4. Ibid., 68, 142. Cope wrote: “My brother John, the eldest of five sons, was at that time a youth of very promising talents. His mind was uncultivated by education & experience, but his heart was affectionate & pure, his person attractive & his genius versatile, active & powerful…. A similarity of taste & character ripened into a mutual & ardent attachment between him & André. They formed a resolution to spend the residue of their days together. London, as affording the best hope to rising genius, was designed as the place of their permanent abode. André made known their intentions to my father & craved his approbation…. So firm & ardent was his attachment that he offered to abandon the army on condition of my father's consent to their plans. He went further; he offered wholly to defray John's expenses until they should both be settled in some honorable & lucrative employment…. John also pressed the suit, but he pressed in vain; neither argument, solicitation nor tears availed. Father was inflexible…. Whether by a private understanding between them, or whether it was the offspring of his own motion alone, I cannot remember, but John soon attempted to follow his friend to New York. His escape was private, but would not long be concealed from his father, who went in search of him &…[overtook] him before he reached the British lines…. From that moment his character & pursuits assumed a new direction. The palette & pencil were thrown aside…No André to take him by the hand & lead him up the path of science. Home & study became equally irksome” (142, 144).
5. Ibid., 143.
CHAPTER 1
1. Letter, Germain to Knox, “1777, June 11. Stoneland Lodge”; Germain to Knox, June 24, 1777. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, vol. VI (Dublin: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1909: Reprint, Gregg Press, Boston, 1972), 130–31.
2. Letter, Thomas Forrest to Colonel Proctor, “McConkey's Ferry, 29th Dec'r, 1776,” Samuel Hazard, Pennsylvania Archives, vol. 5 (Philadelphia: Joseph Severns & Co., 1853), 142. “Brass Caps” is a nickname for the Hessian grenadiers and fusiliers, who wore distinctive brass or tin “mitre” caps.
3. Letter, Gen. James Grant to the Honorable Richard Rigby, “Brunswick, 15th January 1777,” James Grant of Ballindalloch Papers, National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh. Microfilm in Library of Congress, reel 28.
4. Report, von Donop to Cornwallis, “Cantonement Brunswig 6e. Janv. 1777” (“Brunswick Cantonment, January 6, 1777), Grant Papers, reel 37. Translation from French by the author.
5. A summary of Sir George Osborn's examination can be found in “Parliament: Commons on Gen. Howe's Conduct,” Scots Magazine, 41 (December 1779), 644.
6. Nicholas Cresswell, The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell (London: Jonathan Cape, 1925), 181.
7. The Annual Register: or, a View of the History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year 1777, 4th ed. (London: J. Dodsley in Pall Mall, 1794), 20. The Register's founder and chief editor was the Whig leader Edmund Burke, so its editorializing tended to be sympathetic to the American cause.
8. The Annual Register: or, a View of the History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year 1776 (London: J. Dodsley in Pall Mall, 1777), 236.
9. Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life, edited by B. Radice (1984), 160. Quoted in “Edward Gibbon, Historian of the Roman Empire,” by Eugene Y. C. Ho, www.his.com/~z/gibho1.html.
10. Letter, Samuel Adams to Nathanael Greene, “Philad May 12 1777.” Paul H. Smith, Gerald W. Gawalt, and Ronald M. Gephart, eds., Letters of Delegates to Congress, vol. 7 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1981), 70.
11. Alexander Graydon, Memoirs of a Life, Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania, within the Last Sixty Years (1811) (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1822), 298.
12. Johann Ewald, Diary of the American War: A Hessian Journal, Captain Johann Ewald, Field Jager Corps, translated and edited by Joseph Tustin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 50–51.
13. Ibid., 51.
14. Letter, Howe to Grant, dated “N. York Jan 9th [1777] 11 o'clock A.M.,” Grant Papers, reel 37.
15. G. Washington to Col. Jos. Reed, January 14, 1777. John C. Fitzpatrick, The Writings of George Washington, vol. 7 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932), 15–16.
16. Ibid., 53.
17. Ibid., 66.
18. Historical Anecdotes Civil and Military in a Series of Letters Written from America in the Years 1777 and 1778, &c. (London: Printed for J. Bew, in Pater Noster Row, 1779), 5. Rare Book Collection, Library of Congress.
19. No. 2091, the King to Lord North, “Queens House Dec. 2, 1777,” in Sir John Fortescue, The Correspondence of King George the Third, vol. 3, July 1773–December 1777 (London: MacMillan and Co., 1928), 501.
