German Forces and the British Army

Interactions and Perceptions, 1742-1815

M. Wishon

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349449002, 9781137284006
• eBook ISBN: 9781137284013
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book examines the partnerships between Britain's famed redcoats and the foreign corps that were a consistent and valuable part of Britain's military endeavors in the eighteenth century. While most histories have portrayed these associations as fraught with discord, a study of eyewitness accounts tells a different story.

1

National Character and Transnational Professionalism

Delving into the writings of British and German soldiers, one constant uniting all periods and authors is that commentaries regarding their foreign allies are almost always couched in terms of their national or ethnic origin. Indeed, whenever descriptions are made of allied or auxiliary forces, be they regiments, armies or merely one or a handful of individuals, they are simply referred to as a collective: as ‘Germans’ or ‘English’. The usage of this language reveals the degree to which men in these multinational armies saw the respective components with regard to their nationality, and in doing so used terms that carried with them not only an indication of their national origin, but a collection of characterizations and stereotypes prevalent in popular discourse. This chapter seeks to examine some of these popular conceptions, with the goal of providing a background and a point of comparison for the personal writings and opinions of soldier-authors. The focus here is on stereotypes and, particularly, the discourse concerning ‘national character’, a term common among the writings of soldiers through which their accounts of foreign soldiery were often filtered and which entailed a set of theories about a polity’s collective psychology and innate traits. This emphasis on national character is relevant to the entire period under examination, but gained more value, and greater emphasis at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the proliferation of nationalism in Western Europe.

The eighteenth century has, for several decades now, been understood as a formative period in the growth of a British national identity, forged through intense and continued conflict with France and shared commonalities, such as language, Protestantism and economic dynamism.¹ It was within this context that a British nationalism grew around various cultural peculiarities, shared historical legacies and a number of emblems that came to reflect the nation as a whole.² While the British Navy remained one of these key symbols, the army was likewise becoming increasingly emblematic of the nation – beginning with the brilliant successes of the Duke of Marlborough at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Yet it was within the prolonged struggles at the close of the century that nationalistic sentiments truly emerged in the British Isles, as they did quite dramatically in France and Germany as a result of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This awakening of a sense of a national identity increased the appeal of understanding the difference between the pre-eminent polities of Europe by means of discerning or defining their national character. For the soldier-author or correspondent, this prompted commentaries on the differences they saw, both from the civilian populations they encountered on campaign and the foreign soldiers they fought with and against. The manner in which these military men articulated these differences owed a great deal to pre-established concepts and themes, which had become better defined thanks in part to many of the Enlightenment’s greatest thinkers.

National character discourse impacted the retelling of interactions between soldiers; however, the focus was not always on nationality. Within their writings, an emphasis on military duties would inevitably alter or override many popular depictions, while others, owing to the numerous universal traits of those within early modern European armies, would not be addressed at all. Furthermore, there were associations, such as military professionalism and a gentlemanly culture among officers, which would transcend national boundaries. These were the multinational and transnational elements that would shape or diminish the peculiarities associative of national character, where professional or class-based solidarities would emerge as stronger commonalities than ethnicity. Therefore this chapter will begin with many of the chief attributes of British and German national characters and conclude with some of the homogenizing aspects of early modern European militaries, as the conflict between nationalism and professionalism would be the primary agents affecting the retelling of interactions and associations between British and German soldiery.

The dissemination of stereotypes

In his essay ‘National Prejudices’, the Irish author and historian Oliver Goldsmith addressed, and hoped to curb, many of the negative characterizations of foreigners he heard during conversations amongst merchants and businessmen in London, lamenting somewhat rhetorically, ‘we are now become so much Englishmen, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Spaniards, or Germans, that we are no longer citizens of the world.’³ Goldsmith’s essay was a reaction to the unilaterally negative impressions his countrymen had towards foreign peoples, and while Britain’s enemies were subject to the majority of these negative stereotypes, her allies were also targets of a particularly vitriolic brand of public scrutiny. These disapproving characterizations were disseminated in a variety of mediums, which we can discuss only too briefly. Therefore, the focus here is on publications, in part due to the attention they have received from scholars focusing on the Anglo-German relations in the eighteenth century. Travel diaries, newspapers, magazines, books – usually histories of dubious credibility – and the new-fangled encyclopaedias, all dispensed concepts of national character, and were all sources familiar to our subjects.⁴ However, this and later chapters will chiefly feature those pamphlets and satirical prints that had a much more dramatic and wide-reaching effect.

