Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy and I'm Holly Fry. Holly, do you know
Speaker 1: what I've been exceptionally enjoying on television this fall? I do,
Speaker 1: but tell me anyway, Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is from
Speaker 1: a historical standpoint, quite ridiculous. It is in many other
Speaker 1: ways quite ridiculous. It's kind of a good reminder to
Speaker 1: me to sometimes just shut all of that analytical, critical
Speaker 1: brain off and just enjoy the ride. Yeah, I I extremely,
Speaker 1: extremely enjoy the ridiculous ride of Sleepy Hollow. I enjoy
Speaker 1: the fact that we've got a guy that's been walking
Speaker 1: around in multi hundred year old clothing that somehow is
Speaker 1: not falling apartner stinking enjoy the ride, Tracy so great.
Speaker 1: If you have ever watched the show, you know that
Speaker 1: they take some just absurd liberties with actual history. But
Speaker 1: the reason that we're talking about it right now is
Speaker 1: that they also keep talking about the headless Horseman as
Speaker 1: a Hessian right. But this is not something that the
Speaker 1: show just made up out of whole cloth. In the
Speaker 1: legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington. Irving describes Sleepy Hollow this way.
Speaker 1: The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region and
Speaker 1: seems to be commander in chief of all the powers
Speaker 1: of air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback
Speaker 1: without a head. It is said by some to be
Speaker 1: the ghost of a Hessian trooper whose head had been
Speaker 1: carried away by a cannonball in some nameless battle during
Speaker 1: the Revolutionary War, and who has ever and anon by
Speaker 1: seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom
Speaker 1: of night, as if on the wings of the wind.
Speaker 1: So the TV show is not a cannonball. No, it's
Speaker 1: a sword, because in truth, the headless horseman is not
Speaker 1: only a Hessian soldier but also one of the four
Speaker 1: horsemen of the Acalypse, and therefore kind of immortal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they actually in the show, didn't They hit him? And
Speaker 1: they shot him first, Ichabod Crane shoots him and he
Speaker 1: doesn't die. So then he cuts his head off and
Speaker 1: he appears to die, but then comes back later along
Speaker 1: with Ichabod. Uh So, Matt, of course, as as things
Speaker 1: do when I'm watching TV, made me think, how can
Speaker 1: we talk about this in the podcast? And I really
Speaker 1: got curious about who these Hessians were, Right, I know
Speaker 1: the same basic description as many people who have studied
Speaker 1: the American Revolution, which is sort of mercenaries hired by
Speaker 1: Britain during the Revolutionary War. And that is not even
Speaker 1: an accurate description really, Or when we were first talking
Speaker 1: about it, I said, Christopher Walking was filed down teeth
Speaker 1: right because he placed said the Sportsman in the tim
Speaker 1: Burton sleepy Hollow, which is the exposure that most people,
Speaker 1: I think get They know the word Hessian because of
Speaker 1: that story, and a lot of them, I know, even
Speaker 1: talking to my husband about it when he asked what
Speaker 1: we were recording this coming week, and I said, oh,
Speaker 1: the Hessians, and he goes, I don't know anything about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I pretty much know that one sentence that I just
Speaker 1: said about about mercenaries hired by Britain during the Revolutionary
Speaker 1: War not really accurate. Um, we're gonna talk about that.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about who these guys were, where they
Speaker 1: came from, why they were participating in the Revolutionary War
Speaker 1: in the first place, and we're also going to talk
Speaker 1: about their most famous altercation with the Army of George Washington. Um.
Speaker 1: So there is so much other history that you can
Speaker 1: talk about with the Hessians, but that's a're gonna keep
Speaker 1: to today so that this podcast is not four hours
Speaker 1: and or eight parts long. So we have to start
Speaker 1: in Germany. Kind of Germany. Germany at the time of
Speaker 1: the American Revolutionary War was not this unified nation that
Speaker 1: we know it as today. Was more like a collection
Speaker 1: of about three hundred little principalities, and they all shared
Speaker 1: a common German language and culture. They're basically little city states.
