Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Pausch, George

PAUSCH, George, Hessian soldier, b. about 1740; d. in 1796. He was chief of the Hesse-Hanau artillery in the Burgoyne campaign. Little is known of him after Burgoyne's surrender. His signature appears on the Cambridge parole, now in the Boston public library. In 1786 the name of George Pausch is entered in the official calendar of Cassel as major in the regiment of light artillery. His name disappears from the calendar in 1796, so that it is probable he died early in that year or late in the year preceding. His journal, which was recently found in the state library at Cassel, is among the most valuable of the accounts of the German troops during the Revolution that have yet been discovered, inasmuch as it gives with great fulness of detail the difficulties that the Hessians experienced in passing through the countries on the lower Rhine and Holland to the seaboard. It details the fate and fortune of Pausch and his men from 15 May, 1776, the day they left Hanau, to the close of Burgoyne's last battle, 7 Oct., 1777. The journal also dwells freely on the personal experiences of its author and his men while in Canada, by which glimpses are obtained into the private life of the execrated Hessian soldiers. Regarding also the battles of Saratoga, Pausch's account is the first we have had of the part played by the Hesse-Hanau artillery in those actions, which well supplements that taken at the same time by the Brunswick infantry, as given in the “Military Journals of Gen. Riedesel.” The journal has been translated by William L. Stone, with an introduction by Edward J. Lowell (Albany, 1886).