Despite the theoretical reasons for explaining a nation’s character, most had to be created or corroborated through experiences within German States or with German people. Though this book will include a number of accounts of soldiers travelling through the Holy Roman Empire, they were by no means alone. The most common were merchants, emigrants and tourists, but there were certainly numerous other connections: envoys, scholars, students, musicians and artists to name a few.⁵ Of these, the British tourists have received the most attention in modern scholarship, and indeed, did much to shape opinions of those back home in Britain. For many wealthy, aristocratic youngmen, the ‘Grand Tour’ of Europe, which was so popular in Britain in the eighteenth century, at times included forays into the Holy Roman Empire, either to Vienna, Berlin, Dresden or Frankfurt, and, after the Dynastic Union, Hanover.⁶ Here impressions of Germany would share a number of similarities to the accounts of soldiers themselves. This was due, in part, to the influence of famous travel diaries, which would encourage some soldiers to write descriptions of the peoples, places and foods they encountered in a similar style, either for private reflection or public consumption. In some instances, these journals or published letters were printed with the specific aim of describing the people met and places visited, more than the military campaigns themselves.⁷ Aside from travel diaries, the other means for dissemination of national stereotypes – particularly for the reading public – were through encyclopaedias, histories, magazines and geographical gazettes. Unlike those mediums outlined above, these particular sources do not figure prominently in soldiers’ own writing themselves and therefore will be overlooked for the purposes of this chapter, though they were no doubt quite influential in shaping the debate about English, British and German national characters.⁸

Lastly, and crucially, given recent trends in historical scholarship: stereotypes were reiterated and magnified in satirical prints in the British press. Woodcuts and engravings reproduced for a mass – and barely literate – audience were powerful tools in shaping perception of the British nation and their continental counterparts, and are very much at the cornerstone of examinations of English or British identity by modern historians. These and other forms of ephemera addressing political situations or key events on the Continent would commonly show the respective peoples (usually their monarch, prince or other symbolic figure) in the trappings of their particular nation, further reinforcing the association of certain nationalities with key characteristics, fashions or demeanour. Yet this was a medium that was not only important for describing foreigners, but for defining Englishness, usually in the guise of ‘John Bull’, or ‘Britannia’ as an embodiment of all British dominions. These were powerful symbolic tools, and gave a visual representation to many of their own and others’ stereotyped characteristics.⁹

Just as they were an important aspect in creating a British self-image, the British press also had an important hand in shaping German character, particularly in the case of the Hanoverians. Common throughout the century, political tracts disparaging the people or soldiers of Hanover were especially numerous during wars and major events in British and Imperial foreign policy. Bob Harris has written an exhaustive work on the manner in which attacks on the Electorate were part and parcel of both Republican and Jacobite opposition polemics in the 1740s.¹⁰ Most depictions of Hanover emphasized its absolutist political structure, small population, few natural resources and, most importantly, its standing army maintained in wartime only with financial assistance from Great Britain. During the War of Austrian Succession (for Britain, 1742–8), the Hanoverian forces that were serving as auxiliaries of the British Army were characterized as cowards lead by self-serving generals, and in the summer of 1743 especially, rhetorical attacks on Hanover and her soldiers reached fever pitch.¹¹ A letter from the Hanoverian General, Thomas Eberhard von Ilten in 1743, published under the title Popular Prejudice, complained that the British Press and its ‘jealousy of Foreigners, so natural to that selfish Nation, is of late confined to us H[anoverian]s: Their Rancour to the French, holds, at present but the second place.’¹² Through the course of the first century of the Union, Hanoverians were the targets of vitriolic pamphlets by some of the most famous or infamous polemicists of the age, including John Shebbeare and William Cobbett, both of whom were imprisoned (1757 and 1810 respectively) for criticisms of the Electorate and its troops.¹³ Therefore, there was a strong link between the stereotypes seen in public discourse, and the soldiers who were often the main topic of such discourse. But the prevalent characterizations did not owe their origins to current debates on war and diplomacy, but instead, stemmed from an older and further-reaching discourse in which they merely played a part.

