Abstract
Throughout the long eighteenth century, the German auxiliary was the most common and most recurrent partner in Anglo-German military associations, and the one that had the greatest impact on perceptions and relations. The augmentation of British-sponsored forces through the hiring of German troops would become one the more consistent aspects of British military policy during the eighteenth century, and in the process would create one of the great fault lines in British politics. So consistent was this policy that in every major European war German ‘mercenaries’ would make up a significant proportion of the armies fighting on behalf of the Hanoverian monarchs. This chapter will survey some of the key relationships to examine trends in their integration and relations with British soldiers.
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Notes
Peter Wilson, ‘The German “Soldier Trade” of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Reassessment’, The International History Review, XVIII(4) (November 1996), pp. 757–92.
One well-informed English officer wrote in his diary of the situation in the Peninsula had been saved by ‘an army of 30,000 English mercenaries’. Julia V. Page, Intelligence Officer in the Peninsula: Letters and Diaries of Major the Hon Edward Charles Cocks 1786–1812 (New York: Hippocrene, 1986), p. 126.
Reginald Savory, ‘Jeffery Amherst Conducts the Hessians to England, 1756’, JSAHR, 49 (1971), p. 158.
Carl William Eldon, England’s Subsidy Policy Towards the Continent During the Seven Years’ War (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania, 1938), pp. 60, 160.
One subsidy treaty with the Prince-bishop of Trier had more to do with access though the Rhine and Mosel valleys than access to his armed forces. Peter Wilson, War, State and Society in Württemberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 86
This policy would be used again in 1716, whereby George I paid for Gotha, Münster and Wolfenbüttel troops to cover the Dutch border fortresses, thus permitting them to send 6,000 Dutch soldiers to help turn the tide in the first Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland. Jonathan Israel, ‘The Dutch Role in the Glorious Revolution’, in Jonathan Israel (ed.), The Anglo-Dutch Moment: Essays on the Glorious Revolution and Its World Impact (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), pp. 106–8
Once again, this is excluding the Holstein troops within the Danish auxiliaries. John Hattendorf, England in the War of Spanish Succession (New York: Garland, 1987), p. 132
Details of many of these treaties can be found in Charles Jenkinson, A Collection of Treaties of Peace, Alliance, and Commerce Between Great-Britain and Other Powers, 1648–1783 (London: J. Debrett, 1785).
During the Waterloo Campaign, Britain agreed to subsidize some 100,000 troops from several German states, including Bavaria. John M. Sherwig, Guineas and Gunpowder: British Foreign Aid in the Wars with France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 338.
Horatio Walpole, The Case of the Hessian Forces, in the Pay of Great-Britain, Impartially and Freely Examin’d (London: R. Francklin, 1731), pp. 30, 33.
Atwood, Hessians, p. 18; Burne, The Noble Duke of York, p. 46; Foranindepth examination of the effects of this relationship on the Hessian state, see: Peter Keir Taylor, Indentured to Liberty, Peasant Life and the Hessian Military State, 1688–1815 (New York: Cornell University Press, 1994).
See, for example: Tony Hayter (ed.), An Eighteenth-Century Secretary at War, The Papers of William, Viscount Barrington (London: Army Records Society, 1988), pp. 137–8.
Reed Browning, ‘The Duke of Newcastle and the Financial Management of the Seven Years War in Germany’, Journal of Economic History, 31(2) (1971), pp. 24–5.
Burne, Duke of York, pp. 43–4; Gebhard von. Scharnhorst, G. v. Scharnhorsts Briefe. Bd. 1 Privatbriefe, Hrsg. K. Linnebach (München und Leipzig: Georg Müller, 1914), p.
Wilson Beckles, The Life and Letters of James Wolfe (London: William Heinemann, 1909), p. 141.
Ompteda, A Hanoverian-English Officer, p. 59; British Officer, The Present State of the British Army in Flanders; With an Authentic Account of Their Retreat Before Dunkirk… (London: H. D Symonds, 1793), p. 4.
Johann Ewald, Diary of the American War, A Hessian Journal Translated and Edited by Joseph P. Tustin (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1979), pp. 55, 78, 110, 121.
McGuffie, The Siege of Gibraltar, pp. 45, 54; John Drinkwater, A History of the Siege of Gibraltar, 1779–1783 (London: J. Murray, 1863), p. 96.
John W. Jackson, With the British Army in Philadelphia (London: Presidio Press, 1979), p. 83.
Wolfgang Handrick claims that there was relations were more favourable on account of previous history, but few references to the War of Spanish Succession were found, save for those complimenting George II for a bravery that matched his endeavours as a young German prince. Wolfgang Handrick, Die Pragmatische Armee 1741 bis 1743: Eine alliierte Armee im Kalkül des Östereichischen Erfolgekrieges (München: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1991), pp. 116–17.
See also: Historical Manuscripts Commission, Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont Diary of the First Earl of Egmont (London: HM Stationery Office, 1923), vol. III, pp. 275.
W.A. Speck, The Butcher: The Duke of Cumberland and the Suppression of the 45 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), p. 120.
Helga Doblin (trans.); and Mary C. Lynn (ed.), The American Revolution, Garrison Life in French Canada and New York: Journal of an Officer in the Prinz Friedrich Regiment, 1776–1783 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), p. 4
Johann Conrad Döhla, A Hessian Diary of the American Revolution. Translated, Edited, and with an Introduction by Bruce E. Burgoyne (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990), p. 71.
Clerk himself was certainly a fan of German armies, later enquiring with Government ministers about the viability of having his son join the Prussian Army under Frederick II. John Clerk, Memoirs of the Life of Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, edited by John M. Gray (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1892), vol. xiii, p. 91.
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Wishon, M. (2013). German Auxiliaries. In: German Forces and the British Army. War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137284013_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137284013_4
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