Cotemporary writers represent the appearance of the poor German and Hessian troops as extremely miserable and ludicrous. They deserved commiseration, but they received none. They came not here voluntarily to fight our people; they were sent as slaves by their masters, who received the price of their hire. They were caught, it is said, while congregated in their churches and elsewhere, and forced into the service. Most of them were torn reluctantly from their families and friends; hundreds of them deserted here before the close of the war; and many of their descendants are now living among us. Many had their wives with them, and these helped to make up the pitiable procession through the country. Their advent into Cambridge, near Boston, is thus noticed by the lady of Dr. Winthrop of that town, in a letter to Mrs. Mercy Warren, an early historian of our Revolution: "On Friday we heard the Hessians were to make a procession on the same route. We thought we should have nothing to do but view them as they passed. To be sure, the sight was truly astonishing. I never had the least idea that the creation produced such a sordid set of creatures in human figure-poor, dirty, emaciated men. Great numbers of women, who seemed to be the beasts of burden, having bushel baskets on their backs, by which they were bent double. The contents seemed to be pots and kettles, various sorts of furniture, children peeping through gridirons and other utensils. Some very young infants, who were born on the road; the women barefooted, clothed in dirty rags. Such effluvia filled the air while they were passing, that, had they not been smoking all the time, I should have been apprehensive of being contaminated." ** The whole view of the vanquished army, as it marched through the country from Saratoga to Boston, a distance of three hundred miles, escorted by two or three American officers and a handful of soldiers, was a spectacle of extraordinary interest. Generals of the first order of talent; young gentlemen of noble and wealthy families, aspiring to military renown; legislators of the British realm, and a vast concourse of other men, lately confident of victory and of freedom to plunder and destroy, were led captive through the pleasant land they had coveted, to be gazed at with mingled joy and scorn by those whose homes they came to make desolate. "Their march was solemn, sullen, and silent; but they were every where treated with such humanity, and even delicacy, that they were overwhelmed with astonishment and gratitude. Not one insult was offered, not an opprobrious reflection cast; and in all their long captivity **** they experienced the generous kindness of a people warring only to be free. * Gordon, ii., 267. ** Women of the Revolution, i., 97 *** Mercy Warren, ii., 40.