Speaker 1: They all had their own rulers, they all needed their
Speaker 1: own defenses, and consequently, they tended to have pretty sizeable
Speaker 1: compared to their size, organized armed forces. Great Britain, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, had a hard time recruiting soldiers at
Speaker 1: this point in history. Uh. And even if people were
Speaker 1: pressed into service, those men still needed training and it
Speaker 1: just was not the same level of military organization. Basically,
Speaker 1: the British economy at this point was robust enough that
Speaker 1: other work was easy to come by, so military recruitment
Speaker 1: was not very appealing for the average man, and it
Speaker 1: was very challenging for the government to reason army. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Britain also had the advantage of being separated from the
Speaker 1: rest of Europe by the English Channel, so it didn't
Speaker 1: need to have an enormous standing army to really defend
Speaker 1: itself constantly. This was not true on the continent, where
Speaker 1: a lot of times nations had long borders with one
Speaker 1: another that didn't necessarily have any kind of natural old
Speaker 1: features to deter invasions. So on the continent of Europe,
Speaker 1: people nations were a lot more likely to have bigger
Speaker 1: armed forces than Britain had at the point. At that point, yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes sense. But on top of that, George the
Speaker 1: Third was the elector of the German Principality of Hanover,
Speaker 1: and this effectively made George the Third a German prince
Speaker 1: in addition to being the King of Great Britain and Ireland. Uh,
Speaker 1: he was automatically considered to be a German ally. So
Speaker 1: when George the Third needed troops to fight for him
Speaker 1: in the American Revolution, German princes were pretty eager to
Speaker 1: help him. He was their ally and they kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to show off their military strength. And Britain only
Speaker 1: had about fifty five thousand troops to send to fight
Speaker 1: in the American Revolution. About thirty thousand additional soldiers came
Speaker 1: from hess Castle Braunch fig hess Han now on spark Behout,
Speaker 1: Valdeck and Anhabs ups to fight for George the third
Speaker 1: twelve thousand of them, the overmwhelming majority from any one
Speaker 1: place from hess Castle. Yes, so today Hessian has come
Speaker 1: to encompass all of these troops. But from here on
Speaker 1: out we're pretty much going to be talking about the
Speaker 1: troops specifically from hess Castle for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: One is that hess Castle was the biggest participant in
Speaker 1: the industry of armies for hire that existed at that
Speaker 1: time that came to be known as so Dotton Handle
Speaker 1: in seventy seven. The other is that troops from hess
Speaker 1: Castle were the ones who were occupying Trenton in seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy six. That is a particularly famous Revolutionary War battle
Speaker 1: that we'll talk about a little bit later in the episode. So,
Speaker 1: at the time of the American Revolution, military had become
Speaker 1: hess Castle's dominant industry, and this was partly a necessity.
Speaker 1: It was a middle size collection of villages that otherwise
Speaker 1: survived through subsistence farming. It's position was also, unfortunately between
Speaker 1: two parts of Prussia, so hess Castle was often in
Speaker 1: the line of fighter or more accurately the line of
Speaker 1: marching troops on their way from one place to another.
Speaker 1: By the mid sixteen hundreds, the army there was kind
Speaker 1: of flagging, and recovery from attacks or just being kind
Speaker 1: of caught in the crossfire in the way of these
Speaker 1: travels of enemy of other armies was really slow for
Speaker 1: the little principality. But in sixteen eighty seven, Hescastle decided
Speaker 1: to lease some military forces to Venice. Basically, Venice was
Speaker 1: paying hes Castle money, Hescastle was sending troops their way
Speaker 1: to fight for them. Uh. And this is kind of
Speaker 1: a mixed success. Almost eighty percent of the thousand men
Speaker 1: that they sent were killed, But those men fought well
Speaker 1: enough that they earned a reputation for being good, reliable soldiers.
Speaker 1: And so the next year Hescastle sent thirty four hundred
Speaker 1: men to serve William of Orange under a similar agreement.
Speaker 1: Their performance was so highly valued that suddenly Hessian troops
Speaker 1: were in demand from other governments, and hes Castle realized
Speaker 1: that it could maybe make this into a bigger industry
Speaker 1: and turn a profit over maintaining and leasing an army
Speaker 1: for other governments to use. So I could see where
Speaker 1: the appeal for subsistence farmers would be really high. There
Speaker 1: was a lot appeel there. And as hess Castle's efforts grew,
Speaker 1: and we're joined by other German principalities, they eventually crowded
Speaker 1: out the existing private army for higher industry that had
Speaker 1: been in place before that point. Yeah. So there were
Speaker 1: already people who were raising armies and basically selling them
Speaker 1: to other people, but there was pretty much a private enterprise,
Speaker 1: and you know, the Hessian troops were higher quality than
Speaker 1: other options. Yeah. Well, and these these little principalities got
Speaker 1: so good at it that the private enterprises couldn't compete.
Speaker 1: And also people started to view private armies as being
Speaker 1: a pretty shady business to be in, so that that
Speaker 1: faded away as all these various German principalities started making
Speaker 1: their own army. The focus on the military also trickled
Speaker 1: down to the rest of hess Castle. Passions generally used
Speaker 1: their own weapons and uniforms in battle, and so having
Speaker 1: this big army going on create created more work for
Speaker 1: crafts people. The income that came into the government allowed
Speaker 1: them to bring in experts to improve farming and husbandry methods,
Speaker 1: and with these improvements, rural families got bigger. They provided
Speaker 1: a bigger pool of recruits for the military. Um some
Speaker 1: of the revenue from the operation also went into things
Speaker 1: like hospitals and schools, And thanks to all of this
Speaker 1: income that came in from leasing armies out, taxes for
Speaker 1: the rest of the citizens were lower. So lacing armies
Speaker 1: to other nations was obviously a major economic boon that
Speaker 1: lifted hess Castle out of maybe not exactly what you
Speaker 1: would categorize as poverty, but at least pretty austere circumstances.
