Talk:Hessian (soldier)

message: Can someone merge the two articles I pasted? Thanks, Greenmountainboy 18:30, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Merged articles

message: Could someone try and correct that note? Currently it says that 10,000 Hessians out of a force of 1,400 were captured. Obviously that cannot be correct. Unfortunately I have no idea what the correct numbers are.--Caranorn 13:19, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Numbers seemed okay a while back when I last read the entire article, I only noticed that entry on 10,000 captured out of 1,400. Maybe there is some massive buried vandalism.--Caranorn 12:39, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That looks like a typo that was fixed a few days ago.~ (The Rebel At) ~ 13:51, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

text: You raise a good point. 1793 is definitely the wrong number.  Though, by 1783, the war was pretty much over.  So perhaps an offer of land at that point makes sense, when veterans were also receiving land grants for service. ~ (The Rebel At) ~ 01:00, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hessian captives 

message: I'm not sure how long that information has been part of the article but I find it rather confusing. Of the regiments listed later in the article, none seem to be subjects of the Electorat of Hanover. From my past wargame research I don't recall any Hanovrian regiments present either. I think the problem stems from George III being one of a number of dukes of Brunswick (several distinct duchies) at the time, the units present don't seem to have originated in his duchy.
In short, does anyone have sourced material documenting German subjects of George III serving in German regiments (there almost certainly were some in his UK and Colonial regiments. Otherwise I think this should be removed.
Note, I've actually been on wiki-retirement for over a year now, but as I'm working on a major project (three more weeks fully booked for the first stage of that project) for french language wikipedia I've been regularly checking my watchlist the past few weeks. But I'd rather not get involved in another task like verifying and referencing this article right now.--Caranorn (talk) 22:10, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I just came across a letter from King George III where he volunteered 400 of his Hanover chaasseurs for the Burgoyne campaign.  It's in Commager's The Spirit of Seventy-Six pg 543.
Be careful with our terminology, The UK didn't exist in the 18th century. At the time it was the Kingdom of Great Britain which was in personal union with Irland at the time.(Morcus (talk) 19:11, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

text: Yep, but we are on the talk page, not the article. And I used UK as I wanted to refer to Regiments from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.--Caranorn (talk) 19:55, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  King George III, Hanover and Hessians 

message: In 1786, the British Government paid the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel a total of £471,000in compensation and celebration of lost horrible troops.
Does anyone have a citation for this quote, or any idea what "lost horrible troops" means?  It should be removed if not.  Does anyone disagree?  Thanks! --smurdah (talk) 17:39, 20 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing, uncited sentence in the article 

message: Is anyone else here a descendant of a deserting Hessian soldier?  I'm a descendant of Caspar Spohn, who eventually settled in Pennsylvania.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.106.242.150 (talk) 20:41, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Descendants 

message: Something that struck me when looking at this article was that it almost entirely covers the period 1776-83, yet the practice of the British hiring Hessian and other German soldiers was considerably older - and was continued post 1783. Would it be an idea to split into two articles, one largely consisting of the current contents under an article of Hessians in the American War and one covering their wider existence in the period? Lord Cornwallis (talk) 01:50, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the current contents are a result of editor interest and knowledge.  I think it'd better to keep everything in one umbrella at the moment until there's significant content for both areas to warrant a split.  Otherwise, while it's weighted heavily toward the American Revolution and that time period, there's no reason that someone can't come in and balance out the article.  I'd rather see a longer comprehensive article on Hessians, than several abbreviated ones.  My own opinion. ~ (The Rebel At) ~ 18:04, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Split?

message: I remember hearing this rumor somewhere the colonists at the time were given the impression that the Hessians they were fighting were 7 foot tall and had 2 rows of teeth. I can't seem to find any source material about this and would like see some. Anyone know of any?
thanks 70.104.168.106 (talk) 05:07, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "7 foot tall with two rows of teeth" 

message: The section on Ireland 1798 should be revised drastically. The 5th Bn 60th foot was part of a British Line Regiment and Hompesch's Mounted Rifles were raised by an individual for British service - a completely different arrangement from the Hessian contract troops used in America. Hompesch himself was from Wurtemburg by way of Malta, and all that is recorded about the personnel of both units is that most (but by no means all)were ethnic Germans. Mercenaries maybe - on an individual level - but their identification as "Hessians" seems to come entirely from a line in the Irish nationalist ballad "Boolavogue" - which is how I came to this page. This is more likely to have been a deliberate attempt to link their activities in 1798 with those of their fellow-Germans in America than an accurate statement of historical fact. Howey1924 (talk) 18:29, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Confusing section on Ireland 1798" 

message: Someone's added a line claiming 16,000 Hessians were in fact Russian. I have never seen this stated anywhere else. I know the British considered hiring in Russians to bolster numbers, but that never transpired.
:No it's absolute rubbish. The British asked the Russians for troops, but the Russian government refused. The word Hessians come from the principality of Hesse-Hanau, where most of the German contingent came from.
 
