British efforts to enlist Germans as volunteers in her own army were promptly checked by the German rulers and it was necessary literally to buy the troops from their princes.

One-fourth of the able-bodied men of Hesse-Cassel were shipped to America.

They received four times the rate of pay at home and their ruler received in addition some half million dollars a year.

The men suffered terribly and some died of sickness for the homes to which thousands of them never returned.

German generals, such as Knyphausen and Riedesel, gave the British sincere and effective service.