Speaker 1: They were getting by, but as we said, subsistence farming,
Speaker 1: and they started the more prosper and then the became yeah, more,
Speaker 1: much more prosperous. It wasn't always pretty though. When your
Speaker 1: country basically becomes a factory for making soldiers, there are
Speaker 1: going to be some repercussions when battles go badly or
Speaker 1: when battles come to your own doorstep. So it did
Speaker 1: take an immense toll, and even even with those downsides,
Speaker 1: hess Castle became the most militarized state in Europe. At
Speaker 1: the height of this industry, there was a soldier for
Speaker 1: every fifteen civilians, and a quarter of all families had
Speaker 1: at least one member who was in the military. Boys
Speaker 1: were registered for service when they turned seven, and men
Speaker 1: had to present themselves to an official every year to
Speaker 1: determine if they were going to be inducted into service.
Speaker 1: From the tiny turned sixteen until they hit thirty uh,
Speaker 1: so called quote expendable people, which were the shiftless, idol, unemployed, etcetera,
Speaker 1: could be pressed into service at any time. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, people who had more crucial roles, including roles
Speaker 1: like keeping the army dressed and fed, would be exempt
Speaker 1: from this practice. Yeah, it's the modern side of me
Speaker 1: thinks that this sounds sort of like a dreadful circumstance
Speaker 1: to be in. But wages were good. Military families got
Speaker 1: tax benefits, The pay was better than being a servant
Speaker 1: or a farm laborer, and while discipline was strict within
Speaker 1: the military, if you were a person who behaved yourself,
Speaker 1: it was not really a problem. So it was an
Speaker 1: attractive proposition, and there was also some other attractive stuff
Speaker 1: booty and plunder. Yes, on the military side of things,
Speaker 1: Hessians had a reputation for being really sharp and skilled,
Speaker 1: but two civilians, they were viewed often as plunderers and looters,
Speaker 1: taking whatever they wanted from the lands where they fought,
Speaker 1: and often this was not actively endorsed by the command,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't exactly discouraged either. They kind of let
Speaker 1: the soldiers do their plundering without much repercussion in terms
Speaker 1: of being punished or dissuaded. Right, So, with the pay
Speaker 1: and the plunder and the stability, becoming a Hessian soldier
Speaker 1: was a pretty popular career career move um. Also it
Speaker 1: was you know, it was an army of intense training
Speaker 1: and strict discipline, but at the same time one that
Speaker 1: instilled a lot of pride and its forces. Its leaders
Speaker 1: were generally educated men who were promoted from within according
Speaker 1: to merit um see a lot of military history where
Speaker 1: the officers were basically coming from the aristocracy, and they
Speaker 1: were they were officers because they were aristocrats the aristocracy
Speaker 1: and hes Castle was not big enough to be doing
Speaker 1: that for this whole army, so they had to instead
Speaker 1: promote men based on their skill and merit, which meant
Speaker 1: that most of the time people were in units where
Speaker 1: they had a good boss. Having a good boss is
Speaker 1: a good thing, does you know, even when your job
Speaker 1: is maybe one that might be particularly hard and take
Speaker 1: you away from your family for a long time. Men
Speaker 1: who had and served also told their sons about what
Speaker 1: an honorable and rewarding service it was. UH. And the
Speaker 1: principality as a whole was also a Calvinist society with
Speaker 1: a really strong sense of duty. So there were a
Speaker 1: lot of social factors going into the popularity of being
Speaker 1: in the military. And while many nations, including Britain, often
Speaker 1: hired soldiers from Germany, this was not really viewed favorably
Speaker 1: by the founding fathers here in the US UH. In
Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independence, among the lists of grievances against
Speaker 1: the King, one of them is quote he is at
Speaker 1: this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete
Speaker 1: the works of death, desolation and tyranny already begun, with
Speaker 1: circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most
Speaker 1: barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
Speaker 1: Not popular moon the scathing review of that practice, yes, UH,
Speaker 1: and later on the rest of the world would start
Speaker 1: to view it's sort of the same way. But at
Speaker 1: the point that yeah, the the colonies were extremely displeased
Speaker 1: about this idea. But even though today a lot of
Speaker 1: people call Hessian's merchant mercenaries, and they were referred to
Speaker 1: as mercenaries and the Declaration of Independence. They weren't really mercenaries.
Speaker 1: What they were was auxiliaries. So mercenaries were individual people
Speaker 1: who served in foreign armies for pay. There were mercenaries
Speaker 1: in both the British and Hessian armies. Um. And these
Speaker 1: are people that like had their own negotiated terms and
Speaker 1: rates of working and like a length of time that
Speaker 1: they would serve. Auxiliaries, though, were armies that served on
Speaker 1: behalf of governments, with subsidies being paid at the national
Speaker 1: level instead of the personal level. And this is a
Speaker 1: difference that was recognized by international law. Uh. And at
Speaker 1: this point in history, the hiring of auxiliaries was an
Speaker 1: extremely common and pretty well accepted practice, except for in
Speaker 1: the colony, where it was not favored at all. So
Speaker 1: these were really well trained soldiers who were paid to fight,
Speaker 1: So not really that different from military service today, except
Speaker 1: that they had been kind of contracted on maths through
Speaker 1: a government agency. Yeah. So as soon as Britain decided
Speaker 1: to use force against the American revolutionaries, it was pretty
Speaker 1: much a given that they were going to have to
Speaker 1: use a hired army as part of the package. Brittain,
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, just did not have a big
Speaker 1: enough army on its own, and German Principality started offering
Speaker 1: troops to the British in August of seventeen seventy five,
Speaker 1: just a couple of months after the Battle of Bunker Hill,
Speaker 1: and once Britain agreed, they set a date for troops
Speaker 1: from Hescastle to be ready to march, and that date
Speaker 1: was February fifteenth of seventeen seventy six. This was meant
Speaker 1: to put Hessians in America in time for a summer campaign.
