Chapter XII Trying Times “The star-spangled banner” had been raised; thirteen white stars, to represent the thirteen States, shone upon its blue field. The patriots must now win freedom beneath its folds or fall with honor. Many difficulties had been overcome, but still greater ones remained to be conquered. England was gathering all her strength together to subjugate the so-called rebels. New troops were sent to General Howe, including German subjects whom Great Britain had bought to use as executioners in America. The sale of subjects as mercenaries was of common occurrence during the heyday of the small principalities in Germany. The Princes of Hesse-Bayreuth-Anspach, Braunschweig, and Anhalt-Zerbst were engaged in this traffic. Hesse provided the greatest number, so that the German mercenaries in America were generally called Hessians. In Hesse a man who tried to get out of trouble by running away and fell into the hands of the elector’s spies was handcuffed and gagged. Complaints by his parents were answered by putting the father in irons and the mother in prison. In the market-place in Cassel, English agents bought Hessian subjects for one hundred dollars apiece. Frederick the Great said with bitter irony: “Let the lords of the country not forget to raise the duty on cattle also!” “No one,” relates the celebrated Seume, “was safe from these traders in souls [the princes]. They tried all methods—persuasion, strategem, deception. Even strangers of all kinds were attacked, locked up, and exported.” While his subjects were being marched on board ship, Alexander of Bayreuth-Anspach stood on the banks of the Main ready to shoot down any one who made an attempt to escape. In this way twenty-nine thousand Germans were sold to the English as “food for cannon.” “The thoughtful traveller,” says an English lord, “cannot look upon the magnificent gardens of ‘Wilhelmsberg’ at Cassel without a sigh, for the blood money of the citizens of Cassel and other places has been expended upon them.”