As part of our celebration of America at 250, we’ve started a weekly newsletter by historian Jonathan Horn. Learn what happened this week in American history, why it matters, and what else you should see and read in The Free Press and beyond. This week, Jonathan looks at the “Hessians” as they headed for America 250 years ago. To get this newsletter in your inbox every week, sign up here. —The Editors
The French have a term for the feeling that naturally follows from reading recent newspaper headlines about Germany “reinventing” its economy around manufacturing weapons for Europe. The term is déjà vu, and it’s not just about the two world wars. Long before unifying into a nation, the German states of the Holy Roman Empire made a business of supplying their European neighbors with not just arms but also entire armies.
As April 1776 gave way to May, American patriots were discovering the specifics behind reports that King George III of Great Britain had outsourced some of his fight against them to foreign troops. Though hailing from several different German states, these soldiers would go into the history books under the shared name of “Hessians,” for the principality that furnished most of their numbers: Hesse-Kassel. The first of the approximately 30,000 who served in America during the Revolutionary War set off across the Atlantic around this time 250 years ago.