Speaker 1: Time was so much of the essence in this whole
Speaker 1: plan that this deadline was actually set earlier than the
Speaker 1: agreement between the two nations was going to be ratified.
Speaker 1: Once it was actually signed, Britain's then back They did
Speaker 1: the pay for their service by a month to January.
Speaker 1: And for American units, the Hessians include yeager or hunter companies. Uh.
Speaker 1: These were foresters and huntsmen, and their role was sort
Speaker 1: of like elite rangers. They had better field skills and
Speaker 1: we're better marksmen than average recruits, and the younger got
Speaker 1: better pay and really spiffy uniforms that were green so
Speaker 1: that they could blend into the woods, and also in
Speaker 1: the mix were for grenadier battalions and fifteen infantry battalions
Speaker 1: which included field and garrison regiments, and those troops were
Speaker 1: dark blue. The agreement between Britain and Hescastle outlined the pay,
Speaker 1: the removal of injured Hessians back to Germany, medical care,
Speaker 1: and free passage for the troops mail. The medical care
Speaker 1: was similar to the care that was going to be
Speaker 1: provided for British troops, but it was going to be
Speaker 1: given German doctors who would travel with the units, and
Speaker 1: the Hessian troops that came with this agreement could only
Speaker 1: serve in Europe and America. Hescastle had to pay for
Speaker 1: replacement soldiers who were killed or injured too badly to
Speaker 1: return to the field. On the other hand, if illness
Speaker 1: or a shipwreck or some other disaster wiped out a
Speaker 1: whole unit, that was then on Britain to pay for
Speaker 1: that was their responsibility. Even though a Hessian army seemed
Speaker 1: to like a given from this point, like we said,
Speaker 1: hiring a foreign army was pretty standard and how warfare
Speaker 1: went at this point, there were some really big worries
Speaker 1: within Britain about what the results of this action would be.
Speaker 1: One part of this was that a lot of people
Speaker 1: had the just the justifiable fear that if they started
Speaker 1: a full scale military action with hired troops and everything,
Speaker 1: that was going to irreparably damage the relationship between the
Speaker 1: colonies and Britain, so that no matter how the war went,
Speaker 1: it would not ever be repaired from having Star did
Speaker 1: with Okay, we're gonna have a big military action with
Speaker 1: you guys. And there were also to consider a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand Germans that were living in the colonies,
Speaker 1: and British leadership worried that a German army was going
Speaker 1: to be convinced to desert and resettle by these existing colonists,
Speaker 1: and there were in fact some desertions along the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was even some talk that maybe they should use
Speaker 1: troops from Russia instead, because there were fewer people in
Speaker 1: the colonies who spoke Russian, so there would be less
Speaker 1: of a temptation to lure people away from their units
Speaker 1: to this sort of idealistic dream of what the founding
Speaker 1: fathers were shooting for with UH. With the founding of
Speaker 1: the nation UH, these troops started to move out a
Speaker 1: little bit later than was originally planned, and a lot
Speaker 1: of it just had to do with the logistics of
Speaker 1: moving so many people. The Vision started leaving their garrisons
Speaker 1: in Germany in February and March, and they continued to
Speaker 1: to depart until the spring. They moved from their garrisons
Speaker 1: in cycles of marching and rest, thing, with the so
Speaker 1: called rest days really involving a lot of training and
Speaker 1: exercise we would call the active rest day. Hessian troops
Speaker 1: embarked for America in April and June of seventeen seventy six,
Speaker 1: so several months after the initial plan, and their first
Speaker 1: stop was Portsmouth, where they got more food and additional
Speaker 1: ships so the voyage would be more comfortable. Otherwise they
Speaker 1: really would not have been in any sort of condition
Speaker 1: to fight when they arrived. It was a very long trip.
