Something that has never been explained is what actually started the Revolutionary War.

It's never been published before for a reason that you will shortly read about.

Almost every war is started by some event (or related group of events) that focuses attention, polarizes the masses, drives people to outrage and then elevates it until one or both sides declare war. The English and Americans had no such event or that is how it appears. They had been at odds for dozens of years. The same disagreements that started the Revolutionary War had been going on for dozens of years, some had been going on for over 100 years. So why did it start in 1776 and not before?

America entered WWII because of how Pearl Harbor angered the nation to enter a war that had been going on for years. The Kidnapping and impressing of American sailors into slavery on English ships for the rest of their shortened lives was largely responsible for the War of 1812. There is not a recorded single atrocity during the early part of 1776 that could have driven the Americans to frenzy and to war, or was there?

There was and you are about to read it but not a 'sound bite' so it will take a few minutes to read it. But first...

Why did George Washington stand up while crossing the Delaware

That's a simple one and he actually did this even though falling out would have probably been fatal.

The ice was in large chunks that had piled up until there were just a few breaks in it which the boats could traverse. It was not moving and had become a maze of 3 or 4 foot high ice blocks with ice shards that stood up to 5 feet high and blocked the view of what lay ahead.

Sitting in the boats you could only see a wall of ice all around you. Standing up was needed to even see where the gaps in the ice were but most of those ended in blind alleys or low bridges of ice that kept the bergs separated. They had to get across the river and do it fast as there were 20 man patrols on the other side which was strongly held enemy territory. It was called something like 'Little Germany' and the name held even after the war

The gaps between the icebergs were often bridged by ice which kept them apart. That ice was low in the water and not visible to a short man even standing up in a boat. The gaps in the ice formed hundreds of blind alleys with all but a few ending in walls of ice. And the pattern continuously changed. Someone had to stand up to even see over the icebergs.

In order to wend our way through this maze George Washington needed an intelligent man who was both tall and had good eyesight to be able to stand, look over the ice and then down for the low bridges of ice and then calculate in the most likely and closest passages, calculate to avoid coming out on the other side of the river near any of the patches of trees (you can in the paintings) that could hide 200 Hessian troops. The man had do this all very quickly in order to get to the other side before the irregularly timed Hessian patrol came along. All this time the person needed to not panic even though he was the prime target for a long rifle on either side of the river and about 200 yards up or down it. The Hessians equipped their morning patrol with long rifles.

In the middle of asking his men for volunteers 6 ft. 4 inch tall George realized that he was the most qualified. Since George Washington always chose the most qualified man for the specific job and never asked his men to do what he wouldn't do himself he finished and said 'lets go, I'm going to do it myself'. The people in the front row said 'you are crazy (many were not regulars) they (the Hessian patrol they were expecting) can't miss you or your white hair and the (officers) coat. So Washington agreed to pull his hat down which he did not do and use a blanket to cover his uniform but it came off to the side which can easily be seen the big version of Washington Crossing the Delaware.

The second most qualified man was the only one who was taller but I did not have as good of eyesight and my mind tended to wander. Washington put me on the bow where my long arms made me the most qualified since I could push off the ice. I was given a 50/50 chance that I would need to take over for a fatally wounded commander of our Army. However I was not a professional soldier.*

That kind of consideration for others is what made George Washington the most respected of all leaders and held the Army together until victory was obtained in spite of all odds being against the army and the nation ever surviving.

Damn straight, George Washington stood up in the boat all the way across the Delaware.

They went single file with his boat in front. On that stood our George Washington, a prize six foot four target who was pushing aside the ice with his sword which showed any and all that he was a high officer. It was a very easy shot for anyone with a rifle on either shore and back 100 yards in the woods. Worried? He was shaking from fear by the time the boats reached the far shore but it lasted for only a few seconds and he was right back to being George Washington, solid as ever.

That is where the inspiration for the painting came from. What I want to know is who gave the painter all the details since he did not paint it until the 1850's, seventy years after the Delaware crossing. A few of the major items are off but not the details. So someone filled him in. There were 500 men under the age of 20 and there was at least one 12 year old (but they mainly carried ammunition and supplies). Some of these brave men would still have been alive 70 years later. I guess I have my answer as to who provided the details.

This doesn't explain why we even went across that river in the first place since we could have taken a longer but a much safer route.

Part of it was to make the mercenaries think they were safe because the army gathered in Pennsylvania and across the Delaware River, not in New Jersey where they were camped.

