SEUME AND THE ENGLISH
53
imagined that Faucit was not popular among the conscripts or
anywhere in Germany.1®
Although the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown on October
19, 1781, was the real end of the war, the British government was
loath to admit defeat. Parliament renewed the grant for the allied
troops, and the German recruits were forwarded as usual. Max
von Eelking, in The German Allied Troops in the North American
War of Independence, 1776-1783, translated and abridged by J. G.
Rosengarten (Albany, 1893), writes:
On June 10th, 1782, the transport fleet of 15 vessels, escorted by three
nιen-of-war, sailed with Hessian, Hanau, Brunswick, Ansbach, and
Zerbst recruits.
Col. v. Hatzfeld led 900 Hessians,17 the eighth regular reinforcement
—consisting of Yagers, artillery-men and infantry—leaving Cassel on
April 10th. Their route lay through Prussian territory, and in spite
of the report that Frederic the Great would not allow German recruits
for America to go through his kingdom, or that he exacted the same
duty that was paid on cattle sent to England, no effort was made to
interrupt their march—indeed, their number was increased by Prussian
soldiers deserting to join the new recruits (Chap. XIV, p. 231).
This is borne out by Seume’s account of his contingent’s transport
from Cassel to Bremen and then by ship to the new world. Colonel
von Hatzfeld is also mentioned by Seume. As a matter of fact, he
had an argument with him later in Canada, when his duties as a
clerk became too much for him (W, I, 83-84).18 Seume, upon ar-
rival in Halifax, together with twenty other recruits, was assigned
to the Regiment Crown Prince (Erbprinz), which he never saw
(W, I, 78). That is not surprising, for it had been the strongest
of the Hessian regiments at Yorktown, and according to von
Eelking, had suffered proportionately heavy losses (p. 212).
Seume’s own account of his miserable voyage to America is well
known. Von Eelking writes of Seume’s contingent: “Arriving in
Halifax in August [1782], the men were disembarked, on the
report of a large French fleet near by; but it proved to be a
British fleet, with 1,500 men and provisions for the army” (p.
231). Time and again in his other writings Seume alludes to his
terrible experiences on board the transports. In the Spaziergang
he remarks concerning the lodging he found on his way to Sicily,
“I think, it is not as bad by far as on an English transport vessel,
where we were packed in like pickled Swedish herrings” (W, I,
173). Similarly, in Mein Sommer he writes of another crossing,
this time from Copenhagen to Kiel: “I had to sleep on the first
chest that I could find, which in every way was quite as bad as