Speaker 1: The first ships were sighted at Long Island almost three
Speaker 1: months after they had departed, on August twelve. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: idea was that they were supposed to arrive ready to fight,
Speaker 1: so while it was still a long and difficult sea voyage,
Speaker 1: it was a long and difficult sea voyage with more
Speaker 1: comforts than you might ordinarily see better amenities. Everybody had
Speaker 1: a pillow and two blankets and a place to sleep,
Speaker 1: and and pretty nice allotments of rations, at least until
Speaker 1: later in the voyage when a lot of that was
Speaker 1: spoiled and gross. Even with those amenities and the relatively
Speaker 1: acious and comfortable transport, about eight hundred Hessians in that
Speaker 1: first convoy were sick once they arrived. Scurvy and diarrhea
Speaker 1: were two of the big complaints. They also because they
Speaker 1: had not seen fresh fruit for months while they were
Speaker 1: on their way. A lot of them made themselves ill
Speaker 1: on unripe apples after they landed um and also exhausted
Speaker 1: themselves in the manual effort of setting up camps once
Speaker 1: they got off the ships. Once on American soil, they
Speaker 1: had a number of compensations to make. So the Hessians
Speaker 1: had a reputation for being exceedingly competent soldiers really well disciplined,
Speaker 1: but their training in Germany really didn't always translate to
Speaker 1: combat skills in America. There had been a lot of
Speaker 1: focus on marching and very precise formations, and that didn't
Speaker 1: work well when mixed in with British formations or in
Speaker 1: skirmishes with small bands of revolutionaries who were fighting in
Speaker 1: more of a guerrilla combat style. Yeah. I can't of
Speaker 1: imagine a well trained army the very focused on maneuvers
Speaker 1: and on precision in in marching and formation and things
Speaker 1: like that, and and being harried by little bands of
Speaker 1: scrappy guys with guns taking pot shots at them from
Speaker 1: the woods. Not really compatible. Yeah. The colonists had also
Speaker 1: gotten word that Hessians were on their way, and they
Speaker 1: had made their own recruitment and training efforts to try
Speaker 1: to compensate um these though as we as we just said,
Speaker 1: they were scrappier, raggedier forces than these professionally trained and
Speaker 1: dressed troops from Britain and Germany. So the American troops
Speaker 1: looked like they were just going to be easily overwhelmed
Speaker 1: by the Hessians. In the British they did not look
Speaker 1: like trained, competent soldiers. They looked like ragamuffins. Really like
Speaker 1: I'm sort of imagining them as grown up street urchins
Speaker 1: with rocks m from a Dickens novel. They just went
Speaker 1: through time to the battlefield. Yeah their faces so yeah,
Speaker 1: And for a while, um, the the American forces faced
Speaker 1: a lot of defeat In the late summer, fall and
Speaker 1: early winter of seventeen seventy six, the colonial forces met
Speaker 1: the Hessians again and again, and they saw what seemed
Speaker 1: like just an endless string of defeats. This really cemented
Speaker 1: the idea in the in the you know, minds of
Speaker 1: the Hessian troops that the Americans were not good soldiers,
Speaker 1: but they would be easily defeated and this overconfidence would
Speaker 1: turn out to be a problem, as over confidence often does.
Speaker 1: Do you want to pause for just a second before
Speaker 1: we get to the meaty story of battle, Yes, and
Speaker 1: take a word from our sponsors. Yes, And now let's
Speaker 1: get back to the most famous battle that the Hessians
Speaker 1: were involved in in the American Revolution. This is the
Speaker 1: one that followed George Washington's famous crossing of the Delaware
Speaker 1: River on Christmas night seventeen seventy six, and that happened
Speaker 1: at Trenton. So the brief version, the war had been
Speaker 1: going very very poorly for Washington's army, with many defeats
Speaker 1: and retreats and trouncings by the Hessians. Desertion had become
Speaker 1: a huge problem, and new recruits were getting more and
Speaker 1: more difficult to come by. The mood of both the
Speaker 1: army and the leadership was pretty seriously demoralized, and it
Speaker 1: was basically fraught with pessimism. Yeah, listen started out as
Speaker 1: a very idealistic attempt to become independent and to start
Speaker 1: a new, pretty groundbreaking system of government, and then as
Speaker 1: the fighting went on, it was just like being kicked
Speaker 1: over and over. It was not going well. You could
Speaker 1: see how that would break their spirits. Yes, at this point,
Speaker 1: the wise thing to do, from many people's perspective, would
Speaker 1: have been for the colonists to spend the winter regrouping
Speaker 1: for a spring campaign. And that's really what the main
Speaker 1: portion of the British army had done, leaving the Hessians
Speaker 1: to hold some of the key ground. But many of
Speaker 1: Washington's men had not re enlisted. He was going to
Speaker 1: lose some as soldiers at the end of the year.
Speaker 1: There was no guarantee of getting them to change their
Speaker 1: minds or being able to replace them with fresh troops.
Speaker 1: So he decided to make a really extraordinarily risky combat
Speaker 1: move in the hope that it would be successful and
Speaker 1: reinvigorate the effort for independence. Yeah, he basically he had
Speaker 1: to do something or he was not going to have
Speaker 1: much of an army anymore. So on Christmas night of
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy six, Washington led his army across the Delaware
Speaker 1: River from Pennsylvania to New Jersey. Uh, this is inordinately treacherous.
Speaker 1: The river was close to flood stage, and because it
Speaker 1: was winter, it had frozen over in many places. This
Speaker 1: was a river that would like it would freeze in
Speaker 1: big sheets, and then the sheets would break up and
Speaker 1: these giant pieces of ice would float down the river.
Speaker 1: So these giant ice flows were constantly threatening the boats
Speaker 1: that were trying to cross the river that was already flooding.
Speaker 1: On top of that, while they were crossing, a storm
Speaker 1: started up and pelted them with rain and sleet and
Speaker 1: blinding snow. So like this was already just daring and dramatic,
Speaker 1: and it was immortalized in the famous although in many
Speaker 1: ways not representative of what actually happened, painting by Emmanuel
Speaker 1: Louts which was made in eight one, and that is
Speaker 1: the famous Washington crossing the Delaware painting, which makes it
Speaker 1: flows with like icebergs, and it also seems to be
Speaker 1: happening in the daytime, like there are some things that
Speaker 1: they're not right. Everybody looks beautiful, they're pelted with misery.
