The Court Martial of Lord George Sackville, Whipping Boy of the Revolutionary War

Abstract

L ~ ORD George Germain, until 1770 known as Lord George Sackville, became Secretary of State for the American Department on November io, 1775.1 He remained in office for more than six years, resigning under crushing opposition after the fall of Yorktown. During the whole of the revolutionary struggle, he was virtually War Minister in the British Cabinet. Upon him, more than upon any other man, fell the weight and responsibility of mobilizing the imperial forces for that great struggle in America, the failure of which signalized the end of the First British Empire. The whole of his public life was embittered and conditioned by the national memory of his court martial and conviction in I760, on the charge of disobedience of orders at the Battle of Minden (August I, 1759) 2 Contemporaries regarded his appointment to the high office of Secretary of State with surprise and some indignation, and historians since that time have generally agreed that it was a characteristic act of impolicy on the part of George III. Any reference to Germain in the enormous historical literature of the American Revolution is almost invariably prefaced by a brief or extended account of the Minden affair. The great notoriety attaching to Sackville as a result of his court martial, to-