Program on Hessians during the American Revolution presented at Berks History Center

During the American Revolution, Hessian soldiers hired by the British were imagined by the colonists as barbarians.

But rather than the murderous devils expected, the Germans turned out to be ordinary soldiers, who earned the respect of their American counterparts and were recruited by the Continental Army.

“Due to the wild myths and exaggerated newspaper reports, most Americans expected to see bloodthirsty barbarians,” Michael Jesberger said. “Many expected to see wild robbers and murderers with terrible angry faces, devils in human form.”

Behind the myths, he said, were only men, who earned a reputation for cleanliness, strict order and discipline.

Jesberger, a Continental Army reenactor, spoke Saturday at the Berks History Center as part of the BHC’s monthly Second Saturday series.

The well-attended program, also livestreamed, drew the largest in-person crowd post COVID, Bradley K. Smith, associate director of the center said.

The Hessians, some of whom were held as prisoners of war in Reading, are a subject of interest to many locals.

Not technically mercenaries, who voluntarily go to war for personal profit, they were established soldiers in a national army, run by a Landgraf, or prince, Jesberger said, and were lent to the British as complete military units with their own commanders.

The country of Germany did not then exist as we know it today, he noted, and the area was made up of several principalities. Because many of the men came from the provinces of Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Hanau, they were called Hessians.

Though propaganda depicted them as fearsome monsters or drunk and asleep, the real story is more interesting, Jesberger said.

One of the mistakes made about the Hessians is that they were drunk at Christmas and unprepared for Washington’s daring cross of the Delaware River, during the night of December 25 to 26, 1776, and the subsequent Battle of Trenton, he said.

“No, no, no,” Jesberger said. “They were not plastered; they were off guard. In a driving nor’easter, the day after Christmas, who’s going to attack?”

After the Battle of Trenton, captured Hessian troops were taken to inland cities, including Reading, Lancaster and York for detention.

At first, the Germans were housed in a crude prison along the Schuylkill River. Later, as Reading expected a further influx of prisoners, the camp was moved to an area on Mount Penn. More than 1,000 prisoners were held on a campsite of about 12 acres off Hill Road in the neighborhood now known as the Hessian Camp.

Two first-person accounts of the camp survive, Jesberger said, quoting from the June 16, 1781, entry in a journal kept by a Hessian prisoner.

“On the banks of the Schuylkill, we have been camping on a meadow in the open air for eight weeks,” the POW wrote, “and we’re plagued by the great Reading heat during the day and by rain and cold during the night.”

Less than two months later on Aug. 9, the prisoner wrote: “We marched from the Schuylkill via Reading to a high, rocky mountain area.”

There, the POWs were commanded to build log barracks.

A number of the men were sent into the countryside to work among the locals, the POW recorded. Many of them were employed on area farms or by nearby iron furnaces, such as Hopewell Furnace, Union Township, Jesberger said.

Though the dialects may have differed, most Pennsylvania Dutch speakers in the region could have communicated easily with the Hessians. Local farmers, who tended to be overwhelmingly pro-independence, may have encouraged them to desert.

By war’s end, Congress was offering Hessian deserters farmland, two pigs and a cow along with citizenship, Jesberger said, a much brighter future than that awaiting many of those returning home.

“A lot of the Hessian soldiers didn’t have anything going on back home,” he said.

Of the about 30,000 soldiers from various German states that were sent to America, Jesberger said, a little more than half returned home. About 1,200 were killed in action and another 6,000 or so died from illness or other causes. The rest settled in North America, where they and their descendants helped to build a new country.