20. Sir Danvers's wife, Lady Sarah Osborn (daughter of Lord Halifax), died from complications after the birth of her second son, John. Sir Danvers fell into deep depression over her death, and Lord Halifax tried to help his distraught son-in-law by securing him the governorship of New York, hoping that a change of scenery might give Danvers a new lease on life. Tragically, a few days after arriving in New York in 1753, Sir Danvers succumbed to despair and died of a self-inflicted wound. Danvers (formerly Salem Village), Massachusetts, is believed to be named after him.
21. Letter, Osborn to Germain, October 29, 1776. Public Record Office, London, CO 5/93-3, MS sheets 501–2.
22. With this language arrangement in mind, English-speaking officers often substituted the French preposition de for the German von in titles of officers and regiments. Thus General von Heister is often called de Heister in British writings.
On August 10, 1777, Osborn revealed his lack of fluency in German in a letter to his brother John, the British minister to Saxony stationed in Dresden: “How I envy your having been able to acquire the German language every day. I have an Harper on board, one of the Musick of the Regimen[t] de Ditforth, but I find no advantage but in the amusement of his musick. I shall wish much for my old servant from Dresden and shall be obliged for you to send out for him…I will always likewise have a German footman in my family, if it was only to prevent his [Sir George's son Johnny] being at the loss of the common expression I find myself in my present situation.” Osborn Family Letters, vol. 3, 1771–1782, no. 98. Osborn's frequent use of French in his letters indicates a competency in that language.
23. Friedrich von Münchausen, At General Howe's Side: The Diary of General William Howe's Aide-de-Camp, Captain Friedrich von Münchhausen, translated and edited by Ernst Kipping and Samuel Stelle Smith (Monmouth Beach, NJ: Philip Freneau Press, 1974), 5.
24. Letter, Grant to Rigby, “New York Island 24th Septr. 1776,” Grant Papers, reel 28.
25. “Letters Written during the American War of Independence” by Captain William Hale, Grenadier Company, 45th Regiment of Foot, Regimental Annual (the 1st Nottinghamshire Regiment/Sherwood Foresters) (United Kingdom, 1913), 37.
26. John Graves Simcoe, A Journal of the Operations of the Queen's Rangers…(New York: Bartlett & Welford, 1844), 35.
27. Stephen Kemble, Journals of Lieut.-Col. Stephen Kemble, 1773–1789, &c., new introduction and preface by George A. Billias (New York Historical Society, 1883; reprint, Boston: Gregg Press, 1972), 98. Kemble wrote on October 3, “The Ravages committed by the Hessians, and all Ranks of the Army, on the poor inhabitants of the Country, make their case deplorable; the Hessians destroy all the fruits of the Earth without regard to Loyalists or Rebels, the property of both being equally a prey to them, in which our Troops are too ready to follow their Example, and are but too much Licensed in it…[the Hessians] Maraud throughout the Country, and take Hay and Oats wherever they find it, without the smallest means being used to restrain them, except a letter or two being wrote to their Officers, who pay no attention to them, and Publicly permit, or rather direct, these Depredations to be made” (91).
28. Martin Hunter, The Journal of Gen. Sir Martin Hunter…, edited by James Hunter, Anne Hunter, and Elizabeth Bell (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Press, 1894), 26–27. Confirming these “pet” names, Capt. George Harris of the
5th Regiment's Grenadier Company wrote that when his unit arrived in Princeton shortly after the Trenton disaster, “You would have felt too much to be able to express your feelings, on seeing with what a warmth of friendship our children, as we call the light infantry, welcomed us, one and all crying, ‘Let them come!’ ‘Lead us to them, we are sure of being supported.’” With unabashed emotion, he added, “It gave me a pleasure too fine to attempt expressing, and if you see a stain on the paper pray place the drops to the right motive, for the tears flowed even at the thought, so that I could not stop them.” Stephen R. Lushington, The Life and Services of General Lord Harris, G.C.B., During His Campaigns in America, the West Indies, and India, 2nd ed. (London: John W. Parker, 1845), letter/journal of Capt. George Harris, 5th Regiment Grenadier Company, 55.
29. “From Rariton, May 24, 1777,” letter quoted in the Pennsylvania Evening Post, June 5, 1777, in William S. Stryker, ed., New Jersey Archives, 2nd ser., vol. 1, Extracts from American Newspapers, 1776–1777, 391–92.
30. Philander Chase et. al., eds. The Papers of George Washington: Revolutionary War Series, vol. 9, (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1998), 567–68.
31. Letter, John Adams to Nathanael Greene, “Philadelphia May 9 1777,” in Nathanael Greene, The Papers of General Nathanael Greene, volume 2, 1 January 1777–16 October 1778, edited by Richard K. Showman, Robert M. McCarthy, and Margaret Cobb (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 74.
