Between the growing rebellion in the American colonies and in his holdings in the Caribbean and elsewhere, King George grows worried that his army will be stretched too thin. He initially asks Catherine the Great of Russia to lend him a few thousand fighting men, but she turned him down with the excuse that she wouldn’t want anyone to think he couldn’t handle his own rebellions. Instead, George turns to the various states of Germany, and thus approximately 30,000 Hessians, from Hesse-Cassel and Hesse-Hanau, join the British to fight the rebelling colonists.

Described as “barbarous strangers” by writer and activist Mercy Warren of Massachusetts, the Hessians were actually landless, impoverished peasants rented to Britain by their landgrave, Frederick II. These soldiers were paid well, with the British doling out more money for Hessians who were killed rather than those wounded or captured.