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A 1799 portrait of Hessian hussars during the American Revolutionary War Hessian grenadiers. The use of foreign soldiers was common in 18th-century Europe. In the two centuries leading up to the American Revolutionary War, the continent saw frequent, though often small-scale, warfare, and military manpower was in high demand. [9]
The Battle of Trenton was a small but pivotal American Revolutionary War battle on the morning of December 26, 1776, in Trenton, New Jersey.After General George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River north of Trenton the previous night, Washington led the main body of the Continental Army against Hessian auxiliaries garrisoned at Trenton.
Fate of the German auxiliaries who fought in the American Revolutionary War This memorial at Jordan and Gordon Streets in Allentown, Pennsylvania, marks the location where Hessian prisoners of war were held by General George Washington and the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Germans in Europe lived in numerous separate ...
A Hessian's sketch of the Battle of Trenton. After the war broke out in 1775, the British government realized that it would need more troops than it could raise on its own to fight the war, so it sought to hire troops from willing third parties in Europe. [6] All of these hired troops came from German principalities of the Holy Roman Empire.
About 2,000 Hessians attacked some 500 Americans at the fort, but the fight went disastrously for the Germans. Some 377 Hessians were killed or wounded in less than an hour of combat.
The Hessian War (German: Hessenkrieg), in its wider sense sometimes also called the Hessian Wars (Hessenkriege), was a drawn out conflict that took place between 1567 and 1648, sometimes pursued through diplomatic means, sometimes by military force, between branches of the princely House of Hesse, particularly between the Landgraviate of Hesse-Cassel and the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt.
The Capture of the Hessians at Trenton, December 26, 1776 by John Trumbull, showing George Washington and Johann Rall. By 1776, Rall had joined the staff of the 1st Division under General Leopold Philip de Heister and commanded a Hessian Brigade of approximately 1,200 men fighting for Great Britain in the American War of Independence.
The largest number arrived in 1776 pursuant to agreements signed in late 1775 or early 1776, but additional forces were recruited in 1778, with only limited success. The single largest contingent came from Hesse-Kassel, hence the term "Hessians". Anhalt-Zerbst: Colonel Johann von Rauschenplatt commanded the single regiment from Anhalt-Zerbst.