Abstract
At a time when it would seem that all historical evidence concerning the American Revolution has been unearthed, history has surprised us yet again. In the aftermath of World War II, a journal, unknown except to a few, which had been kept by Captain Johann Ewald, a company commander in the Hessian Field Jager Corps, was procured by an American historian assigned to intelligence and historical duties in the United States Zone of Occupation in Germany. After 30 years of piecing together the journal's scattered volumes, translating and editing, the journal was at last published in 1979, and now stands as "the most important and comprehensive diary kept by a Hessian mercenary" during the American Revolution. Indeed, the Ewald diary opens anew to students of the Revolution a dimension of the conflict that has been somewhat discounted by American military historians: Hessian participation as auxiliary troops hired by Great Britain.
