have we're in your city,
drying out our stuff. This is gonna go really well
for us. Nice formation, champ uh. And this all meant that,
in addition to being outnumbered by more than a thousand,
the Hessians were at this point hugely outgunned, and they
(31:28):
had no way to retreat, and they were trying to
fight with weapons that were too wet to fire, where
his Washington's army had a warm, dry city that they
were working from. So, like we said, it took under
an hour and there were nine nineteen Hessian prisoners taken,
and Washington, uh, understandably, being quite pleased with himself, paraded
(31:48):
his prisoners through Philadelphia so that everyone could see these
Hessians that he had conquered. Yeah, done a sneak attack
on Yeah. So the big thing I mean, in addition
to the fact that there was it was led off
by this dramatic river crossing. Um, this aren't This battle
really reinvigorated the American cause and renewed the war effort.
(32:11):
But obviously eventually the colonists won um had this whole
dramatic thing not happened and kind of restored people's hope
in the effort. I don't know that it would have
gone that way. It really is like the event that
turned to tide for sure. Yeah, there's no telling. It's
not even as though Trenton was like the world's biggest
(32:34):
strategic point. It was more the strategy was more about
making everyone more confident that the war could go in favor. Yeah,
it was a huge morale boost. I mean, that's like
the understatement of the year. Uh. And interestingly enough, after
the war, uh, somewhere between three thousand and five thousands
Hessians actually stayed in the US. Uh. You know, they
(32:55):
found the growing German community and the promises of freedom
and liberty to really be quite an attractive incentive to
stick around. And during the war at least five thousand
of them had deserted to fight for the American side.
So this concern that maybe Hessians would dessert once they
discovered how many other German people were in the colonies,
that was actually it had a little substance to it
(33:15):
pretty valid. Not long after the end of the American Revolution,
the prevailing thinking in Europe started to turn against the
idea of hired armies at all. So while the idea
of privately organized armies for higher had already started to
fall out of favor, the idea of of nations doing
this started to fall out of favor as well. As
(33:39):
time moved towards the eighteen hundreds, Hescastle was less and
less of a military industry, and then in eighteen o
six it was merged into the Confederation of the Rhyme,
meaning that the state didn't exist on its own anymore.
Uh So there was no more army for higher factory
operating out of Europe, but an end to that whole system. Yeah,
(34:01):
it didn't, It didn't end immediately just then, but it
was on its way out. Yeah. That's probably the final
male in the conference, or to speak, that's the passions.
And you know it's a good one because yeah, I
think there's a lot of misconception or just a mystery.
But people don't hear about this one very much. Yeah.
(34:22):
The the idea that they were drunk is repeated often
in books and articles and and things like that, but
modern historians are pretty much said, no, drunkenness may have
been a factor in uh one person's decision. They were
definitely tired, and then sickness was a problem. But it
(34:42):
was not as though the American Army showed up and
everybody was completely plastered and they were just like here,
this is ours now. Yeah, not not quite that simple. Yeah,
if you were a military history buff, you probably know
eight million more things about the Shion and all of
their movements in the American Revolution and many many, many
other wars, and probably watching Sleepy Hollow makes you crazy. Yeah.
(35:07):
I love Sleepy Hollow. I want to watch it all
the time you can. Yeah, it's I think one of
the reasons that I love it is that it's so
off the mark, like it's so obviously not taking itself
seriously and its presentation of history. I am much more
accepting of its glaringly not following history for real. Yeah,
(35:27):
it's kind of like it makes you the deal at
the beginning, like we're jumping the tracks here, just heads up,
Which does It makes it easier to accept sort of
the fantastical factor of it and not be too caught
up in the detail incorrectness. I just wish there were
more clancy Brown. I just wish they were more episodes.
There will be I mean every day, like if there
(35:48):
were a daily right on that we'll start a campaign. Okay,
I have some listener mail. I would be delighted if
you would share it. This is a postcard, an actual postcard.
We get these in the mail. This is from Kira
and Kira says Tracy and Holly. I know you two
must have quite the postcard collection by now, but in
case you haven't hit all seven continents, here is one
(36:10):
from Antarctica. I am just finishing up my second season
working to support science at McMurdo Station. My last track
down was during the summer, but this year I was
part of the skeleton crew that stayed through the winter.
I say that with that weird tone because that would
make me crazy. I hate the cold and I hate
(36:36):
the dark, and so I can't imagine this at all.
So with twenty four hours of darkness for months and
a harsh cold environment, it is easy to fall prey
to a condition called T three or winter brain. While
looking for ways to keep myself intellectually stimulated, I stumbled
across a podcast. There were plenty of days that I
spent a solad ten hours listening to old episodes while
(36:58):
I work. I just wanted to say thanks for helping
to keep me sane through the long Antarctic winter. Night
is from Kira. So this postcard that Kira has sent us,
it says Antarctica. It is an old photo. It's Navy
photographers on observation Hill from one So it's an old
(37:21):
photo and it's got these guys and they're on this
desolate hill. There's a cross in the foreground. And what
this picture says to me to sort of come to Antarctica,
you will die. But that's not true. It is not true.