Does anyone know of any credible sources for this? Or is this a kind of Russian revisionism (I don't why any proud Russian would want to claim them, with the exception of the Jægers they frankly weren't particularly good (their Fredick the great tactics were totally inappropriate for the American theatre) that's why the British used them mostly for garrison duty).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.184.115.220 (talk) 10:24, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  'Russian' Hessians? 

message: The enemy the Hessians fought in 1776 were called at the time, and by RS today, "Patriots." It's standard and not POV -- indeed it was a pejorative term at the time. The Oxford English Dictionary third definition of "Patriot" is "A person actively opposing enemy forces occupying his or her country; a member of a resistance movement, a freedom fighter. Originally used of those who opposed and fought the British in the American War of Independence." In Britain at the time, "patriot" had a negative connotation, and was used, says Samuel Johnson to attack "a factious disturber of the government." [ibid OED] Rjensen (talk) 22:34, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: The enemy?

message: "Most of the infantry were chasseurs (sharpshooters)." - This is incorrect,  Chasseur was a French term, they were French light infantry. The correct term for a Hessian/German sharpshooter is Jäger. Vought109 (talk) 20:50, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: History

message: The article says that more Hessians died of accidents than disease, which would have been very unusual during this period. Disease generally caused more deaths than did war wounds up until WWII, as I recall. Parkwells (talk) 01:59, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Casualties

message: Why is this page still rated start class in the wikiprojects? Looks like it's easily C class. Anyway, I've had this page on my watchlist for years and the amount of activity here has always puzzled me. Out of curiosity, is this really such a hot-button topic? It appears in my changelist so often that watchlist fatigue causes me to neglect checking the edits. The topic itself seems somewhat obscure.... at least to me. I have almost 1000 pages in my watchlist and it's easily in the top 10 most active. Thoughts? Is the IP vandalism okay? The page could be protected if there's a big problem. Jason Quinn (talk) 04:15, 6 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  start class? question 

message: The use of the term "state" when describing Hesse and other German speaking countries at the time, while technically correct, may mislead some people into thinking these were united states under a common country called Germany. Of course there was no Germany until a multitude of tiny German speaking countries united into Germany in 1870. So I recommend using the term "German speaking country" instead of German state.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.10.114.177 (talk) 16:21, 25 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Country vs State. 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The article repeated refers to these Soldiers as Auxiliaries.  This is a much better and more NPOV term than "mercenaries," but I wonder if it's really the most appropriate word to use in the introduction and throughout the article.  According to the Auxiliaries article, this term is typically used to describe irregular, part-time, or civilian/non-combatant units.  The Hessian formations were none of these.  It may not be the wrong word to use, necessarily, but I wonder if it's currently over-emphasized.  This is less of a statement and more of a question; I'm curious what others think about it. Canute (talk) 14:34, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree that the term auxiliaries is not the best term.  The soldiers in question were commonly know as mercenaries for the simple fact that they were hired to fight in a foreign war. Mercenaries is the term used by the greater bulk of sources. This was recently discussed at length on the American Revolutionary War Talk Page. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 00:31, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: "Mercenaries" is a significantly worse term for reasons previously and frequently discussed.  It implies things to today's readers that were not true at the time, and was a propaganda term that only represents one perspective. Canute (talk) 20:39, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Auxiliaries 

message: The lede makes the statement that the "Hessians were legally and politically distinguished as auxiliaries", which is a questionable and dubious statement. Legal in whose eyes? I'm sure Hesse-Cassel, who hired these soldiers out, and Britain agreed with that claim.  However King Frederick II of Prussia (Northern Germany) didn't recognize any legal status and forbid the transit of any such soldiers to pass through his territory.  Certainly the Americans didn't recognize any legal status and commonly referred to them as "foreign mercenaries" for the simple and basic reason that they were hired soldiers sent off to fight in a foreign war they had no stock in. As was done in the ARW article, this article needs to give due weight to both the ideas of auxiliaries and mercenaries. It can be easily demonstrated that the term mercenaries is the common term used by the overwhelming majority of sources on the American War for Independence, so we should lend the most weight to that term. Any legal consideration remains dubious and quite debatable and is secondary to the greater idea that the soldiers in question were hired to fight in a foreign war.  It doesn't matter if they had a state sponsored manager or were acting on their own. They remained hired soldiers sent off to fight in a foreign war they had no interest in. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 00:30, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: This debate comes up frequently.  For a start, I'd suggest "A Generous and Merciful Enemy" by Daniel Krebs.  The author dedicates the first chapter explaining the European system of professional armies in the 18th century, the term "mercenary" and what it meant at the time, the common practices, and the opposition to German states' participation in the American Revolutionary War from both the American and German perspectives.  But the short answer to your question would be that the "legal" status of these Soldiers came from their respective treaties with Great Britain, meaning that they weren't spies or Soldiers-for-Hire as some would like us to believe.  As with almost any war, the legalities faced scrutiny from those who disagreed. Forgive the crude comparison, but it's kind of like the difference between a pirate and a privateer. Canute (talk) 20:37, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Legally?