Remember the 1,000+ Hessian mercenaries that Washington captured at Trenton? Nobody doubts that but what happened to them after the battle? Nobody really knows for a fact. By their own account at least 900 of those 1000 Hessians never existed. The Hessian's account (near the bottom on this page) states 17 were killed and 78 wounded at the Battle of Trent but no number at all was entered in the 'missing category' and there is no mention of men in the 'taken prisoner" category when someone should have entered 1000 somewhere. That is a lot of men to make no mention of at all. That number of disappeared men grew until by the end of the war when there were about 12,000 Hessians effectively unaccounted for out of 30,000. Let's find out what happened to them.

The Hessian Government actually enlisted the mercenaries (or got them to accept their being drafted) for the English in 1775 with the understanding that they could rape, pillage and kill people, as was the standard practice in Central European wars after a battle, when they took over enemy territory. This technique was used to punished the other sides supporters but it was not standard practice for occupying troops in a friendly nation that was not at war with the motherland. Most of the Hessians had been promised a bonus for each American soldier they killed equal to (I think) about about three months wages for a working man in lieu of wages. There were at least three big selling points for the enlistment program of the Hessians. Also, it was made clear to all the Hessians when they signed up exactly what they were expected to do and it wasn't to act as a policing force in a country full of nice people. The Hessian government wanted to save money so they also conned many of their own cons (many were convicted criminals) into accepting bonuses for killing Americans in battle instead of pay. However, they 'forgot' to tell the men that there was no war going on so they could not earn bonuses. (This absence of pay is backed up by most historical accounts but later the English kept the bonus information quiet.) So the Hessian mercenaries came to America expecting a war. Since there was no war and many of them had no money they started a war. This is really how the Revolutionary War got started.

The Hessian troops started right away with robbery and then highway robbery (compete with disguises and speaking in a Hessian dialect), then stage robberies, then they started gang raping any and all women in order to start that war.

For 218 years there has been a division and a disagreement going back and forth across the Atlantic as to whether England or America started the Revolutionary War. Now that question can finally be laid to rest. Neither of the two countries started that war. It was the unpaid and under paid Hessian mercenaries that started it.

Then after the war started the mercenaries took advantage of the fact that not many American soldiers had uniforms in order to murder civilians and claim that they were soldiers so they could collect bonuses.

The English drew the line when the Hessians started killing American women and dressing them up as men. They only found out about the women, who were raped by gangs of Hessians before they were murdered, when we tipped them off to what the Hessians were doing! The English did nothing except inspect the bodies more closely to make sure they were all men. Then all American's within 20 miles of their forts moved away so the Hessians ran out of people they could murder. Then the Hessians killed a bunch of their own suppliers, mostly American wagon drivers. That caused the most unusual alignment imaginable. The drivers who were still Tories and supporter of England's cause temporarily aligned themselves with us Americans in order to hatched one single plot.

The wagon drivers held back the Hessians liquor delivery for four days until the Hessians were going through withdrawals and many were in DT's. Then some of Washington's men helped the wagon drivers spike all the liquor and then sent the entire load late that afternoon to Trenton, on the day before Christmas...and about 15 hours before our attack.

George and his men 'spiced' the liquor with Jimsonweed (Jamestown) Weed which has a drug similar to Atropine in it so it create's a delirium not unlike DT's only a lot worse.

When our troops arrived the next morning some of the mercenaries were crawling around on their hands and knees banging their heads into the walls because they couldn't even see. All the others were either passed out or too busy talking to God to notice who had entered their barracks.

The U.S. Army back in the last century developed a synthetic version of Jimson weed called 'BZ' and it works the same way. In war games a guard under the influence challenged the other sides approaching army by asking them for the password. The other side said 'You tell us what the password is.' The entire attacking force just walked around the guard while he was still trying to figure out what to reply. The US not only has BZ but they still seem to be testing other drugs related to Jimson weed such as atropine and scopolamine.

