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Continental Army, Foreign Officers in

In popular memory, the American Revolutionary War was waged solely by patriots fighting for their country and their liberties against the hired mercenaries of England's King George III. For the purveyors of this myth, the presence of significant numbers of foreign officers serving in the Continental Army (and large numbers of foreign-born soldiers serving in the ranks as well) has always been awkward. The presence of high-ranking foreigners in the Continental Army has customarily been explained in one of two ways. Foreign officers have generally been portrayed as either ideological converts to the cause of American freedom or as useless parasites who fastened onto the struggling Continental Army and blocked the promotion of deserving native-born Americans. Both of these views are based on a false impression of the Continental Army. Historians increasingly contend that the Revolutionary War was not fought on the American side by patriotic yeoman farmers. National myth to the contrary, after the first year or so, the war was instead waged by the regular Continental Army, which, in composition, was far more like the armies of the ancien régime in Europe than it was a revolutionary force.

Multinational Armies

In the mid-18th century, regular armies were, to a surprising degree, multinational. During the 1758 campaign to capture Fort DuQuesne from the French, George Washington was exposed to this reality and acquired much of his military training while serving under the command of Gen. John Forbes, a lowland Scot, and Forbes's right-hand man, Col. Henry Bouquet. The Swiss-born Bouquet had first served in a Swiss regiment in the service of the Dutch, then in another Swiss regiment in the service of Sardinia, and then in the Dutch Guard, before finally accepting a commission in the British Army. Bouquet's commission was in the 60th Foot, Royal American Regiment, which, during the mid-18th century, was made up of large numbers of Irish, Scots, and German soldiers. In European armies of the mid-18th century, both officers and soldiers commonly served in armies other than those of the nation of their birth. This would be true of the Continental Army as well, which would come to closely resemble its principal foe, the British Army.

Once the Continental Congress decided to raise a standing army of some size, it needed officers for that army, particularly officers with experience at the higher levels of command. However, not enough of these men were to be found in North America. (For instance, before being appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army, George Washington had served at no higher rank than that of colonel.) It also needed officers with certain specialized skills, particularly staff officers and military engineers—even less common in North America. The only realistic source for these officers was Europe, where armies often hired skilled men on the open market. So, from early on, the Continental Congress's representatives in Europe made it their business to try to find officers for their new army.

Motives for Service

Soldiers in 18th-century Europe often sought their fortunes outside the nation of their birth. The national origin of these “soldiers of fortune” varied, and some nationalities were always overrepresented: people who suffered persecution such as the “wild geese” of Ireland, or impoverishment such as the Scots, or those from areas such as central Germany or Switzerland where soldiering was a recognized trade with a long tradition of leaving home for wars. Moreover, for many “gentlemen,” the field of battle was still the place to seek honor, and if one's homeland could not provide an honorable battlefield, then one traveled elsewhere to fight. Likewise, for the gentleman who had to earn a living, yet who wished to maintain his status as a gentleman, soldiering was one of the few acceptable occupations open to him, and he might have to travel a distance to find employment.

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