George Sackville-Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville

George Sackville-Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville (born Jan. 26, 1716, London, Eng.—died Aug. 26, 1785, Stoneland Lodge, near Withyham, Sussex) was an English soldier and politician. He was dismissed from the British army for his failure to obey orders in the Battle of Minden (1759) during the Seven Years’ War. As colonial secretary he was partly responsible for the British defeat at Saratoga (1777) in the American Revolutionary War.

The third son of the 1st Duke of Dorset, he was educated at Westminster School and at Trinity College, Dublin (B.A., 1733; M.A., 1734). Commissioned in 1737, he fought well in the War of the Austrian Succession, particularly in the Battle of Fontenoy (May 11, 1745), where he led his infantry regiment so deep into the French ranks that he was taken prisoner and his wounds were treated in Louis XV’s own tent. Later, as a colonel of infantry, Sackville served in Scotland and Ireland.

Transferred to the cavalry, Sackville was promoted to major general in 1755. The badly managed attack on Saint-Malo (1758) during the Seven Years’ War was his first defeat. From October 1758 he commanded a British contingent of the allied army in Germany. At Minden (Aug. 1, 1759), after the British and Hanoverian infantry had routed the cavalry forming the French centre, he disregarded repeated orders by the allied commander, Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, to exploit this success, and the French retreated unpursued. Temporarily disgraced by and court-martialed for this episode, he was restored to favour in 1765. In 1770, under the terms of the will of Lady Elizabeth Germain, he inherited the estate of Drayton, Northamptonshire, and took the name of Germain.

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Understanding the American Revolution

As colonial secretary (from 1775) in Lord North’s government, Sackville was responsible for the general conduct of the war against the American colonists, and he was largely to blame for the poor coordination of British operations from Canada and New York, ending in the surrender of General John Burgoyne’s British army at the Second Battle of Saratoga, N.Y. (Oct. 17, 1777). After the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown (1781), Germain was the only cabinet minister to favour continued fighting, but he was dismissed.

Created Baron Bolebrooke and Viscount Sackville of Drayton in 1782, he retired from politics when North resigned that year.