Description
When Lord North, the British Prime Minister, suggested, in February 1776, the hire of German troops to support efforts against American rebels in North America, the suggestion was met with loud outcries from the British Parliamentarians. One of the more outspoken was Frederick Bull, MP for the City of London, who ended the debate in the Commons with a scorching address declaring that the German mercenaries would be ‘hired to subdue the sons of Englishmen and of freedom’ and lamented that the measures taken against America were ‘inimical … to the honor, faith, and true dignity of the British nation.’ Bull saw the German mercenaries as illegitimate fighters and constructed them as such with his utterance.
This paper will investigate not only why the German mercenaries were constructed as illegitimate fighters, but also how this construction impacted the organisation of violence in Britain. Ultimately, this paper will argue that the moral objection made towards mercenaries and the widespread dislike of these actors is more than just an expression of a norm against mercenary use, as Sarah Percy has argued. Rather than saying something fundamental about mercenaries as actors, the moral objections and the subsequent de-legitimation of mercenaries are an expression of the struggle to articulate the proper organisation of violence and therefore who should fight. As will be shown in this paper, the German mercenaries were so vehemently objected against because they were seen as disruptors of the ideal British polity. The use of the German mercenaries spoke to the very issue of how to best organise violence and, thus, how best to organise society.
