Between 1776 and 1783, Britain hired an estimated 30,000 German soldiers in its war to put down the American rebellion. Collectively known as Hessians, the troops were hired out by the rulers of six German territories within the Holy Roman Empire: Hessen-Kassel, Hessen-Hanau, Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, Anhalt-Zerbst, Ansbach-Bayreuth, and Waldeck.

Roughly 18,000 of these auxiliary troops arrived in North America in 1776. During the following three years, one third of the British regular army’s strength in North America consisted of Germans; two years later, the proportion reached thirty-seven percent. (For this estimate, see Stephen Conway, “The British Army, ‘Military Europe,’ and the American War of Independence,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 67, no. 1 (January 2010): 78. This percentage does not take into account provincial and loyalist forces or Native American allies. See also Stephen Conway, Britannia’s Auxiliaries: Continental Europeans and the British Empire (New York, 2017), 50-51.) These German forces entered Britain’s conflict with its rebellious colonies with the assumption that the enemy was weak and that the war would not last long. Indeed, Britain’s Prime Minister Lord North’s predicted in 1776 that their hire would bring the war to a speedy resolution without the “further effusion of blood.” This, of course, did not happen. In fact, the steady supply of Germans kept the war going for seven more years.

Members of the German corps spent extended periods of time in locations as dispersed and varied as Canada in the North and West Florida and Cuba in the South. Across this vast terrain, German troops participated in all major military campaigns and occupied British garrisons along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. They shared in all of the significant British military triumphs and in the defeats. Thousands died of disease or were killed in battle or were captured by the enemy. Over the course of the war, a growing number also deserted. Put differently, at virtually any given moment in the years between 1776 and 1783, large numbers of German troops were in garrison, engaged in military action, remained in captivity, returned to Germany, or had settled in a local community, somewhere in North America.

Military and civilian members of the corps penned thousands of official and private letters, reports, diaries, memoirs, and similar records that describe their experiences as participants in Britain’s war against American independence. They also drew maps, collected objects, and authored memoirs about their time in America. Whether written for private or public consumption, many of these records have a high ethnographic content; they include often detailed descriptions of the American land and the people, including the natural and built environments, flora and fauna, and the climate. The creators of these records also commented on the prevalence of slavery and described encounters with Native Americans. Some offer descriptions and opinions about political matters and the war. Taken together, the material constitutes a rich and voluminous body of sources that sheds light on the war in America from the perspective of a people uniquely positioned both in the midst of the war and at its margins.

Over the past few years, I conducted extensive research about the German auxiliary forces in the War for American Independence in libraries and archival collections in North America and Europe. To date, the major outcome of this work is my book Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War, which was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. It was awarded the 2023 Society of the Cincinnati Prize and the 2022 American Revolution Roundtable of Philadelphia Annual Book Award.

This website features material drawn from archival collections as well as published editions of primary sources created by members of the German corps. Some entries will be short, others will be more extensive. They represent a wide range of emotions and sentiments; their tone and content can be serious, curious, passionate, angry, amusing, cheerful, hopeful, deflated, sad. My hope is that these glimpses will broaden our understanding of the German troops’ experiences in the American Revolutionary War. Unless otherwise noted, all translations and transcriptions are mine. When using this material please be sure to include proper citations with a link to the site.

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