On August 15, 1776, the horizon off Staten Island, New York, bristled with the masts of a massive British flotilla. Among the thousands of troops disembarking were more than 8,600 foreign soldiers whose presence would fundamentally alter the course of the American Revolutionary War. Clad not in the iconic British scarlet, but in deep blue […]

As the United States approaches its semiquincentennial—the 250th anniversary of its founding—historians and the public alike are revisiting the complexities of the Revolutionary War. Among the most enduring, yet frequently misunderstood, figures of that conflict are the "Hessians." Often depicted in folklore and early American textbooks as bloodthirsty mercenaries who fought solely for gold, the […]