The German Allied Troops in the North American War of Independence, 1776-1783

Max Von Eelking was a captain in the Saxon-Meiningen Army and corresponding member of the Historical Society of New York. In 1863, he published (in Hanover, Germany) a large two-volume history of the activities of the various German regiments that fought for the British in the American Revolution. The present volume is a translation and abridgement of that work and was first published in New York in 1893 by J. D. Rosengarten. This interesting history is based on about thirty German manuscript sources-journals, diaries, letters and reports-compiled by officers and enlisted men who served in the German regiments from Hesse, Brunswick, Waldeck, Ansbach-Bayreuth, and Anhalt-Zerbst. It provides a unique view of the German participation as recorded by the German soldiers themselves. The abridgement done by Rosengarten consisted mainly of eliminating the general history of the American Revolution which is well known to Americans, so that the volume now consists predominantly of material on the German participation. Appended to the historical text is a list of several hundred officers who served in the German regiments. The antiquarian, Larned, described this book as "the best source of information in the field..."