Dear Guest - slight objections to the Hessian "mercenaries, pressed into service". They were either conscripts or volunteers. The Hessians were bound by treaties with the British to mutual assistance in case of war. Fighting in "subsidies" was a practice not uncommon all over Europe in these times. The British even payed in peacetime for the Hessian army to maintain its top standard.
During the war against the rebels in America the Hessian and other German soldiers received double pay; the "English Money" layed the ground for many peasant families for an upstart into University careers. A late friend of mine told me that his family never could have changed to an academic one without the money his gret-great-grandfather had brought back from America. A not so small lot of volunteers enlisted in the German contingents because they got a good pay and were promised land in the colonies to settle after the end of hostilities.
My proud batallion, the Hessian Jagers, can look back without shame to this part of its history - the breakthrough at Flatbush, NY, first in, last out at Yorktown, and a lot of fierce fighting in between. For the duration they took volunteers who had to qualify at the shooting range; only the best were accepted.
If you read some German sources about the "selling of Hessian soldiers" you must be always aware who wrote about it. Prussian sources tried to hammer a wedge between the people and the reigning family because they wanted the "English money" of the reigning house (and unfortunately got it in 1866). In the nearly 100 years before it was put to a good use for the economic and industrial development of our small contry.

Wilfried