Enemies of Liberty: The Continental Army Against the Corps of Hesse-Cassel
Great Britain would not have been able to wage war as it did during the American Revolution without the assistance of a number of German states, most notably that of Hessen-Cassel. Despite pre-existing colonial discontent, the outbreak of armed hostilities in April 1775 caught both the British government and its military badly unprepared – the peace-time army was small, and augmentation and expansion to the size required to wage war first in North America and, after 1778, across the globe, would take considerable time.