still more taken prisoners. I did not lose a single man,
so much had the rebels come to be afraid of the
chasseurs. Things went equally well on the other wing.
We lost few men, and, except one chasseur, who was
shot in the village, not a single one was killed. On
the other hand, we made on the first day more than five
hundred prisoners, among whom were General Stirling
and one other general, and Colonel Johnson was shot.
General Stirling is one of the most important rebels,
who, sword in hand, forced the people to fight against
their king. As long as we had no horses, the prisoners
were harnessed in front of the cannon, and they were
afterwards sent aboard the ships of war. In two days
we had taken eleven hundred men. The rebels looked
ragged, and had no shirts on. Our Hessians marched
like Hessians; they marched incorrigibly, and the
English like the bravest and best of soldiers. They,
therefore, lost more men than we. This was a lucky day for
us. The rebels had a very advantageous position in
the wood, and we had a very bad one in the village of
Flatbush. At first they made good use of their
position, burned down a house and set fire to the barns
upon our outposts. But when we attacked them
courageously in their hiding-places, they ran, as all
mobs do.”[1]
The editor of the Frankfort magazine, who publishes the above, remarks that many letters from Hessian officers have appeared in the newspapers; that
- ↑ “Die Neuesten Staatsbegebenheiten,” 1777, Frankfurt a. M., pp. 110-116. The letter, of which the above is the largest part, would seem to have been written by an officer of chasseurs, probably either Major von Prueschenk or Lieutenant von Grothausen.