I had a friend that spent time with Antarctica, also
doing science research. Keep back, it's cool. I a terrifying
(37:43):
prospect because I am a little bit of like I'll
tell you that I think Brian's relatives think I'm his
pretty city wife, just because I like the amenities of
living in a city and all things you can get,
and so did not be able to like have my
whims met with make me a little insake. I like
the amenities of daylight and warmth. I don't need the daylight,
(38:04):
I do like the warmth, and I want to be
able to go to restaurants when I want them. Yeah. Well,
you know, before I was born, my mother and father
lived in Alaska for a little while. Yeah, my dad
was in the army, and my mom has talked about
how she found Alaskan winters to be horrible, and her
method for dealing with this was to make chocolate cookies
every week so that the house always smelled like cookies,
(38:27):
which I think is a great coping mechanism, a beautiful
coping mechanisms. I'm so happy that we were able to
provide entertaining some enterdainment for people that are in the
middle of a cold, dark winter, because that just that
is a thing that just thinking about kind of crushes
my soul a little bit. I can't imagine living in
a place where there is not a sunrise or a
(38:47):
sunset for that long. Chinese, Like, what do you do
when you have to have lomaine? I know, it's ridiculous,
you know, trays my very oiled nature. Yeah, thank you
so much for writing to here and for sending us
this postcard. We get a lot of requests about where
people can send postcards, and since our address has changed, Yeah,
(39:12):
we were at thirty three fifty Peachtree Road, Northeast Sweet
eleven fifty party Change Atlanta, Georgia three or three to six.
So that is where you can send us a postcard
you would like, Oh, I love the postcard. Their offer.
They are quite fun. We get some that are just
like from such as I love it. It's wonderful. If
(39:35):
you would like to write to us an email, you can.
We were at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're
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Stuff and on Twitter at missed in History. Our tumbler,
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been talking about today, you can go to our website
(39:56):
and put the word Revolutionary War in the search bar.
You will find a gallery of Revolutionary War pictures, which
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as why was the American Revolution so revolutionary? You can
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which is how Stuff works dot com for more on
(40:22):
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Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy and I'm Holly Fry. Holly, do you know
what I've been exceptionally enjoying on television this fall? I do,
but tell me anyway, Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is from
(00:25):
a historical standpoint, quite ridiculous. It is in many other
ways quite ridiculous. It's kind of a good reminder to
me to sometimes just shut all of that analytical, critical
brain off and just enjoy the ride. Yeah, I I extremely,
extremely enjoy the ridiculous ride of Sleepy Hollow. I enjoy
the fact that we've got a guy that's been walking
(00:45):
around in multi hundred year old clothing that somehow is
not falling apartner stinking enjoy the ride, Tracy so great.
If you have ever watched the show, you know that
they take some just absurd liberties with actual history. But
the reason that we're talking about it right now is
that they also keep talking about the headless Horseman as
(01:05):
a Hessian right. But this is not something that the
show just made up out of whole cloth. In the
legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington. Irving describes Sleepy Hollow this way.
The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region and
seems to be commander in chief of all the powers
of air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback
(01:29):
without a head. It is said by some to be
the ghost of a Hessian trooper whose head had been
carried away by a cannonball in some nameless battle during
the Revolutionary War, and who has ever and anon by
seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom
of night, as if on the wings of the wind.
(01:50):
So the TV show is not a cannonball. No, it's
a sword, because in truth, the headless horseman is not
only a Hessian soldier but also one of the four
horsemen of the Acalypse, and therefore kind of immortal. Yeah,
they actually in the show, didn't They hit him? And
they shot him first, Ichabod Crane shoots him and he
doesn't die. So then he cuts his head off and
(02:12):
he appears to die, but then comes back later along
with Ichabod. Uh So, Matt, of course, as as things
do when I'm watching TV, made me think, how can
we talk about this in the podcast? And I really
got curious about who these Hessians were, Right, I know
the same basic description as many people who have studied
(02:34):
the American Revolution, which is sort of mercenaries hired by
Britain during the Revolutionary War. And that is not even
an accurate description really, Or when we were first talking
about it, I said, Christopher Walking was filed down teeth
right because he placed said the Sportsman in the tim
Burton sleepy Hollow, which is the exposure that most people,
(02:56):
I think get They know the word Hessian because of
that story, and a lot of them, I know, even
talking to my husband about it when he asked what
we were recording this coming week, and I said, oh,
the Hessians, and he goes, I don't know anything about that. Yeah,
I pretty much know that one sentence that I just
said about about mercenaries hired by Britain during the Revolutionary
War not really accurate. Um, we're gonna talk about that.
(03:17):
We're gonna talk about who these guys were, where they
came from, why they were participating in the Revolutionary War
in the first place, and we're also going to talk
about their most famous altercation with the Army of George Washington. Um.
