From: KH.Ranitzsch@t... (K.H.Ranitzsch)
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2002 22:09:58 +0100
Subject: Re:[OT] AWI Mercs
From: "John Atkinson" <johnmatkinson@yahoo.com> > The Hessians employed by the Dietmar Kügler, in his Book "Die deutschen Truppen im amerikanischen Unabhängigkeitskrieg 1775-1783" (The German troops in the AWI), Stiuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag 1998, ISBN 3-87943-738-6 looks at those troops in considerable detail. Apparently, records had been kept with Teutonic thouroughness ;-) Of the 29,867 men sent out, 17,313 returned home. About 8,000 were killed, some 5,000 stayed in the States - some uncertainty due to missing soldiers etc. > Of course, that's because they were The men were quite decently paid. They sent home 591,000 Talers to their families, and many returned home with - for commoners - comfortable sums. > the blood money for those All of the above. The British hired troops from 6 different petty states ;-) The different rulers used the money for different purposes. Braunschweig paid off its debts, Anhalt-Zerbst and Ansbach-Bayreuth squandered it. The others invested it mostly in public works to improve their infrastructure. BTW, some 25% of the French troops supporting the revolution were of German origin, too. This includes mercenary units such as the "Regiment Allemand des Deux-Ponts" (Zweibrücken) and a bataillon of Trier Grenadiers. A number of German officers, from Steuben down, served with the Americans, and could equally be called mercenaries. Plus, many Germans wo had settled in America before the war fought for the rebels, often in distinct units, thigh here the term is hardly appropiate. Greetings Karl Heinz