Speaker 1: Washington and his troops did make it across the river,
Speaker 1: but two other units that were supposed to be supporting
Speaker 1: him could not. The weather in the river were simply
Speaker 1: too treacherous, and because the river crossing had taken so long,
Speaker 1: Washington had really given up the element of surprise that
Speaker 1: he had been counting on, since they'd no longer be
Speaker 1: able to reach Trenton before dawn of Things were not
Speaker 1: looking very good for them at this point, and their
Speaker 1: attack plan, which started out kind of like far of
Speaker 1: a wild card plan, the Hail Mary even more of
Speaker 1: a long shot that this was the Hail Mary Pass
Speaker 1: of George Washington. So even though they had just had
Speaker 1: this treacherous river crossing that was exhausting and blinding and
Speaker 1: put them way behind schedule, Washington attacked Trenton anyway with
Speaker 1: a two pronged attack and spoiler alert, and under an
Speaker 1: hour they had taken the city along with nine nineteen
Speaker 1: Hessian prisoners. It's pretty impressive. It is the hail Mary work,
Speaker 1: and that made be one of the reasons why the
Speaker 1: legend goes that all of this went so amazingly well
Speaker 1: for George Washington, because the Hessians were drunk because they
Speaker 1: partied too late into the night for Christmas the night before.
Speaker 1: That's not true. No, maybe it's one of those things
Speaker 1: where it strange credulity so much that people have to
Speaker 1: come up with a reason that the Hessians could be
Speaker 1: taken down. Surely they must all have been. They were hammered.
Speaker 1: That's the only way this could have worked. One of
Speaker 1: them was kind of hammered. But uh, but the greater
Speaker 1: proportion of the men we're going to talk about now,
Speaker 1: why it is not that they were drunk, Although in
Speaker 1: my head there's a very funny version of this now
Speaker 1: playing out where Washington's troops basically walk into like a
Speaker 1: herd of you know, jolly stumblinas who were just slashed.
Speaker 1: But that's not real. That didn't happen, But in my
Speaker 1: head it's very funny, and I wish I could share it. Yea.
Speaker 1: So these were trained and disciplined men. They had been
Speaker 1: forewarned that Washington might attack them, and there had been
Speaker 1: a number of skirmishes in the surrounding area leading up
Speaker 1: to this attack. There were three Hessian regiments staying in Trenton,
Speaker 1: and every night one of them would sleep in their
Speaker 1: uniforms with their weapons just in case they were attacked
Speaker 1: in the night. Their commanding officer, UH, Colonel Johann Rawl,
Speaker 1: he had definitely overindulged himself on Christmas. He didn't set
Speaker 1: a really awesome example. But the fighting men were on
Speaker 1: the whole sober. So you must have been kind of
Speaker 1: an outlier, since it sounds like that's not really the
Speaker 1: way most of them would have conducted themselves. No, but
Speaker 1: the problem was that while they may not have been drunk,
Speaker 1: and they were however sick, they were exhausted. They were
Speaker 1: short on men. Uh and in the days before the battle,
Speaker 1: Colonel Rawl had written to Hessian Colonel Carl von Dannup
Speaker 1: to say that they were undermanned and that they were exhausted.
Speaker 1: Von Donop had passed this up to General James Grant,
Speaker 1: a British general who was commanding a number of scattered garrisons,
Speaker 1: and General Grant had simply not taken this information seriously.
Speaker 1: He wrote off the idea that Washington would have ever
Speaker 1: dared across the Delaware at this time of year, and
Speaker 1: he described the rebels as having quote neither shoes nor stockings,
Speaker 1: are in fact almost naked, starving for cold without blankets
Speaker 1: and very ill supplied with provisions. So he thought there
Speaker 1: was no way they would even if they were going
Speaker 1: to try it, they weren't going to make it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but even though he had pretty much been like,
Speaker 1: this is not an actual problem, uh, he did right
Speaker 1: to Rawle on Christmas Eve with this kind of blithe
Speaker 1: note that said, Washington has been informed that our troops
Speaker 1: have been marched into winter quarters and has been told
Speaker 1: that we are weak at Trenton and Princeton, and Lord
Speaker 1: Sterling expressed a wish to make an attack upon these
Speaker 1: two places. I don't believe he will attempt it, but
Speaker 1: be assured that my information is undoubtedly true. So I
Speaker 1: need not advise you to be on your guard against
Speaker 1: an unexpected attack at Trenton. So even though he had
Speaker 1: pretty much said like, you guys don't need more men's fine,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it, then literally Christmas Eve, worry about
Speaker 1: it a little, but don't worry about it. Maybe you
Speaker 1: do need to actually worry about this, but not really. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's unclear whether rawl ever read this note. It's
Speaker 1: possible that he mistook a skirmish the night before as
Speaker 1: the sneak attack that he'd been forewarned of. He canceled
Speaker 1: the dawn patrol outside trenton the day after Christmas due
Speaker 1: to miserable weather and the aforementioned sickness and exhaustion of
Speaker 1: the troops. Yeah, but it really might not have helped
Speaker 1: them much if they had done this dawn patrol and
Speaker 1: gotten a little bit more advanced warning that the that
Speaker 1: George Washington troops were incoming, that it was their overconfidence
Speaker 1: and their German military training that was really their undoing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Hessians formed up in ranks outside of town. They
Speaker 1: were ready to meet Washington's army as they'd been taught. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it was snowing and their muskets got wet and
Speaker 1: they could not fire. Yeah. Meanwhile, the Americans came in
Speaker 1: behind them, took the town that immediately gave them shelter
Speaker 1: in a place where they could easily dry out their
Speaker 1: own weapons, And they took the bridge under ass and
Speaker 1: Pink Creek, and that cut off the Hessian's easiest way
Speaker 1: to escape. So when the Hessians did try to escape,
Speaker 1: their soldiers were pretty quickly bogged down in ice and mud.