National character

Ideas of national character – traits, behaviours and proclivities associative of the inhabitants of a particular nation – were long established by the time the major states and territories of Europe began developing into the ‘modern nations’ we would recognize today. Nationality might from time to time take a back seat to another facet of identity, such as religious, political, regional or ethnic considerations, nevertheless national character was very much a part of the means by which differences with ‘others’ were constructed or articulated. Furthermore, a sense of national identity developed over different periods and faster in some regions than in others. This was certainly true for the Highland Scots, who in the second half of the eighteenth century refashioned their image into loyal subjects, and did so by associating themselves through military prowess and courage within the British Army.¹⁴

As important as trends in the development of national identity and nationalism were during the period in question, discourses of national character were in fact much older. The equating of the character of a people to the political entity to which they belong has been in vogue for centuries and was as popular in the early modern period as it is today. The philosphe Montesquieu in discussing ‘the spirit of nations’ was particularly focused on classical accounts of national character, drawing examples from ancient Rome and comparisons of the Spartans and Athenians in his discussions.¹⁵ Eighteenth century Britain’s most significant contributor towards this discourse was the philosopher David Hume, whose essay ‘Of National Characters’ aimed to address and in many ways refute some of the most widespread and widely accepted theories on the subject, many of which had been around for generations.¹⁶ Although Hume and like-minded philosophers aimed to dismantle many of the impressions of national character seen in popular discourse, his arguments reveal the variety of ways that theories of national character were constructed, and in doing so, perpetuated other generalizations.¹⁷ This was in part, because discussions of national character in this period were not about creating or rejecting new distinctions, but modifying older ones. By the end of the seventeenth century, many of the stereotypes that had become synonymous with ‘English’ and ‘German’ had long been developed, and for those discussing the natural inclinations or traits of various nationalities or ethnicities, there were usually references to classical authors who first penned these dissimilarities in the preceding millennia. Among these classical sources, the Roman author Tacitus was a useful guide to early Britannic character, but particularly influential for Teutonic characteristics, where the ‘Tacitean Model’ became a depiction of Germans that still has residues in the modern impressions of German national character. Tacitus’s accounts of Germanic and Britannic tribes would become the template for later depictions of English individuality and bravery, or Germanic barbarity, dipsomania and martial ability. Yet there were other authors of antiquity including Julius Caesar and the Venerable Bede, from whom eighteenth century writers could turn to for additional precedents.¹⁸ It was the humanists that had first uncovered and reintroduced many of these ancient caricatures, and two centuries later, some of the great thinkers of the enlightenment still turned to these ancient accounts to spotlight the timelessness of many of the characteristics of their own people.¹⁹ For those discussing British or English exceptionality, these hoary antecedents and the history of the peoples of the island served as a means of establishing English national character as a mixture of indigenous and foreign elements, including – quite crucially – French and German. For the officer class of Britain’s army, these same ancient texts were very much a part of their military repertoire, to be read alongside military manuals and drill books – from foreign and domestic sources.²⁰ This blending of philosophical works and military tracts manifested itself in the discussion of martial character, whereby soldiers from each nation were seen to display certain characteristics unique to their land of origin.

The martial character of a people would, according to eighteenth century theorists, be very much a part of their national character, and often they were one in the same. In many ways the nation represented the army, and the army was representative of the nation. Soldiers were well aware that their actions would be seen to reflect their ‘national character & that of the army’, and British soldiers took pride in fighting for their ‘nation’, whether that meant Britain, or more commonly, for their respective homelands: England, Scotland or Ireland.²¹ This direct link was felt by many within the army, growing stronger as the century progressed, and can be seen in the remarks of the Duke of York in 1793 who fretted that the misdeeds of a small number of his soldiers would ‘cast the most injurious stigma on the national character in general’.²² By the end of the century, British troops were expected to be on their best behaviour and to reflect positively on the nation they fought for – a feat that they did not always achieve. Throughout the long eighteenth century, there was a close relationship with national character and the image of the army, though not as strong in Britain as for highly militarized states such as Hessen-Kassel or Prussia. The concepts of a ‘martial nation’ or a ‘martial people’ were becoming a greater part of national-character discourse, but would only gain prevalence in the mid to late nineteenth century, particularly in instances such as British India.²³

Elements of national character

There were numerous theories as to the origins and nature of national character. Montesquieu, in his Spirit of Laws, wrote of a ‘general spirit of nations’ forged by the climate, religion, laws, government and customs of a given people, to which others added geography, terrain and wealth.²⁴ The pre-eminent portrayals of various peoples usually incorporated a combination of several of these factors. Despite the entreaties of David Hume, the most common and generally accepted influence on nat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword to the Series
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. National Character and Transnational Professionalism
• 2. Britain’s German Allies
• 3. German Auxiliaries
• 4. Case Study 1 – The ‘Hessians’ in the American War
• 5. Germans within the British Army
• 6. Case Study 2 – The King’s German Legion, 1803–15
• Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index