So there is so much other history that you can
talk about with the Hessians, but that's a're gonna keep
to today so that this podcast is not four hours
(03:39):
and or eight parts long. So we have to start
in Germany. Kind of Germany. Germany at the time of
the American Revolutionary War was not this unified nation that
we know it as today. Was more like a collection
of about three hundred little principalities, and they all shared
a common German language and culture. They're basically little city states.
(04:03):
They all had their own rulers, they all needed their
own defenses, and consequently, they tended to have pretty sizeable
compared to their size, organized armed forces. Great Britain, on
the other hand, had a hard time recruiting soldiers at
this point in history. Uh. And even if people were
pressed into service, those men still needed training and it
(04:25):
just was not the same level of military organization. Basically,
the British economy at this point was robust enough that
other work was easy to come by, so military recruitment
was not very appealing for the average man, and it
was very challenging for the government to reason army. Yeah,
Britain also had the advantage of being separated from the
rest of Europe by the English Channel, so it didn't
(04:46):
need to have an enormous standing army to really defend
itself constantly. This was not true on the continent, where
a lot of times nations had long borders with one
another that didn't necessarily have any kind of natural old
features to deter invasions. So on the continent of Europe,
(05:06):
people nations were a lot more likely to have bigger
armed forces than Britain had at the point. At that point, yeah,
it makes sense. But on top of that, George the
Third was the elector of the German Principality of Hanover,
and this effectively made George the Third a German prince
in addition to being the King of Great Britain and Ireland. Uh,
he was automatically considered to be a German ally. So
(05:27):
when George the Third needed troops to fight for him
in the American Revolution, German princes were pretty eager to
help him. He was their ally and they kind of
wanted to show off their military strength. And Britain only
had about fifty five thousand troops to send to fight
in the American Revolution. About thirty thousand additional soldiers came
from hess Castle Braunch fig hess Han now on spark Behout,
(05:51):
Valdeck and Anhabs ups to fight for George the third
twelve thousand of them, the overmwhelming majority from any one
place from hess Castle. Yes, so today Hessian has come
to encompass all of these troops. But from here on
out we're pretty much going to be talking about the
troops specifically from hess Castle for a couple of reasons.
(06:13):
One is that hess Castle was the biggest participant in
the industry of armies for hire that existed at that
time that came to be known as so Dotton Handle
in seventy seven. The other is that troops from hess
Castle were the ones who were occupying Trenton in seventeen
seventy six. That is a particularly famous Revolutionary War battle
(06:35):
that we'll talk about a little bit later in the episode. So,
at the time of the American Revolution, military had become
hess Castle's dominant industry, and this was partly a necessity.
It was a middle size collection of villages that otherwise
survived through subsistence farming. It's position was also, unfortunately between
(06:56):
two parts of Prussia, so hess Castle was often in
the line of fighter or more accurately the line of
marching troops on their way from one place to another.
By the mid sixteen hundreds, the army there was kind
of flagging, and recovery from attacks or just being kind
of caught in the crossfire in the way of these
travels of enemy of other armies was really slow for
(07:17):
the little principality. But in sixteen eighty seven, Hescastle decided
to lease some military forces to Venice. Basically, Venice was
paying hes Castle money, Hescastle was sending troops their way
to fight for them. Uh. And this is kind of
a mixed success. Almost eighty percent of the thousand men
that they sent were killed, But those men fought well
(07:40):
enough that they earned a reputation for being good, reliable soldiers.
And so the next year Hescastle sent thirty four hundred
men to serve William of Orange under a similar agreement.
Their performance was so highly valued that suddenly Hessian troops
were in demand from other governments, and hes Castle realized
(08:01):
that it could maybe make this into a bigger industry
and turn a profit over maintaining and leasing an army
for other governments to use. So I could see where
the appeal for subsistence farmers would be really high. There
was a lot appeel there. And as hess Castle's efforts grew,
and we're joined by other German principalities, they eventually crowded
(08:22):
out the existing private army for higher industry that had
been in place before that point. Yeah. So there were
already people who were raising armies and basically selling them
to other people, but there was pretty much a private enterprise,
and you know, the Hessian troops were higher quality than
other options. Yeah. Well, and these these little principalities got
so good at it that the private enterprises couldn't compete.
(08:47):
And also people started to view private armies as being
a pretty shady business to be in, so that that
faded away as all these various German principalities started making
their own army. The focus on the military also trickled
down to the rest of hess Castle. Passions generally used
(09:09):
their own weapons and uniforms in battle, and so having
this big army going on create created more work for
crafts people. The income that came into the government allowed
them to bring in experts to improve farming and husbandry methods,
and with these improvements, rural families got bigger. They provided
a bigger pool of recruits for the military. Um some
(09:31):
of the revenue from the operation also went into things
like hospitals and schools, And thanks to all of this
income that came in from leasing armies out, taxes for
the rest of the citizens were lower. So lacing armies
to other nations was obviously a major economic boon that
lifted hess Castle out of maybe not exactly what you
would categorize as poverty, but at least pretty austere circumstances.
