LECTURE IX.

THE FOREIGN ELEMENT OF THE REVOLUTION.

WE

E come now to a very interesting, though a very difficult part of our subject, the foreign element in the war of the Revolution. It is very interesting to know how much help our untrained officers received from the well-trained officers of Europe who fought by their side. It is equally interesting to know how large a proportion of those who served in the ranks and bore the brunt of the war were men of foreign birth. The last is a question of statistics for which the data are extremely imperfect, or rather, almost entirely wanting. We know that there were many foreigners among the common soldiers; for we know that on more than one occasion when men were chosen for special service, special care was taken to employ none but natives. We know that there was a German legion; and German and Irish names meet us constantly in the imperfect musterrolls that have escaped the moths and rats, or not been burnt for kindling. But we know, also, that

then as now, hundreds bore German and Irish names who had never seen Ireland or Germany. Conjecture and analogy then must supply the want of positive evidence; and the analogy in the present war bears us fully out in the conjecture that by far the greater portion of the common soldiers were natives of the land for which they fought.

Of foreign officers, the proportion in the higher ranks was much larger. Out of twenty-nine major-generals, eleven were Europeans; there were sixteen Europeans among the brigadiers; and if, as we descend to colonels, captains, and lieutenants, we find the number comparatively less, we must remember that what the greater portion of them sought in the American service was increase of rank. Few would care to serve as captains or lieutenants in the half-clad, half-starved army of America, who could be captains and lieutenants in the well-clothed and well-fed armies of France or Prussia.

But it is not by numbers that we are to estimate the services of these officers. Many of them had been trained to arms from their childhood. Many had served through the Seven Years' War, at that time the greatest war of modern history as a school of military science. All of them were practically familiar with the rudiments of their profession, the life of a camp, the duties of a field day. Ten soldiers of such make as composed the bulk of European armies might have very little influence in

moulding the character of a regiment of American farmers and mechanics. But a single officer, of even moderate experience, could hardly fail to make his American colleagues painfully conscious of their deficiencies, even where the daily sight of his example did not go far towards correcting them. A colonel at a loss for some important evolution must have been greatly relieved to find that his lieutenant-colonel, or his major, knew all about it. And more than one general may have felt stronger at the head of his division, after a few weeks of daily intercourse with generals who had passed their lives in camps. It surely is not assuming too much to say that, regarded merely as a contribution to the general stock of military science, the foreign element was a very important element in the army of the Revolution.

But the war of the Revolution was a civil war; a war of opinions and convictions, in which men fought, not for a few miles more or less of a territory, that whether won or lost would add nothing to their individual aggrandizement, but for rights which involved not only their own happiness, but that of their remotest descendants. Every American who drew his sword knew that a fearful penalty was attached to his failure, a glorious reward to his success. He had relinquished positive advantages, broken strong ties, often sacrificed cherished affections and brilliant hopes. But he had done it conscientiously as the only thing which

a good citizen could do; and whatever the consequences might be, he was prepared to abide them. For him then it was a grave question, how far he ought to intrust his own and his country's cause to men who could not fully share either his hopes or his danger.

To answer this question aright, we must give a glance - unfortunately it can be but a glance,at two characteristic features in European society at the period of the American war.

Long before that period France had placed herself at the head of European civilization. The French language had taken the place of Latin as the language of diplomacy. French literature had taken the place of the Italian as the literature of refinement and taste. Everywhere fine gentlemen endeavored to imitate the air and manners of the fine gentlemen of France. And fine ladies, as they decked themselves for the eye of the world, for the front row at the theatre, or for a presentation at court, followed with scrupulous minuteness the fashions and example of Versailles. "If I were king of France," said Frederic the Great, "not a cannon should be fired in Europe without my permission." And for many years the kings of France endeavored to do what Frederic would have done, and give law to states as their tailors and milliners gave law to drawing-rooms. Richelieu had laid deep foundations on which Louis XIV. built a dazzling superstructure. The name

of country was merged in the name of king. Devotion to the sovereign became the test of patriotism. And those local attachments which have always been one of the chief bulwarks of society, were converted into those personal attachments which have often been its greatest curse.

Already when this transmutation began, men's minds had grown singularly indifferent to the obligations of nativity. Long and bloody civil wars had loosened the hold which the name of birthplace always retains in healthy minds. Turenne and Condé had alternately fought against their countrymen, and with them, and even after fighting side by side had led armies against each other. Yet France has classed them both among her favorite heroes. Frenchmen had turned their swords against France long before the army of Coblentz was enrolled. Englishmen had encountered Englishmen at the point of the bayonet on more than one bloody field. German and Swiss mercenaries, like the Condottieri of an earlier day, were long the chief reliance of every monarch in every war. Thus when the tie of country was loosest, the tie of sovereign began to be drawn more closely. Turenne and Condé, who had shed the blood of Frenchmen freely, became the most devoted of the loyal servants of Louis. And when Louis was gone it took more than eighty years to undermine the edifice which he had built. First came the regency, and the religious element crumbled. Then