Benjamin Franklin: “The Sale of the Hessians”

Glossary

• convention agreement
• Count De Schaumbergh … Baron Hohen-Dorf fictional characters of Franklin’s devising
• Don’t economize them don’t spare their lives
• Dr. Crumerus fictional character of Franklin’s invention
• farthing a very small amount of money
• florin a unit of currency used in southern Germany at the time
• guinea a gold coin in the British currency of the time, equivalent to one pound and one shilling
• Hessians soldiers from the German state of Hesse hired to fight on the British side in the American Revolution
• Lord North prime minister of Great Britain from 1770 to 1782
• Major Maundorff fictional character created by Franklin
• recall the life of bring back from the dead
• the 300 Lacedaemonians … reference to the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BCE, where King Leonidas of Sparta (also called Lacedaemon) led three hundred soldiers in a fight to the death against a vastly larger Persian invading force
• they pay me as killed for all who die from disease Franklin’s fictional count receives just as much money for a man who dies of disease as for one who dies in battle
• massacre of Trenton reference to the Battle of Trenton (New Jersey), on December 26, 1776, where some nine hundred (out of a force of fourteen hundred) Hessians were captured by the Americans