(09:55):
They were getting by, but as we said, subsistence farming,
and they started the more prosper and then the became yeah, more,
much more prosperous. It wasn't always pretty though. When your
country basically becomes a factory for making soldiers, there are
going to be some repercussions when battles go badly or
when battles come to your own doorstep. So it did
take an immense toll, and even even with those downsides,
(10:17):
hess Castle became the most militarized state in Europe. At
the height of this industry, there was a soldier for
every fifteen civilians, and a quarter of all families had
at least one member who was in the military. Boys
were registered for service when they turned seven, and men
had to present themselves to an official every year to
(10:37):
determine if they were going to be inducted into service.
From the tiny turned sixteen until they hit thirty uh,
so called quote expendable people, which were the shiftless, idol, unemployed, etcetera,
could be pressed into service at any time. On the
other hand, people who had more crucial roles, including roles
like keeping the army dressed and fed, would be exempt
(10:59):
from this practice. Yeah, it's the modern side of me
thinks that this sounds sort of like a dreadful circumstance
to be in. But wages were good. Military families got
tax benefits, The pay was better than being a servant
or a farm laborer, and while discipline was strict within
the military, if you were a person who behaved yourself,
(11:22):
it was not really a problem. So it was an
attractive proposition, and there was also some other attractive stuff
booty and plunder. Yes, on the military side of things,
Hessians had a reputation for being really sharp and skilled,
but two civilians, they were viewed often as plunderers and looters,
(11:43):
taking whatever they wanted from the lands where they fought,
and often this was not actively endorsed by the command,
but it wasn't exactly discouraged either. They kind of let
the soldiers do their plundering without much repercussion in terms
of being punished or dissuaded. Right, So, with the pay
and the plunder and the stability, becoming a Hessian soldier
(12:05):
was a pretty popular career career move um. Also it
was you know, it was an army of intense training
and strict discipline, but at the same time one that
instilled a lot of pride and its forces. Its leaders
were generally educated men who were promoted from within according
to merit um see a lot of military history where
(12:27):
the officers were basically coming from the aristocracy, and they
were they were officers because they were aristocrats the aristocracy
and hes Castle was not big enough to be doing
that for this whole army, so they had to instead
promote men based on their skill and merit, which meant
that most of the time people were in units where
they had a good boss. Having a good boss is
(12:48):
a good thing, does you know, even when your job
is maybe one that might be particularly hard and take
you away from your family for a long time. Men
who had and served also told their sons about what
an honorable and rewarding service it was. UH. And the
principality as a whole was also a Calvinist society with
(13:09):
a really strong sense of duty. So there were a
lot of social factors going into the popularity of being
in the military. And while many nations, including Britain, often
hired soldiers from Germany, this was not really viewed favorably
by the founding fathers here in the US UH. In
the Declaration of Independence, among the lists of grievances against
(13:31):
the King, one of them is quote he is at
this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete
the works of death, desolation and tyranny already begun, with
circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most
barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
(13:51):
Not popular moon the scathing review of that practice, yes, UH,
and later on the rest of the world would start
to view it's sort of the same way. But at
the point that yeah, the the colonies were extremely displeased
about this idea. But even though today a lot of
people call Hessian's merchant mercenaries, and they were referred to
(14:12):
as mercenaries and the Declaration of Independence. They weren't really mercenaries.
What they were was auxiliaries. So mercenaries were individual people
who served in foreign armies for pay. There were mercenaries
in both the British and Hessian armies. Um. And these
are people that like had their own negotiated terms and
rates of working and like a length of time that
(14:34):
they would serve. Auxiliaries, though, were armies that served on
behalf of governments, with subsidies being paid at the national
level instead of the personal level. And this is a
difference that was recognized by international law. Uh. And at
this point in history, the hiring of auxiliaries was an
extremely common and pretty well accepted practice, except for in
(14:58):
the colony, where it was not favored at all. So
these were really well trained soldiers who were paid to fight,
So not really that different from military service today, except
that they had been kind of contracted on maths through
a government agency. Yeah. So as soon as Britain decided
(15:19):
to use force against the American revolutionaries, it was pretty
much a given that they were going to have to
use a hired army as part of the package. Brittain,
as we said earlier, just did not have a big
enough army on its own, and German Principality started offering
troops to the British in August of seventeen seventy five,
just a couple of months after the Battle of Bunker Hill,
(15:40):
and once Britain agreed, they set a date for troops
from Hescastle to be ready to march, and that date
was February fifteenth of seventeen seventy six. This was meant
to put Hessians in America in time for a summer campaign.
Time was so much of the essence in this whole
plan that this deadline was actually set earlier than the
agreement between the two nations was going to be ratified.
(16:04):
Once it was actually signed, Britain's then back They did
the pay for their service by a month to January.
And for American units, the Hessians include yeager or hunter companies. Uh.