32. Letter, Greene to Adams, “Camp Middlebrook May 28, 1777,” Greene, Papers, 98.
33. Washington to Livingston, January 24, 1777, Fitzpatrick, Washington, 7, 56–57.
34. Historical Anecdotes, 4.
35. Fitzpatrick, Washington 7, 81.
36. George Washington Papers online at the Library of Congress, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gwhtml/.Ser. 3b, Varick Transcripts, image 323.
37. Eric Robson, ed., Letters from America 1773 to 1780: Being the Letters of a Scots Officer, Sir James Murray, to His Home during the War of American Independence (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1951), 38.
38. Ira D. Gruber, John Peebles’ American War: The Diary of a Scottish Grenadier, 1776–1782 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1998), 98.
39. Letter, William Dansey to his mother, “On Board the Chambre, Amboy Mar. 15, 1777,” Letters of Capt. William Dansey, Light Company, 33rd Regiment of Foot, Historical Society of Delaware, Wilmington. Punctuation added.
40. Fitzpatrick, Washington 7, 222–25.
41. Graydon, Memoirs, 279, 281.
42. Ewald, Diary, Introduction, xxiv–xxvi, 365–74. Ewald's original letters to Jeannette van Horne are in the Library of Congress. They are translated in Appendix 2 of Ewald, Diary.
43. The Bishop of Worcester to Lord North #135, “Lord North's Correspondence,” English Historical Review 62 (1947): 235. The “Roll of the Age, Size, Service, &c.” of the Brigade of Guards Grenadier Company, lists six men as “cordwainers,” or shoemakers. Orders, Returns, Morning Reports and Accounts of British Troops, 1776–1781, film 9, reel 1, M922 U.S. National Archives.
44. Hans Huth, “Letters from a Hessian Mercenary (Colonel von Donop to the Prince of Prussia),” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 62 (October, 1938): 497. Graydon says that Susan van Horne “had the opportunity of often seeing Colonel Donope, a Major Hendricks, and a Major Pauli, all of the German troops; the latter of whom was polite enough to take charge of her horse and chair…” Graydon, 279.
45. Graydon, 279.
46. Von Heister, fiche 45, FZ 57–58, in Count Carl von Donop, Journal of the Hessian Corps in America under General von Heister, 1776–June 1777, Hessian Documents of the American Revolution, Morristown National Historical Park, Morristown, New Jersey.
47. Ewald, Diary, 56–57.
48. Von Donop, Journal of the Hessian Corps, AA, 76–78. “En profound negligee” is a humorously exaggerated idiomatic expression based on the French term en négligé, which means “undressed.” Adding the word profond makes the statement literally translate as “profoundly undressed.” I have used the English idiom “in the buff” to convey the sense and flavor of von Donop's statement.
49. Ewald, Diary, 57.
50. Ibid., 57.
51. Chase, Papers of Washington 9, 188–89.
52. Greene, Papers, 57.
53. Chase, Papers of Washington 9, 171.
54. Greene, Papers, 2, 60.
55. Baurmeister Journal, Fiche 86, GZ 70.
56. Huth, “Letters,” 498. Grogge, or grog, is watered rum, at that time a drink considered fit only for the lower classes and sailors, not for officers and gentlemen.
57. Henry J. Retzer, “Two Journeys to Pay and Clothe the Trenton Captives,” Schwalm 8 (2005): 61.
58. Letter, Capt. James Moore to Col. Persifor Frazer, “Bonebrook Apl. 30th 1777,” Frazer, Frazer Memoir, 224.
59. Letter, Osborn to Germain, “Rariton Near Brunswick May the 15th 1777,” PRO, CO 5/93-3, MS sheet 426.
60. Letter, Lee to Jefferson, “Phila. May 20. 1777,” Thomas Jefferson Papers, ser. 1, General Correspondence, Images 846–47, loc.gov.
61. Cresswell, Journal, 220–21.
62. From Hessian GHQ New Brunswick: “last winter Colonel von Donop with the consent of General Howe, mounted 16 of his Jägers and put them under the orders of Captain Lorey.” Von Donop, Journal of the Hessian Corps, von Heister, fiche 45, FZ 66,
63. Von Donop, Journal of the Hessian Corps, 86.
64. Ibid.
65. Thomas Glyn, Ensign Glyns Journal on the American Service with the Detachment of 1000 Men of the Guards, Manuscript Journal, 50a–51, Princeton University Library, Princeton, NJ.
