Chap. LVII.} |
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most graciously suspended from July to the
time of the return of his troops, one half of the ordinary contribution to his military chest.
The other half was rigorously exacted.
It was stipulated that the British pay, which was higher than the Hessian, should be paid into the treasury of Hesse; and this afforded an opportunity for peculation in various ways.
The pay rolls, after the first month, invariably included more persons than were in the service; with Brunswick, the price to be paid for the killed and wounded was fixed; the landgrave introduced no such covenant, and seemed left with the right to exact full pay for every man who had ever once been mustered into the British service, whether active or dead.
The British minister urged the indispensable necessity that the Hessian soldiers should be allowed as ample and extensive enjoyment of their pay as the British: ‘I dare not agree to any express or limited stipulation on this head,’ answered Schlieffen, ‘for fear of giving offence to the landgrave.’
‘They are my fellow-soldiers,’ said the landgrave; ‘and do I not mean to treat them well?’
The sick and the wounded of the Brunswick troops were to be taken care of in the British hospitals; for the Hessians, the landgrave claimed the benefit of providing a hospital of his own.
The British ministers would gladly have clothed the mercenary troops in British manufactures; but the landgrave would not allow this branch of his profits to be impaired.
It had been thought in England that the landgrave could furnish no more than five thousand foot;
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