These were foresters and huntsmen, and their role was sort
of like elite rangers. They had better field skills and
we're better marksmen than average recruits, and the younger got
(16:26):
better pay and really spiffy uniforms that were green so
that they could blend into the woods, and also in
the mix were for grenadier battalions and fifteen infantry battalions
which included field and garrison regiments, and those troops were
dark blue. The agreement between Britain and Hescastle outlined the pay,
(16:47):
the removal of injured Hessians back to Germany, medical care,
and free passage for the troops mail. The medical care
was similar to the care that was going to be
provided for British troops, but it was going to be
given German doctors who would travel with the units, and
the Hessian troops that came with this agreement could only
serve in Europe and America. Hescastle had to pay for
(17:09):
replacement soldiers who were killed or injured too badly to
return to the field. On the other hand, if illness
or a shipwreck or some other disaster wiped out a
whole unit, that was then on Britain to pay for
that was their responsibility. Even though a Hessian army seemed
to like a given from this point, like we said,
hiring a foreign army was pretty standard and how warfare
(17:32):
went at this point, there were some really big worries
within Britain about what the results of this action would be.
One part of this was that a lot of people
had the just the justifiable fear that if they started
a full scale military action with hired troops and everything,
that was going to irreparably damage the relationship between the
(17:53):
colonies and Britain, so that no matter how the war went,
it would not ever be repaired from having Star did
with Okay, we're gonna have a big military action with
you guys. And there were also to consider a hundred
and fifty thousand Germans that were living in the colonies,
and British leadership worried that a German army was going
to be convinced to desert and resettle by these existing colonists,
(18:15):
and there were in fact some desertions along the way. Yeah,
there was even some talk that maybe they should use
troops from Russia instead, because there were fewer people in
the colonies who spoke Russian, so there would be less
of a temptation to lure people away from their units
to this sort of idealistic dream of what the founding
fathers were shooting for with UH. With the founding of
(18:37):
the nation UH, these troops started to move out a
little bit later than was originally planned, and a lot
of it just had to do with the logistics of
moving so many people. The Vision started leaving their garrisons
in Germany in February and March, and they continued to
to depart until the spring. They moved from their garrisons
(18:58):
in cycles of marching and rest, thing, with the so
called rest days really involving a lot of training and
exercise we would call the active rest day. Hessian troops
embarked for America in April and June of seventeen seventy six,
so several months after the initial plan, and their first
stop was Portsmouth, where they got more food and additional
ships so the voyage would be more comfortable. Otherwise they
(19:20):
really would not have been in any sort of condition
to fight when they arrived. It was a very long trip.
The first ships were sighted at Long Island almost three
months after they had departed, on August twelve. Yeah, the
idea was that they were supposed to arrive ready to fight,
so while it was still a long and difficult sea voyage,
it was a long and difficult sea voyage with more
(19:41):
comforts than you might ordinarily see better amenities. Everybody had
a pillow and two blankets and a place to sleep,
and and pretty nice allotments of rations, at least until
later in the voyage when a lot of that was
spoiled and gross. Even with those amenities and the relatively
acious and comfortable transport, about eight hundred Hessians in that
(20:04):
first convoy were sick once they arrived. Scurvy and diarrhea
were two of the big complaints. They also because they
had not seen fresh fruit for months while they were
on their way. A lot of them made themselves ill
on unripe apples after they landed um and also exhausted
themselves in the manual effort of setting up camps once
(20:27):
they got off the ships. Once on American soil, they
had a number of compensations to make. So the Hessians
had a reputation for being exceedingly competent soldiers really well disciplined,
but their training in Germany really didn't always translate to
combat skills in America. There had been a lot of
focus on marching and very precise formations, and that didn't
(20:48):
work well when mixed in with British formations or in
skirmishes with small bands of revolutionaries who were fighting in
more of a guerrilla combat style. Yeah. I can't of
imagine a well trained army the very focused on maneuvers
and on precision in in marching and formation and things
like that, and and being harried by little bands of
(21:09):
scrappy guys with guns taking pot shots at them from
the woods. Not really compatible. Yeah. The colonists had also
gotten word that Hessians were on their way, and they
had made their own recruitment and training efforts to try
to compensate um these though as we as we just said,
they were scrappier, raggedier forces than these professionally trained and
(21:31):
dressed troops from Britain and Germany. So the American troops
looked like they were just going to be easily overwhelmed
by the Hessians. In the British they did not look
like trained, competent soldiers. They looked like ragamuffins. Really like
I'm sort of imagining them as grown up street urchins
(21:52):
with rocks m from a Dickens novel. They just went
through time to the battlefield. Yeah their faces so yeah,
And for a while, um, the the American forces faced
a lot of defeat In the late summer, fall and
(22:13):
early winter of seventeen seventy six, the colonial forces met
the Hessians again and again, and they saw what seemed
like just an endless string of defeats. This really cemented
the idea in the in the you know, minds of
the Hessian troops that the Americans were not good soldiers,
but they would be easily defeated and this overconfidence would
(22:34):
turn out to be a problem, as over confidence often does.