66. Hale, 21. Grant lived very well, despite the conditions, which no doubt contributed to his unpopularity. John Peebles commented on April 1, “dined with Genl. Grant, the old fellow lives like a Prince.” By contrast, Peebles noted two days earlier, “Din'd with Lord Cornwallis, a genteel Table & moderate.” Peebles Diary, 107. An old Scottish veteran, Lt. Col. Allan Maclean, commander of the Royal Highland Emigrants, described the general in a letter that spring as “our countrywoman Mother James Grant.” New Records of the American Revolution: Letters of Charles Stuart (privately printed, n.d.), 25. Library of Congress.
67. Letter, Grant to Harvey, June 7, 1777, Grant Papers, reel 28.
68. Charles J. Stillé, Major-General Anthony Wayne and the Pennsylvania Line in the Continental Army (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1893), 71. Wayne was appointed brigadier general in February 1777, while stationed at Fort Ticonderoga with part of the Pennsylvania Line. The reorganization of the army and the Pennsylvania Line in this period is complex; see John B. B. Trussell, The Pennsylvania Line: Regimental Organization and Operations, 1775–1783 (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1977). Wayne arrived in Northern New Jersey sometime in early May and took command of the 1st Pennsylvania Brigade, which, along with the 2nd Pennsylvania Brigade, made up Maj. Gen. Benjamin Lincoln's Division.
69. Von Münchhausen, Diary, 13.
70. Graydon, Memoirs, 280.
71. Von Donop, Journal of the Hessian Corps, 90–91. Rev. Henry Muhlenberg of Trappe, Pennsylvania, wrote in his diary on June 11: “The dragoons surrounded him, and although he asked for pardon and offered to surrender, he was cruelly tortured, his eyes were knocked out, his nose was cut off, and finally he was killed by the stabs of seventeen men and his body left lying in the field. The American general washed the body of the said slain man, had him placed in a coffin, sent it to British headquarters, and in a letter inquired if this was an example of their method of waging war.” Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, The Journals of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, vol. 3, translated and edited by Theodore G. Tappert and John W. Doberstein (Philadelphia: The Muhlenberg Press, 1958), 51.
72. Pennsylvania Evening Post, June 12, in Stryker, New Jersey Archives, 397.
73. The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 1, Harold G. Syrett and Jacob E. C
ooke, eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 263.
74. Chase, Papers of Washington 9, 591.
75. Syrett and Cooke, Papers of Hamilton, 263.
76. Von Heister, Fiche 45, FZ 66.
77. Chase, Papers of Washington 9, 592.
78. Graydon, Memoirs, 280.
79. Letter, Grant to Harvey, June 7, 1777, Grant Papers, reel 28.
80. Letter, Wayne to Sharp Delaney, dated “Camp at Mount Prospect 7th June 1777,” Stillé, Wayne, 65.
81. Cresswell, Journal, 229.
82. Historical Anecdotes Civil and Military, 40.
83. Germain to Knox, June 24, 1777, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report, 131.
84. Mark M. Boatner, Encyclopedia of the American Revolution (New York: David McKay Company, 1966), s.v. “von Heister.”
85. This was the name of the principality at the time of the Revolution. In recent times, it has been called Ansbach-Brandenburg-Bayreuth.
86. Cresswell, Journal, 231.
87. O'Hara was the officer who had the disagreeable duty of surrendering Cornwallis's army at Yorktown in 1781.
88. The original three regiments of Foot Guards were the 1st Guards, the Coldstream Guards, and the 3rd Guards (also known as the Scots Guards). Today there are five regiments, with the addition of the Welsh Guards and the Irish Guards, and they are collectively known as the Grenadier Guards, having received this name for their role in defeating the grenadiers of Napoleon's “Old Guard” at Waterloo in 1815.
89. Letter, Howe to Barrington, HQP, Carleton Papers, PRO 30/55, vol. 4.
90. Letter, Grant to Harvey, June 7, 1776, Grant Papers, reel 28.
91. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, The Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 7 (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1922), 191–92; Henry B. Wheatley, The Historical and the Posthumous Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall 1772–1784, vol. 3, (London: Bickers and Son, Leicester Square, 1884), 56–58. Wraxall's memoirs were criticized at the time by his political enemies for being inaccurate. However, “one very strong testimony in favour of Wraxall was the letter which Sir George Osborn, for forty years equerry to George III, wrote to him: ‘I have your first edition here, and have perused it again with much attention. I pledge my name that I personally know nine parts out of ten of your anecdotes to be perfectly correct. You are imprisoned for giving to future ages a perfect picture of our time, and as interesting as Clarendon.’” Vol. 1.
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