Current goals and research programs are unclear. However it was revealed last year that the US Army was testing atropine and scopolamine on 55 military personnel at Edgewood Arsenel. The Army denied that either drug could cause hallucinations. This information only serves to confuse the Army's intentions - the ability of atropine and scopolamine to cause delirious states similar to the anti-cholinergic hallucinogens has been well known for many years. What seems further to confuse the situation is that researchers at Edgewood Arsenel published, in 1973, a comprehensive paper showing the behavioral effects of atropine, scopolamine, and Ditran, (an anti-cholinergic hallucinogen) to be indistinguishable from each other. [Psychoparmacologia (sic), vol 28 p 121]. The subjects were 158 Army enlisted men. The general properties of the drugs were described to subjects before testing. Here

That chemical warfare agent turned around the entire war. We never would have become a nation other wise. The Hessian's had inspired George Washington to use this chemical warfare agent but they were much better at using biological warfare agents than we were. They made hollow miniballs that they packed with bacteria and viruses. They started the smallpox epidemic that killed 120,000 people with these hollow miniballs packed with smallpox virus although apparently in this paper and the book they now blame it just on the English. The English started it and used a very inefficient method until the Hessians came along with their BW weapons and their hollow miniball delivery system. The early English method could still be used so I wont say what it was.

This chemical warfare is why only four Americans even got wounded at Trenton and the four were all wounded while charging one artillery position. The Hessian's only got off one shot during that battle. Without the poisoned drink it would have been impossible to take over their fort without sustaining major casualties.

Some historians state that the mercenaries at Trenton were drunk. That is not an issue. The Hessians were all alcoholics and opium addicts. They were known to go into battle drunk. It was said by most that they fought braver and better when they were drunk or on opium.

There is nothing that can disable an entire army without losing a single man other than nukes, biological or chemical warfare. Nothing as one sided as 'The Battle of Trenton' has ever happened in the history of warfare before or since.

The accounts you might read of the battle of Trenton were figments of people's imagination. They were allowed in order to keep the role of Jimson weed a secret in case we needed to use it again. Using Jimson weed and/or then keeping it a secret was not a moral issue at all.

No one had ever captured mercenaries before Trenton. Regular troops always killed mercenaries since they were literally hired murderers, not normal troops. So mercenaries usually fought to the death. Only a few were ever captured in any battle and they were usually wounded or caught indisposed (while going to the bathroom in the bushes). At the battle of Trenton they were drugged so over 1,000 (actually it was 1,200-1,300) were easily captured and that had never happened before. In fact they were hallucinating so badly that almost none of them realized they had been captured even while they were being chained up. Capturing 1,000+ murderers for hire shocked all of Europe and since the use of Jimson weed was kept a secret in case we needed to use it again against another invading army the English never found out how we managed to capture an entire army of Hessians. This is the first time the curtain has ever been lifted on one of the best kept secrets of the United States Army.

Do you still not believe me? Ok, the Hessians had won every battle and yet at Trenton they suffered at least 17 killed. So how did that happen without one American getting killed and only four getting wounded? They would have slaughtered the Americans, most of which had wet powder in their guns if they had only been asleep or drunk. They were in 40 homes (30 with locks) and they had loaded guns. It's impossible to take over 40 homes without one warning shot being fired.

Since that spiced liquor had been delivered that very afternoon the Continental Army had to attack before morning or not at all. Drugging the mercenaries never would have worked a second time and the wagon drivers would have been all shot. That is why Washington took a great chance, first by crossing the Delaware standing up, then forcing that long march and finally attacking those thousand men while everyone was totally exhausted and with wet powder.

The wagon drivers had also delivered half empty bottles of turpentine with food and other supplies as well as the liquor. Later the wagon drivers told the English that when they arrived at the fort the Hessian were such alcoholics that they were drinking turpentine as a substitute for their normal drink. Turpentine, I guess is an accumulative poison that created similar outward appearances to Jimson weed poisoning so the wagon drivers got off the hook. That info might be in the English records.

The liberation of 42 beautiful American women that the Hessian's had kidnapped for the obvious purpose sealed the fate of every captured Hessian from then on until the end of the war.

George Washington said this about the mercenary Hessians. 'They have no business in this war and most don't know or care one way or the other or even know why they are here. All they know and they will tell you this to your face, is that they are here to kill people for the money. That makes everyone of those son-of-bitches' a self admitted murderer. The penalty for (premeditated) murder is always hanging but we ran out of rope.' *

The English were so disgraced by what had become of the women that George Washington rescued from the Hessians that they were actually ashamed. Then that combined with the previous exposure of the Hessians murdering and using the bodies of American women to make money almost created a revolt within the English army. To prevent further trouble from then on the Hessians were mainly used as garrison troops which mean't they were virtually imprisoned in forts and pretty much taken out of the war.