Speaker 1: So basically the Hessian army had followed their military training
Speaker 1: to go meet out in the field where their weapons
Speaker 1: became water logged and they couldn't really defend themselves, while
Speaker 1: Washington was like, now we have we're in your city,
Speaker 1: drying out our stuff. This is gonna go really well
Speaker 1: for us. Nice formation, champ uh. And this all meant that,
Speaker 1: in addition to being outnumbered by more than a thousand,
Speaker 1: the Hessians were at this point hugely outgunned, and they
Speaker 1: had no way to retreat, and they were trying to
Speaker 1: fight with weapons that were too wet to fire, where
Speaker 1: his Washington's army had a warm, dry city that they
Speaker 1: were working from. So, like we said, it took under
Speaker 1: an hour and there were nine nineteen Hessian prisoners taken,
Speaker 1: and Washington, uh, understandably, being quite pleased with himself, paraded
Speaker 1: his prisoners through Philadelphia so that everyone could see these
Speaker 1: Hessians that he had conquered. Yeah, done a sneak attack
Speaker 1: on Yeah. So the big thing I mean, in addition
Speaker 1: to the fact that there was it was led off
Speaker 1: by this dramatic river crossing. Um, this aren't This battle
Speaker 1: really reinvigorated the American cause and renewed the war effort.
Speaker 1: But obviously eventually the colonists won um had this whole
Speaker 1: dramatic thing not happened and kind of restored people's hope
Speaker 1: in the effort. I don't know that it would have
Speaker 1: gone that way. It really is like the event that
Speaker 1: turned to tide for sure. Yeah, there's no telling. It's
Speaker 1: not even as though Trenton was like the world's biggest
Speaker 1: strategic point. It was more the strategy was more about
Speaker 1: making everyone more confident that the war could go in favor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a huge morale boost. I mean, that's like
Speaker 1: the understatement of the year. Uh. And interestingly enough, after
Speaker 1: the war, uh, somewhere between three thousand and five thousands
Speaker 1: Hessians actually stayed in the US. Uh. You know, they
Speaker 1: found the growing German community and the promises of freedom
Speaker 1: and liberty to really be quite an attractive incentive to
Speaker 1: stick around. And during the war at least five thousand
Speaker 1: of them had deserted to fight for the American side.
Speaker 1: So this concern that maybe Hessians would dessert once they
Speaker 1: discovered how many other German people were in the colonies,
Speaker 1: that was actually it had a little substance to it
Speaker 1: pretty valid. Not long after the end of the American Revolution,
Speaker 1: the prevailing thinking in Europe started to turn against the
Speaker 1: idea of hired armies at all. So while the idea
Speaker 1: of privately organized armies for higher had already started to
Speaker 1: fall out of favor, the idea of of nations doing
Speaker 1: this started to fall out of favor as well. As
Speaker 1: time moved towards the eighteen hundreds, Hescastle was less and
Speaker 1: less of a military industry, and then in eighteen o
Speaker 1: six it was merged into the Confederation of the Rhyme,
Speaker 1: meaning that the state didn't exist on its own anymore.
Speaker 1: Uh So there was no more army for higher factory
Speaker 1: operating out of Europe, but an end to that whole system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it didn't, It didn't end immediately just then, but it
Speaker 1: was on its way out. Yeah. That's probably the final
Speaker 1: male in the conference, or to speak, that's the passions.
Speaker 1: And you know it's a good one because yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of misconception or just a mystery.
Speaker 1: But people don't hear about this one very much. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the idea that they were drunk is repeated often
Speaker 1: in books and articles and and things like that, but
Speaker 1: modern historians are pretty much said, no, drunkenness may have
Speaker 1: been a factor in uh one person's decision. They were
Speaker 1: definitely tired, and then sickness was a problem. But it
Speaker 1: was not as though the American Army showed up and
Speaker 1: everybody was completely plastered and they were just like here,
Speaker 1: this is ours now. Yeah, not not quite that simple. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you were a military history buff, you probably know
Speaker 1: eight million more things about the Shion and all of
Speaker 1: their movements in the American Revolution and many many, many
Speaker 1: other wars, and probably watching Sleepy Hollow makes you crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love Sleepy Hollow. I want to watch it all
Speaker 1: the time you can. Yeah, it's I think one of
Speaker 1: the reasons that I love it is that it's so
Speaker 1: off the mark, like it's so obviously not taking itself
Speaker 1: seriously and its presentation of history. I am much more
Speaker 1: accepting of its glaringly not following history for real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like it makes you the deal at
Speaker 1: the beginning, like we're jumping the tracks here, just heads up,
Speaker 1: Which does It makes it easier to accept sort of
Speaker 1: the fantastical factor of it and not be too caught
Speaker 1: up in the detail incorrectness. I just wish there were
Speaker 1: more clancy Brown. I just wish they were more episodes.
