SEUME AND THE ENGLISH
67
mercial affairs And our Monopoly of Trade 1.1 As I however generally
yielded these points to my Adversaries I had little difficulty in others, in
bringing them to agree with me in the superiority of the English to the
french Character—Which for the last six Months has been my favorite
Topick . . (Crabb Robinson in Germany, 1800-1805. Extracts from his
Correspondence, ed. by Edith J. Morley [London, 1929J, p. 80; Grimma, Sep-
tember 21, 1801).
14. Frederick II of Hesse ruled from 1760 to 1785.
15. On the 15th of January, 1776, he signed the treaty with the Hessian
Government, represented by Baron Martin Ernst von Schlieffen (1732-1825),
by which Hesse agreed to furnish fifteen regiments, in all 12,500 men, in
exchange for about three and a half million pounds. Actually, Hesse-Cassel
furnished more than 16,000 men during the whole war, and thus received a
proportionally larger compensation. It was the tenth treaty of this kind
that Hesse had made since the seventeenth century, and it was the best
treaty the country had ever signed, for now it received yearly £50,000 more
than it ever got before for the same number of soldiers. But Britain desperately
needed men and was willing to pay for them. As a special concession the
treaty stipulated that the Hessian soldiers were to be employed only on the
North American Continent, and not in the unwholesome West Indies. The
treaty was printed at Leipzig in 1776 and in the Parliamentary Trans-
actions, Nos. 17 and 18.
16. In his account Seume also mentions that he was employed for a while
as a clerk by the “old General Gore,” i.e., General von Gohr who was in
command of the camp at Ziegenhain.
17. Edward J. Howell, in his The Hessians and the other German Aux-
iliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War (New York, 1884), Ap-
pendix D, p. 299, writes that Hesse-Cassel sent 961 men on April 10.
18. Von Hatzfeld's name occurs in the “Roll of Foreign Accounts of the
23rd year of King George the Third—Anglia—Lieutenant Colonel William
Handfield deputy quarter master General . . .,” published in the Report,
Board of Trustees of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia (Halifax, 1937),
Appendix B, p. 24. The entry in question reads: “More paid 200 days Forage
Baggage and Batt Money for the year 1783 to Colonel de Seitz’s Hessian
Regiment, the Foreign Recruits under the Command of Colonel Hatzfield
(sic!, the Brunswick Troops and Anspach Yagers £1245.” There are several
more entries of payments made to “Hessian Recruits” without reference to
the commanding officer. It is more than probable that part of these moneys
went through Seume’s hands since he was fourrier and in charge of the
records for his company (W, I, 85). No other information concerning Seume’s
stay in Halifax could be elicited from the Public Archives of Nova Scotia by
correspondence. In “A List of the Officers of the Hessian Corps serving
under Generals Howe, Clinton and Carleton, 1776-1783,” appended to M. von
Eelking, The German Allied Troops, von Hatzfeld, listed as plain Halzfeld
(sic), is recorded amongst the colonels of the Grenadier Regiment Marquis
D’Angelelli (1781-1783; formerly the Regiment Woellwarth, 1778, and Trum-
bach, 1779-1780) from March 1782, until 1783 (p. 321). Another Hatzfeld
listed under that name, and probably a close relative, is carried on the lists
of the same regiment as an ensign from March 6, 1782 (p. 323). Franz Carl
von Seitz, colonel, and commanding officer of the Regiment von Seitz (1779-