![]() ![]() For Hesse-Cassel, soldiers were a major export. Hiring a foreign army was not unusual in the eighteenth century. (At the time, Germany was not a unified country but a collection of individual states that shared a language and culture.) They were principally drawn from the German state of Hesse-Cassel, although soldiers from other German states also saw action in America. The term "Hessians" refers to the approximately 30,000 German troops hired by the British to help fight during the American Revolution. Rather, they were generally excellent soldiers. But the Hessian troops were hardly the hapless drunks of legend. The story explains that the Patriots made quick work of the bumbling mercenaries besotted with holiday cheer. According to an old myth, General Washington met light resistance at the Battle of Trenton on the morning of December 26, 1776, because the town's Hessian defenders had been up late the night before celebrating Christmas. ![]()
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