CHAPTER XXIX — THE BRITISH FORCES
178. "Appeal to the Hessians sold by their Princes" (1776)
BY HONORÉ GABRIEL RIQUETTI, COUNT DE MIRABEAU
This spirited protest, by the French pamphleteer and later statesman of the French Revolution, reflects the opinion of thinking men in Europe on the English purchase of mercenary troops. — Bibliography of the Hessian question: Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, VII, 75-76; Lowell, Hessians in the Revolution; Channing and Hart, Guide, § 138.
Quis furor iste novus? quo nunc, quo tenditis? —
Heu ! miseri cives ! non hostem, inimica que castra ;
— Vestras spes uritis.
Virg.
BRAVE Germans, what a brand of shame you allow to be marked on your noble brows ! What ! can it be at the end of the eighteenth century that the nations of central Europe are the mercenary satellites of an odious despotism ! What ! those valorous Germans, who so fiercely defended their liberty against the conquerors of the world and braved the Roman armies, now, like the base Africans, are sold and hasten to shed their blood in the cause of tyrants ! They suffer the slave-trade to be carried on amongst them, their cities to be depopulated, their fields to be ravaged, so as to help overbearing rulers to lay waste another hemisphere. — Will you share much longer in the stupid blindness of your masters? — You, honorable soldiers, faithful and for midable maintainers of their power, of that power which was trusted to them only to protect their subjects, you are bartered away ! — Ah ! for what an employment, just gods ! — Huddled together like flocks of sheep in the ships of foreigners, you cross the seas ; you hasten through reefs and storms, to attack a people who have done you no harm, who are defending the most just of causes, who are setting you the noblest of examples. — Ah ! why do you not imitate that brave people, instead of striving to destroy them ! They are breaking their fetters ; they are fighting to maintain their natural rights and to guarantee their liberty ;
500
