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| p127: People have come to North America to seek new homes for themselves, but country has been able to keep even those who have come on other business. During the War of Independence in the 1770s, England shipped across to America, among other things, an army of five thousand men consisting of German mercenaries, who were supposed to aid in humbling the rebellious colonists. When this army was to be shipped out and sent home to Europe again after the armistice, according to the terms of the peace treaty, it turned out that it had disappeared, it was nowhere to be found. The army no longer existed; it had disbanded and vanished. Where had the soldiers gone? They had quite simply deserted, one and all, and settled down as pioneers in that foreign land! | p127: People have come to North America to seek new homes for themselves, but the country has been able to keep even those who have come on other business. During the War of Independence in the 1770s, England shipped across to America, among other things, an army of five thousand men consisting of German mercenaries, who were supposed to aid in humbling the rebellious colonists. When this army was to be shipped out and sent home to Europe again after the armistice, according to the terms of the peace treaty, it turned out that it had disappeared, it was nowhere to be found. The army no longer existed; it had disbanded and vanished. Where had the soldiers gone? They had quite simply deserted, one and all, and settled down as pioneers in that foreign land! |
Vilhelm Moberg
A History of the Swedish People, Part 1, PSU DL 648 .M62 1972
Violent, starving, perhaps half a million people plagued by a harsh environment, war and warlords.
The last chapter, Scandinavia's Greatest Monarch, describes Queen Margareta (Margaretha Valdemarsdotter) of Denmark, who assembles the defensive Kalmar Union (1.5 million people) out of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Swedish Finland in 1397, for decades of internal peace, and protection from Geerman Hanseatic and Holstein invasion and attack. Moberg notes that had the Union survived to the present day, the Wehrmacht might not have invaded Denmark and Norway.
The Unknown Swedes, MultCo 973.04 M687u 1950, 1970, 1988
p127: People have come to North America to seek new homes for themselves, but the country has been able to keep even those who have come on other business. During the War of Independence in the 1770s, England shipped across to America, among other things, an army of five thousand men consisting of German mercenaries, who were supposed to aid in humbling the rebellious colonists. When this army was to be shipped out and sent home to Europe again after the armistice, according to the terms of the peace treaty, it turned out that it had disappeared, it was nowhere to be found. The army no longer existed; it had disbanded and vanished. Where had the soldiers gone? They had quite simply deserted, one and all, and settled down as pioneers in that foreign land!
In his History of the United States, Andre Maurois comments on the event this way: "So great was this virgin continent's power of assimilation that it changed into citizens those men who had come here as enemies."
...
A historian of Swedish extraction at the University of Minnesota said to me on one occasion: "Every time a new tyrant has appeared among you in Europe, we have gotten a portion of the Old World's best people over here in America: the insurgents, the revolutionaries, the rebels, the freedom fighters. And they have been of invaluable aid to us Americans: they have helped us to uphold and develop our traditions of freedom. We truly have a lot to thank Europe's tyrants for!"