Do you want to pause for just a second before
we get to the meaty story of battle, Yes, and
take a word from our sponsors. Yes, And now let's
get back to the most famous battle that the Hessians
were involved in in the American Revolution. This is the
one that followed George Washington's famous crossing of the Delaware
(22:57):
River on Christmas night seventeen seventy six, and that happened
at Trenton. So the brief version, the war had been
going very very poorly for Washington's army, with many defeats
and retreats and trouncings by the Hessians. Desertion had become
a huge problem, and new recruits were getting more and
more difficult to come by. The mood of both the
(23:19):
army and the leadership was pretty seriously demoralized, and it
was basically fraught with pessimism. Yeah, listen started out as
a very idealistic attempt to become independent and to start
a new, pretty groundbreaking system of government, and then as
the fighting went on, it was just like being kicked
(23:42):
over and over. It was not going well. You could
see how that would break their spirits. Yes, at this point,
the wise thing to do, from many people's perspective, would
have been for the colonists to spend the winter regrouping
for a spring campaign. And that's really what the main
portion of the British army had done, leaving the Hessians
(24:04):
to hold some of the key ground. But many of
Washington's men had not re enlisted. He was going to
lose some as soldiers at the end of the year.
There was no guarantee of getting them to change their
minds or being able to replace them with fresh troops.
So he decided to make a really extraordinarily risky combat
move in the hope that it would be successful and
(24:25):
reinvigorate the effort for independence. Yeah, he basically he had
to do something or he was not going to have
much of an army anymore. So on Christmas night of
seventeen seventy six, Washington led his army across the Delaware
River from Pennsylvania to New Jersey. Uh, this is inordinately treacherous.
The river was close to flood stage, and because it
was winter, it had frozen over in many places. This
(24:48):
was a river that would like it would freeze in
big sheets, and then the sheets would break up and
these giant pieces of ice would float down the river.
So these giant ice flows were constantly threatening the boats
that were trying to cross the river that was already flooding.
On top of that, while they were crossing, a storm
started up and pelted them with rain and sleet and
(25:09):
blinding snow. So like this was already just daring and dramatic,
and it was immortalized in the famous although in many
ways not representative of what actually happened, painting by Emmanuel
Louts which was made in eight one, and that is
the famous Washington crossing the Delaware painting, which makes it
flows with like icebergs, and it also seems to be
(25:30):
happening in the daytime, like there are some things that
they're not right. Everybody looks beautiful, they're pelted with misery.
Washington and his troops did make it across the river,
but two other units that were supposed to be supporting
him could not. The weather in the river were simply
too treacherous, and because the river crossing had taken so long,
(25:51):
Washington had really given up the element of surprise that
he had been counting on, since they'd no longer be
able to reach Trenton before dawn of Things were not
looking very good for them at this point, and their
attack plan, which started out kind of like far of
a wild card plan, the Hail Mary even more of
a long shot that this was the Hail Mary Pass
(26:13):
of George Washington. So even though they had just had
this treacherous river crossing that was exhausting and blinding and
put them way behind schedule, Washington attacked Trenton anyway with
a two pronged attack and spoiler alert, and under an
hour they had taken the city along with nine nineteen
Hessian prisoners. It's pretty impressive. It is the hail Mary work,
(26:36):
and that made be one of the reasons why the
legend goes that all of this went so amazingly well
for George Washington, because the Hessians were drunk because they
partied too late into the night for Christmas the night before.
That's not true. No, maybe it's one of those things
where it strange credulity so much that people have to
come up with a reason that the Hessians could be
(26:57):
taken down. Surely they must all have been. They were hammered.
That's the only way this could have worked. One of
them was kind of hammered. But uh, but the greater
proportion of the men we're going to talk about now,
why it is not that they were drunk, Although in
my head there's a very funny version of this now
playing out where Washington's troops basically walk into like a
(27:20):
herd of you know, jolly stumblinas who were just slashed.
But that's not real. That didn't happen, But in my
head it's very funny, and I wish I could share it. Yea.
So these were trained and disciplined men. They had been
forewarned that Washington might attack them, and there had been
a number of skirmishes in the surrounding area leading up
to this attack. There were three Hessian regiments staying in Trenton,
(27:44):
and every night one of them would sleep in their
uniforms with their weapons just in case they were attacked
in the night. Their commanding officer, UH, Colonel Johann Rawl,
he had definitely overindulged himself on Christmas. He didn't set
a really awesome example. But the fighting men were on
the whole sober. So you must have been kind of
(28:06):
an outlier, since it sounds like that's not really the
way most of them would have conducted themselves. No, but
the problem was that while they may not have been drunk,
and they were however sick, they were exhausted. They were
short on men. Uh and in the days before the battle,
Colonel Rawl had written to Hessian Colonel Carl von Dannup
to say that they were undermanned and that they were exhausted.
