Howard Fast - The Hessian

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The

Hessian

The

Hessian

Howard Fast

First published 1972 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1972 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

Foreword copyright 1996 by Howard Fast

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fast, Howard, 1914

The Hessian / Howard Fast; the classic novel with a new foreword.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-56324-601-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. United StatesHistoryRevolution, 17751783German

mercenariesFiction. 2. Hessian mercenariesFiction.

[1. United StatesHistoryRevolution, 17751783Fiction.]

I. Title.

PS3511.A784H4 1996

813.52dc20 96-15110

CIP

ISBN 13: 9781563246012 (pbk)

Also by Howard Fast

The Bridge Builders Story	The Hill
Seven Days in June	Agrippas Daughter
The Trial of Abigail Goodman	Power
War and Peace (Essays)	The Edge of Tomorrow
Being Red: A Memoir	April Morning
The Confession of Joe Cullen	The Golden River
The Pledge	The Winston Affair
The Dinner Party	Moses, Prince of Egypt
Citizen Tom Paine (A Play)	The Last Supper
The Immigrants Daughter	Silas Timberman
The Outsider	The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti
Max
Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories	Spartacus The Proud and the Free
The Legacy	Departure
The Establishment	My Glorious Brothers
The Magic Door	Clarkton
Second Generation	The American
The Immigrants	Freedom Road
The Art of Zen Meditation	Citizen Tom Paine
A Touch of Infinity	The Unvanquished
The Crossing	The Last Frontier
The General Zapped an Angel	Conceived in Liberty Place in the City
The Jews: Story of a People	The Children
The Hunter and the Trap	Strange Yesterday
Torquemada	Two Valleys

For Rachel and Jonathan

Contents

For six years, from 1983 to 1989, my wife and I lived in Redding, Connecticut, a wonderful little town about six miles from Danbury. The colonial character of the town center has been remarkably preserved, and if you come upon it unexpectedly, it is like stepping back two hundred years in time. It is the town where Mark Twain once built a splendid house, where he was influential in starting the delightful Mark Twain Library, and where his spirit hangs over the community.

It is also a town haunted by a place called Gallows Hill. The name intrigued me, and I tracked down the story. A seventeen-year-old Connecticut volunteer in the Revolution had deserted and returned to his mothers home. General Israel Putnam, a fierce old warrior in command of the Connecticut troops, hunted down this young deserter and, determined to make an example of him, hanged him on what is now called Gallows Hillin sight of his mothers house.

At first, no Connecticut soldier would pull the hangmans rope, no matter how Putnam raged. Finally, Putnam did the execution himself.

You will not find this story in The Hessian, but it set me to thinking about the tale that eventually became The Hessian. Squire Hunt is not unlike Putnam, hard and unrelenting. There was a Quaker meeting house in old Redding, and the Quakers, who would not take part in any war, were disliked for their pacifism and for the fact that they were different, spoke differently, and wore different clothes. The landscape of Redding and Ridgefield, the high point, from which one can see both the Hudson River and Long Island Sound, all of these combined with Gallows Hill to bring together the story in this book.

Now, twenty-four years after I first wrote it, it has been reprinted at the request of teachers and librarians in New England.

Howard Fast

TOWARD FOUR OCLOCK of an afternoon in middle May, the priest appeared, and the following day the whole thing began. It was the priest who told me about the ship in the Sound.

The priest came riding up the road from Norwalk on a donkeyso small a donkey that the riders feet barely topped the ground, and the priest was a very small man indeed, no more than five feet and three inches, about forty-five years old, with a small protruding belly and a round moon face, pink and sweaty, from which two bloodshot and tired pale blue eyes regarded the world without optimism and yet without despair. It had suddenly turned hot, the first heat of early summer, and momentarily the glowing new green of springtime seemed dusty and old. Somewhere the priest had lost his hat, and the sun was turning his bald head the color of ripe apples.

Mrs. Feversham and I were in the herb garden, where I was directing Rodney Stephan how to prune the grape arbornot that grapes are anything to speak of in this wretched Connecticut soilwhen I saw the priest and his donkey top the rise and come down the road toward the house. My wife pointed toward the manifestation and wondered what it could be, and I replied that it appeared to be a priest on a donkey.

A clergyman?

In a manner of speaking. I would guess that this poor devil is a Roman Catholic priest, and what twist of fate brought him into this holy nest of Protestantism I can only guess. In any case, well soon find out.

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