George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 8

[259] able-bodied men in the principality. As a conse-

Chap. LVII.}

quence, two of the battalions destined for the British service were a regular force; the rest, in disregard of promises, were eked out by undisciplined levies, old men, raw boys, and recruits kidnapped out of remote countries.

It is just to inquire if conduct like that of Ferdinand was followed by a happy life and an honorable death. His oldest son died two years before him; his two other sons were idiotic and blind; his oldest daughter was married to the brutal prince of Wurtemberg, and perished in 1788. The same intimate relations, which led George the Third to begin the purchase of mercenary troops with his brother-in-law, made him select Ferdinand's younger daughter Caroline,—a woman brought up in the lewd atmosphere of her father's palace, accustomed to the company of his mistresses, and environed by licentiousness from her childhood,—to become, at the ripe age of twenty seven, the wife of the prince of Wales, and eventually a queen of Great Britain. As to the prince himself, in a battle where his incompetence as a commander assisted to bring upon Prussia a most disastrous defeat, his eyes were shot away; a fugitive, deserted by mistress and friends, he refused to take food, and so died.

From Brunswick Faucitt hurried to Cassel, where his coming was expected by one who knew well the strait to which the British ministry was reduced. The town rises beautifully at the foot of a well wooded hill and overlooks a fertile plain. The people of Hesse preserve the hardy and warlike character of its ancestral tribe, which the Romans could never vanquish.