(28:28):
Von Donop had passed this up to General James Grant,
a British general who was commanding a number of scattered garrisons,
and General Grant had simply not taken this information seriously.
He wrote off the idea that Washington would have ever
dared across the Delaware at this time of year, and
he described the rebels as having quote neither shoes nor stockings,
are in fact almost naked, starving for cold without blankets
(28:51):
and very ill supplied with provisions. So he thought there
was no way they would even if they were going
to try it, they weren't going to make it. Yeah.
But but even though he had pretty much been like,
this is not an actual problem, uh, he did right
to Rawle on Christmas Eve with this kind of blithe
note that said, Washington has been informed that our troops
(29:13):
have been marched into winter quarters and has been told
that we are weak at Trenton and Princeton, and Lord
Sterling expressed a wish to make an attack upon these
two places. I don't believe he will attempt it, but
be assured that my information is undoubtedly true. So I
need not advise you to be on your guard against
an unexpected attack at Trenton. So even though he had
(29:37):
pretty much said like, you guys don't need more men's fine,
don't worry about it, then literally Christmas Eve, worry about
it a little, but don't worry about it. Maybe you
do need to actually worry about this, but not really. Yeah.
And it's unclear whether rawl ever read this note. It's
possible that he mistook a skirmish the night before as
the sneak attack that he'd been forewarned of. He canceled
(29:59):
the dawn patrol outside trenton the day after Christmas due
to miserable weather and the aforementioned sickness and exhaustion of
the troops. Yeah, but it really might not have helped
them much if they had done this dawn patrol and
gotten a little bit more advanced warning that the that
George Washington troops were incoming, that it was their overconfidence
(30:21):
and their German military training that was really their undoing. Yeah,
the Hessians formed up in ranks outside of town. They
were ready to meet Washington's army as they'd been taught. Uh,
And it was snowing and their muskets got wet and
they could not fire. Yeah. Meanwhile, the Americans came in
behind them, took the town that immediately gave them shelter
(30:44):
in a place where they could easily dry out their
own weapons, And they took the bridge under ass and
Pink Creek, and that cut off the Hessian's easiest way
to escape. So when the Hessians did try to escape,
their soldiers were pretty quickly bogged down in ice and mud.
So basically the Hessian army had followed their military training
to go meet out in the field where their weapons
(31:07):
became water logged and they couldn't really defend themselves, while
Washington was like, now we have we're in your city,
drying out our stuff. This is gonna go really well
for us. Nice formation, champ uh. And this all meant that,
in addition to being outnumbered by more than a thousand,
the Hessians were at this point hugely outgunned, and they
(31:28):
had no way to retreat, and they were trying to
fight with weapons that were too wet to fire, where
his Washington's army had a warm, dry city that they
were working from. So, like we said, it took under
an hour and there were nine nineteen Hessian prisoners taken,
and Washington, uh, understandably, being quite pleased with himself, paraded
(31:48):
his prisoners through Philadelphia so that everyone could see these
Hessians that he had conquered. Yeah, done a sneak attack
on Yeah. So the big thing I mean, in addition
to the fact that there was it was led off
by this dramatic river crossing. Um, this aren't This battle
really reinvigorated the American cause and renewed the war effort.
(32:11):
But obviously eventually the colonists won um had this whole
dramatic thing not happened and kind of restored people's hope
in the effort. I don't know that it would have
gone that way. It really is like the event that
turned to tide for sure. Yeah, there's no telling. It's
not even as though Trenton was like the world's biggest
(32:34):
strategic point. It was more the strategy was more about
making everyone more confident that the war could go in favor. Yeah,
it was a huge morale boost. I mean, that's like
the understatement of the year. Uh. And interestingly enough, after
the war, uh, somewhere between three thousand and five thousands
Hessians actually stayed in the US. Uh. You know, they
(32:55):
found the growing German community and the promises of freedom
and liberty to really be quite an attractive incentive to
stick around. And during the war at least five thousand
of them had deserted to fight for the American side.
So this concern that maybe Hessians would dessert once they
discovered how many other German people were in the colonies,
that was actually it had a little substance to it
(33:15):
pretty valid. Not long after the end of the American Revolution,
the prevailing thinking in Europe started to turn against the
idea of hired armies at all. So while the idea
of privately organized armies for higher had already started to
fall out of favor, the idea of of nations doing
this started to fall out of favor as well. As
(33:39):
time moved towards the eighteen hundreds, Hescastle was less and
less of a military industry, and then in eighteen o
six it was merged into the Confederation of the Rhyme,
meaning that the state didn't exist on its own anymore.
Uh So there was no more army for higher factory
operating out of Europe, but an end to that whole system. Yeah,
(34:01):
it didn't, It didn't end immediately just then, but it
was on its way out. Yeah. That's probably the final
male in the conference, or to speak, that's the passions.
And you know it's a good one because yeah, I
think there's a lot of misconception or just a mystery.
