Germans and Poles there were, too, and also exiles from that unhappy island which remains still the most vexing problem of British politics.Some of them wrote their own testimonials;some, too, were spies.On the first day, Washington wrote, they talked only of serving freely a noble cause, but within a week were demanding promotion and advance of money.Sometimes they took a high tone with members of Congress who had not courage to snub what Washington called impudence and vain boasting."I am haunted and teased to death by the importunity of some and dissatisfaction of others" wrote Washington of these people.
One foreign officer rendered incalculable service to the American cause.It was not only on the British side that Germans served in the American Revolution.The Baron yon Steuben was, like La Fayette, a man of rank in his own country, and his personal service to the Revolution was much greater than that of La Fayette.Steuben had served on the staff of Frederick the Great and was distinguished for his wit and his polished manners.There was in him nothing of the needy adventurer.The sale of Hessian and other troops to the British by greedy German princes was met in some circles in Germany by a keen desire to aid the cause of the young republic.Steuben, who held a lucrative post, became convinced, while on a visit to Paris, that he could render service in training the Americans.With quick sympathy and showing no reserve in his generous spirit he abandoned his country, as it proved forever, took ship for the United States, and arrived in November, 1777.Washington welcomed him at Valley Forge in the following March.He was made Inspector General and at once took in hand the organization of the army.He prepared "Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States" later, in 1779, issued as a book.Under this German influence British methods were discarded.The word of command became short and sharp.The British practice of leaving recruits to be trained by sergeants, often ignorant, coarse, and brutal, was discarded, and officers themselves did this work.The last letter which Washington wrote before he resigned his command at the end of the war was to thank Steuben for his invaluable aid.Charles Lee did not believe that American recruits could be quickly trained so as to be able to face the disciplined British battalions.Steuben was to prove that Lee was wrong to Lee's own entire undoing at Monmouth when fighting began in 1778.
The British army in America furnished sharp contrasts to that of Washington.If the British jeered at the fighting quality of citizens, these retorted that the British soldier was a mere slave.There were two great stains upon the British system, the press-gang and flogging.Press-gangs might seize men abroad in the streets of a town and, unless they could prove that they were gentlemen in rank, they could be sent in the fleet to serve in the remotest corners of the earth.In both navy and army flogging outraged the dignity of manhood.The liability to this brutal and degrading punishment kept all but the dregs of the populace from enlisting in the British army.It helped to fix the deep gulf between officers and men.Forty years later Napoleon Bonaparte, despot though he might be, was struck by this separation.He himself went freely among his men, warmed himself at their fire, and talked to them familiarly about their work, and he thought that the British officer was too aloof in his demeanor.In the British army serving in America there were many officers of aristocratic birth and long training in military science.When they found that American officers were frequently drawn from a class of society which in England would never aspire to a commission, and were largely self-taught, not unnaturally they jeered at an army so constituted.Another fact excited British disdain.The Americans were technically rebels against their lawful ruler, and rebels in arms have no rights as belligerents.
When the war ended more than a thousand American prisoners were still held in England on the capital charge of treason.Nothing stirred Washington's anger more deeply than the remark sometimes made by British officers that the prisoners they took were receiving undeserved mercy when they were not hanged.
