Essays of Benjamin Franklin

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1752429486

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-127700

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Franklin, Benjamin http://d-nb.info/gnd/118534912

Title:: Essays of Benjamin Franklin

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: G. P. Putnam's Sons

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: xi, 273 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: XXII.From the count de Schaumbergh to the Baron Hohendorf, commanding the hessian troops in America

Collection:: Economics Books

7 Essays 3 commodity, the higher the price. I am assured that the women and little girls have begun to till our lands, and they get on not badly. You did right to send back to Europe that Dr. Crumerus who was so successful in curing dysentery. Don’t bother with a man who is subject to looseness of the bowels. That disease makes bad soldiers. One coward will do more mischief in an engagement than ten brave men will do good. Better that they burst in their barracks than fly in a battle, and tarnish the glory of our arms. Besides, you know that they Sixty German dollars levy money was demanded for each man, but a little more than half that sum was finally accepted. Every soldier killed was to be paid for at the rate of the levy money, and three wounded men were to be reckoned as one killed. It must have been the recital of these degrading enormities which inspired the following anecdote at the expense of royalty, preserved by John Adams. He says in his diary: “Franklin told us one of his characteristic stories. A Spanish writer of certain visions of hell relates that a certain devil, who was civil, showed him all the apartments of the place; among others, that of the deceased kings. The Spaniard was much pleased at so illustrious a sight, and, after viewing them for some time, said he should be glad to see the rest of them. ‘The rest!’ said the demon: ‘here are all the kings that have ever reigned upon earth, from the creation of it to this day. What the devil would the man have?’” It is worthy of note here that the castle of Wilhelmshohe, one of the most costly country-places, after that of the palace of Versailles, in the world, was built by the Elector of Cassel shortly after our revolu- tionary war, with the money he received for the loan of his subjects to aid England in resisting the emancipation of her American colonies. This palace, and the bridges, water-falls, towers, etc., are said to have employed 2,000 men fourteen years in their construction, and the cost was found to be so enormous that the accounts were destroyed. For the 12,000 Hessians sent to fight the Americans and 5,000 more sent to resist the invasion of Scotland by the Pretender, England paid the Elector of that day 22,000,000 thalers, or about $18,000,000, of which the palace of Wilhelmshéhe is the most conspicuous surviving memorial. It is a fact pregnant with important lessons, that every one of the ih 21;

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