Speaker 1: There will be I mean every day, like if there
Speaker 1: were a daily right on that we'll start a campaign. Okay,
Speaker 1: I have some listener mail. I would be delighted if
Speaker 1: you would share it. This is a postcard, an actual postcard.
Speaker 1: We get these in the mail. This is from Kira
Speaker 1: and Kira says Tracy and Holly. I know you two
Speaker 1: must have quite the postcard collection by now, but in
Speaker 1: case you haven't hit all seven continents, here is one
Speaker 1: from Antarctica. I am just finishing up my second season
Speaker 1: working to support science at McMurdo Station. My last track
Speaker 1: down was during the summer, but this year I was
Speaker 1: part of the skeleton crew that stayed through the winter.
Speaker 1: I say that with that weird tone because that would
Speaker 1: make me crazy. I hate the cold and I hate
Speaker 1: the dark, and so I can't imagine this at all.
Speaker 1: So with twenty four hours of darkness for months and
Speaker 1: a harsh cold environment, it is easy to fall prey
Speaker 1: to a condition called T three or winter brain. While
Speaker 1: looking for ways to keep myself intellectually stimulated, I stumbled
Speaker 1: across a podcast. There were plenty of days that I
Speaker 1: spent a solad ten hours listening to old episodes while
Speaker 1: I work. I just wanted to say thanks for helping
Speaker 1: to keep me sane through the long Antarctic winter. Night
Speaker 1: is from Kira. So this postcard that Kira has sent us,
Speaker 1: it says Antarctica. It is an old photo. It's Navy
Speaker 1: photographers on observation Hill from one So it's an old
Speaker 1: photo and it's got these guys and they're on this
Speaker 1: desolate hill. There's a cross in the foreground. And what
Speaker 1: this picture says to me to sort of come to Antarctica,
Speaker 1: you will die. But that's not true. It is not true.
Speaker 1: I had a friend that spent time with Antarctica, also
Speaker 1: doing science research. Keep back, it's cool. I a terrifying
Speaker 1: prospect because I am a little bit of like I'll
Speaker 1: tell you that I think Brian's relatives think I'm his
Speaker 1: pretty city wife, just because I like the amenities of
Speaker 1: living in a city and all things you can get,
Speaker 1: and so did not be able to like have my
Speaker 1: whims met with make me a little insake. I like
Speaker 1: the amenities of daylight and warmth. I don't need the daylight,
Speaker 1: I do like the warmth, and I want to be
Speaker 1: able to go to restaurants when I want them. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, before I was born, my mother and father
Speaker 1: lived in Alaska for a little while. Yeah, my dad
Speaker 1: was in the army, and my mom has talked about
Speaker 1: how she found Alaskan winters to be horrible, and her
Speaker 1: method for dealing with this was to make chocolate cookies
Speaker 1: every week so that the house always smelled like cookies,
Speaker 1: which I think is a great coping mechanism, a beautiful
Speaker 1: coping mechanisms. I'm so happy that we were able to
Speaker 1: provide entertaining some enterdainment for people that are in the
Speaker 1: middle of a cold, dark winter, because that just that
Speaker 1: is a thing that just thinking about kind of crushes
Speaker 1: my soul a little bit. I can't imagine living in
Speaker 1: a place where there is not a sunrise or a
Speaker 1: sunset for that long. Chinese, Like, what do you do
Speaker 1: when you have to have lomaine? I know, it's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: you know, trays my very oiled nature. Yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for writing to here and for sending us
Speaker 1: this postcard. We get a lot of requests about where
Speaker 1: people can send postcards, and since our address has changed, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were at thirty three fifty Peachtree Road, Northeast Sweet
Speaker 1: eleven fifty party Change Atlanta, Georgia three or three to six.
Speaker 1: So that is where you can send us a postcard
Speaker 1: you would like, Oh, I love the postcard. Their offer.
Speaker 1: They are quite fun. We get some that are just
Speaker 1: like from such as I love it. It's wonderful. If
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us an email, you can.
Speaker 1: We were at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're
Speaker 1: also on Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash history flash
Speaker 1: Stuff and on Twitter at missed in History. Our tumbler,
Speaker 1: which is booming lately, is missed in History dot tumbler
Speaker 1: dot com, and we are also on Pinterest. If you
Speaker 1: would like to learn a little more about what we've
Speaker 1: been talking about today, you can go to our website
Speaker 1: and put the word Revolutionary War in the search bar.
Speaker 1: You will find a gallery of Revolutionary War pictures, which
Speaker 1: includes the famous Washington Crossing, the Delaware painting, as well
Speaker 1: as why was the American Revolution so revolutionary? You can
Speaker 1: do all that and a whole lot more at our website,
Speaker 1: which is how Stuff works dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Because it has to
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