Most American's thought the Germans would send a huge Army for revenge but George knew the German government as military leaders must know the enemy. George used a bear analogy 'If you put your hand in the mouth of an injured and angry bear and he bites it off would you blame that bear or yourself for placing your hand in his mouth in first place?'

It was a warning to all European countries not to invade America since we did not play by the rules which had made war a game in Europe. You might have noticed that England had to fight the War of 1812 without Hessian mercenaries. If they had them they would have won.

*George Washington's second for the position of standing up in the boat was the only man taller than him but Washington had better eyesight so I gracefully agreed to be his back up and since I had the longest reach at 6' 4" I took the bow and pushed off the ice. Dressed like a dandy (my wife said I had to dress for the occasion) I was the laughing stock of our troops and voted the most likely to be shot by our side due to my clothes. I was also voted the second to be shot by the other side. Some men said I was more likely overall to be shot since even a bullet intended for George from the other side might fall short due to wet powder, inaccurate ranging or drunkenness. You can see my soft leather riding boots, gentleman's hat and my snazzy form fitting fur lined coat best in the large version of Washington Crossing the Delaware. My wife thought the dramatic red scarf made me look like a hunk but the soldiers thought otherwise.

More on the boots. Compare my riding boots with George's shinny hard ones and you can tell that they are soft. I'll tell you this I'll never wear soft boots again. Those soft boots split after we crossed the river. While crossing I used them to push away ice and you see the high heels which slipped right off the ice and into the water so that the boots got drenched, then they froze hard as a rock. When we reached the other side and I started to walk the ice broke into shards and they cracked the leather. Then the leather itself tore as I marched to my death at the hands of the Hessians. Even now I am wary about wearing soft leather boots. I was in many major battles of that War and some of the battles of the War of 1812. In the middle of this act of self depreciation I remembered that I had not dressed for this occasion.

I need to explain that before the battle we were at a meeting when several of us militiamen were tapped on the shoulder. We went out the back to horses and we had no idea what was going on, where we were going or what we were going to do! We rode and took a stage for three days not knowing where we were headed or when we would stop. Only two people in the world knew that we were even going to attack Trenton and author of Declaration of Independence was not one of them. Only George Washington and the other general knew. Not even their aides knew. That is about the only way you might have a fair chance of keeping an attack a secret.

**This is what George Washington told Congress but it's not at all what happened to the Hessians. Nobody could figure out what to do with them.

So George Washington was put in charge of them while the forefathers negotiated to sell them back to Hessia. Hessia balked at paying our stated rate (maybe $200 per man) except for one officer so the forefathers continued to negotiate with them. In fact we kept lowering our request until it was about $50 per and then we realized they would probably pay us not to send them back. Hessia wanted to get rid of them in the first place and had impressed (drafted) most of them. Almost all of them were either alcoholics, drug abusers, idiots, insane, degenerates, and/or criminals. We Americans valued human life so dearly that no one had even thought of this before and now we were trying to sell the mercenaries back to Hessia with graduate degrees in rape, murderer and mayhem.

George Washington was also put in charge of the 40+ women. Of the 40 that he liberated, 6 of them killed themselves when they were released and before he could do anything about it. 24-26 were deemed by two doctors as being hopelessly insane. When he or his men approached them they would spit and try to bite the Americans so our men had to back off. These women had been tied up when they were raped so spitting and biting was their only defense. It happened so often that spitting and biting became their automatic reaction whenever any man approached them. Each of these American women needed two female nurses (these were all black ladies from George's Plantation) twenty-four-seven to prevent them from killing themselves.

It took 200 American soldiers to watch the Hessians and George needed those men in the field. George Washington wanted to hang all the mercenaries. He was spending too much time managing the insane asylum and America's first pow camp (the later he felt was a nuisance). He remained stoic. However by holding back 5-15 different emotions it affected him so much that he literally could not talk. His heart was too big, his skin too thin and his independent streak too wide to deal with all of the issues and do it fairly.

We were about to lose our most brilliant commander. (Read the proof of his brilliance on this page) To try to make him laugh, so he would feel better, I made an offhanded remark to him: 'You should give the women butcher knives and let them show the prisoners who's boss'.

The joke that people said which ties this altogether was: 'Don't tell your wife to dress and butcher your big buck deer or she may show you who's boss when she takes the knife to her 'dear' big buck.'