But people don't hear about this one very much. Yeah.
(34:22):
The the idea that they were drunk is repeated often
in books and articles and and things like that, but
modern historians are pretty much said, no, drunkenness may have
been a factor in uh one person's decision. They were
definitely tired, and then sickness was a problem. But it
(34:42):
was not as though the American Army showed up and
everybody was completely plastered and they were just like here,
this is ours now. Yeah, not not quite that simple. Yeah,
if you were a military history buff, you probably know
eight million more things about the Shion and all of
their movements in the American Revolution and many many, many
other wars, and probably watching Sleepy Hollow makes you crazy. Yeah.
(35:07):
I love Sleepy Hollow. I want to watch it all
the time you can. Yeah, it's I think one of
the reasons that I love it is that it's so
off the mark, like it's so obviously not taking itself
seriously and its presentation of history. I am much more
accepting of its glaringly not following history for real. Yeah,
(35:27):
it's kind of like it makes you the deal at
the beginning, like we're jumping the tracks here, just heads up,
Which does It makes it easier to accept sort of
the fantastical factor of it and not be too caught
up in the detail incorrectness. I just wish there were
more clancy Brown. I just wish they were more episodes.
There will be I mean every day, like if there
(35:48):
were a daily right on that we'll start a campaign. Okay,
I have some listener mail. I would be delighted if
you would share it. This is a postcard, an actual postcard.
We get these in the mail. This is from Kira
and Kira says Tracy and Holly. I know you two
must have quite the postcard collection by now, but in
case you haven't hit all seven continents, here is one
(36:10):
from Antarctica. I am just finishing up my second season
working to support science at McMurdo Station. My last track
down was during the summer, but this year I was
part of the skeleton crew that stayed through the winter.
I say that with that weird tone because that would
make me crazy. I hate the cold and I hate
(36:36):
the dark, and so I can't imagine this at all.
So with twenty four hours of darkness for months and
a harsh cold environment, it is easy to fall prey
to a condition called T three or winter brain. While
looking for ways to keep myself intellectually stimulated, I stumbled
across a podcast. There were plenty of days that I
spent a solad ten hours listening to old episodes while
(36:58):
I work. I just wanted to say thanks for helping
to keep me sane through the long Antarctic winter. Night
is from Kira. So this postcard that Kira has sent us,
it says Antarctica. It is an old photo. It's Navy
photographers on observation Hill from one So it's an old
(37:21):
photo and it's got these guys and they're on this
desolate hill. There's a cross in the foreground. And what
this picture says to me to sort of come to Antarctica,
you will die. But that's not true. It is not true.
I had a friend that spent time with Antarctica, also
doing science research. Keep back, it's cool. I a terrifying
(37:43):
prospect because I am a little bit of like I'll
tell you that I think Brian's relatives think I'm his
pretty city wife, just because I like the amenities of
living in a city and all things you can get,
and so did not be able to like have my
whims met with make me a little insake. I like
the amenities of daylight and warmth. I don't need the daylight,
(38:04):
I do like the warmth, and I want to be
able to go to restaurants when I want them. Yeah. Well,
you know, before I was born, my mother and father
lived in Alaska for a little while. Yeah, my dad
was in the army, and my mom has talked about
how she found Alaskan winters to be horrible, and her
method for dealing with this was to make chocolate cookies
every week so that the house always smelled like cookies,
(38:27):
which I think is a great coping mechanism, a beautiful
coping mechanisms. I'm so happy that we were able to
provide entertaining some enterdainment for people that are in the
middle of a cold, dark winter, because that just that
is a thing that just thinking about kind of crushes
my soul a little bit. I can't imagine living in
a place where there is not a sunrise or a
(38:47):
sunset for that long. Chinese, Like, what do you do
when you have to have lomaine? I know, it's ridiculous,
you know, trays my very oiled nature. Yeah, thank you
so much for writing to here and for sending us
this postcard. We get a lot of requests about where
people can send postcards, and since our address has changed, Yeah,
(39:12):
we were at thirty three fifty Peachtree Road, Northeast Sweet
eleven fifty party Change Atlanta, Georgia three or three to six.
So that is where you can send us a postcard
you would like, Oh, I love the postcard. Their offer.
They are quite fun. We get some that are just
like from such as I love it. It's wonderful. If
(39:35):
you would like to write to us an email, you can.
We were at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're
also on Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash history flash
Stuff and on Twitter at missed in History. Our tumbler,
which is booming lately, is missed in History dot tumbler
dot com, and we are also on Pinterest. If you
would like to learn a little more about what we've
been talking about today, you can go to our website
(39:56):
and put the word Revolutionary War in the search bar.
You will find a gallery of Revolutionary War pictures, which
includes the famous Washington Crossing, the Delaware painting, as well
as why was the American Revolution so revolutionary? You can
do all that and a whole lot more at our website,
which is how Stuff works dot com for more on
(40:22):
this and thousands of other topics. Because it has to
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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