I'd say I was self programmed to see every thing from a point of view of what was right rather than a point of view of the legality of a situation. George Washington just thought that my off handed remarks always made perfect sense. So when he was about to pull out his hair looking for a solution to the Hessian problem he seized upon my off handed remark as if it was gospel: My remark to Washington was a new version of the saying we had. It was: 'You should give the women butcher knives and let them show the Hessians who's boss'. It started him to thinking along a different track for a solution than he had been thinking about.

He decided that since it was the Hessians that made those nice women insane then they should be made to cure them.

Eventually, the negotiations with Hessia fell through completely and George Washington being a man of action did not wait to implement a plan he had conceived of before the forefathers had a chance to even think. He had the Hessians all lined up and tied together. They thought they were going home to Hessia. Then he brought out the 24 women that had been their victims. The women immediately started screaming in fear and emotional pain but when they saw the Hessians were all tied together their screams changed to hissing and finally to screams of anger and rage. Then Washington's men gave all the women their 18" bayonets and set them loose on the Hessians.

That is all it took for 19 of the 24 women to fully regain their sanity to the degree that they could then go home. George Washington told me all this and I was pretty shocked about it but as I recall he said that they were immediately cured. The rest took a bit longer but soon they were all cured. He said the women only killed a few hundred Hessians. (The recall of this memory is still too vague to remember what happened to the rest of the mercenaries.)

I do remember this information: Hessia owed money to the main German government and to pay it off the German government had made the Hessian government send them troops in the first place. After our realizing that the Hessians might even pay us not to return their soldiers the German government or Holy Roman Empire, since they were a party to the whole affair, made us an offer. Then they sent us a lot of gold bars that paid for 14 months of the war to cover up the whole incident which mean't we had to keep it out of the press.

(We never let the Germans forget what had happened though. When he was president George Washington always made certain one of these ladies attended state functions when Germans were present and introduced her around to the Germans. I asked him why he undiplomatically introduced them and he replied 'because it gives them a black eye every time'. He also had a version of this statement which involves something which is so physically impossible for a woman to do to a man that I won't include it. Then during Adams, my administration and Monroe's invited these ladies to their affairs. Monroe's wife trumped us all by inviting five of these survivors every time. I asked Dolley Madison why so many and she said 'it's not for the German's'. I said 'It's not?' It almost floored me when she explained that it was to entertain the other ladies with their incredibly lurid stories which us men found far too appalling to ever mention around our women because it might precipitate what we called 'a condition'.)

A lot of people have heard how the French spent a lot of money on the Revolutionary war. They put everything they had into it for four years. Now you are about to learn why the French thought the American Revolution was that important.

Three events got the French into the Revolutionary war. One were mass graves of people that the English had killed. They were discovered and for some reason it was associated with the Caribbean. The second was an English privateer's confiscation of an American vessel. It had several French aristocrats on it and the privateers confiscated their jewelry. That was unacceptable piracy. Then England took their percentage of the sale of the jewelry and yet refused to return the jewelry or prosecute the privateers. The French may have eventually gotten some of the jewelry but the pirates went free. The King was related to one of the women and did not like what happened at all. I think several of the women were raped including that relative of the King of France. About the same time as this came to light the news of the women who were rescued from the Hessians as well as what happened to them got to France. That sent the French right through the roof.

The French were/are completely intolerant of men who abuse women. On top of that the Hessians targeted women who were married, young, of high class or who were married to clergy simply because these ladies were not likely to have syphilis. That was seen as doom for all nuns and Aristocratic women if Germany and/or England ever invaded France. Those were the wrong two groups for the English to alienate. So this is what caused the French to charge with full support on America's side. The French got off the first ships asking 'which way to those Hessian bastards'.

I also remember telling George that it was good idea to bring several of the women to a meeting of the states to destroy nay sayers and to defend their honor, which meant to show that they were ladies and were not prostitutes as the English had counter charged. I was at the party and a young lady approached to thank me for being able to tell her side of the story. She was a music teacher who traveled a circuit teaching piano, harp and I think the lute when she had been kidnapped by Hessian's on the road. She was 'incurably insane' but was now composing music again. She was filled with good nature and had full a reverence for others. She was with another one of the 40 women who had gone home early because she was deemed not insane. The one who had gone home early was clearly far less well adjusted than the music teacher who participated in the massacre of Hessian prisoners. The one who had gone home early and her husband who was a minister were attacked since clergy, who did not carry weapons to defend themselves with, were often targeted by the Hessians. The Hessians had singled them out on the road, kidnapped her for her good looks and murdered her husband for the money his body brought from the English when they dress up his body to look like an American soldier.

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© 2004 John Pinil