The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [131]
Following the Proclamation, the definitive act was the removal of Dartmouth to the office of Lord Privy Seal and his replacement as Secretary for the Colonies by a vigorous advocate of “bringing the rebels to their knees” by armed force, Lord George Germain. A Sackville of Knole by birth* and younger son of the 7th Earl and 1st Duke of Dorset, he had overcome a strange history of court-martial and ostracism to maneuver himself into favor with the King and, by plying him with the advice he wanted to hear, to gain the critical American post in the Cabinet.
As a Lieutenant-General and commander of the British cavalry at the battle of Minden in 1759, Lord George had inexplicably refused to obey the order of his superior, Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, to lead a cavalry charge to finish off a victory over the French. Dismissed from the service, called a coward by society, tried for disobedience to orders, he was declared by verdict of the court-martial “unfit to serve His Majesty in any military capacity whatever,” the sentence being recorded in the order book of every British regiment. “I always told you,” wrote his poor half-mad brother Lord John, “that my brother George was no better than myself.”
Although the tag of cowardice fitted queerly with a strenuous military career of more than twenty years, Lord George never explained his conduct at Minden. Hard and arrogant, he stemmed from one ancestor who “lived in the greatest splendour of any nobleman in England,” from a grandfather who avoided a charge of murder only by the friendly intercession of Charles II, from a father created a Duke when George was four years old, whose house was so crowded with suitors and visitors on a Sunday as to give it the appearance of a royal levee. Not a likable man, Lord George had already made enemies by his criticisms of fellow-officers, yet he was able after some years, with Sackville support and an aggressive will, to rise above disgrace and retrieve the status owed to his rank and family. Made harder if not wiser by his experience, he was now to become the minister in active charge of the war.
Opposed like the rest of the Cabinet and the King’s friends to any effort at conciliation, Lord George resisted rigorously the plan of a peace commission to treat with the colonies. When Lord North carried this point, to which he was previously committed, Germain insisted on drafting the instructions. His terms required the colonies to acknowledge, prior to a parley, the “supreme authority of the legislature to make laws binding on the Colonies in all cases whatsoever.” Since their consistent rejection of this principle for ten years was what had led them to rebellion, it was fairly obvious, as Lord North pointed out, that this formula would condemn the peace commission to failure. Dartmouth said flatly he would resign as Privy Seal if the instructions stood; North hinted that he would go if his stepbrother did.
Interminable discussions of the terms followed: whether the phrase “in all cases whatsoever” should be in or out; whether colonial acceptance of the supremacy principle must precede or be part of negotiations; whether the commissioners should have discretionary powers; whether Admiral Howe should hold both the naval command and membership on the peace commission. Mingled with these disputes were intrigues about who should fill several court and sub-Cabinet posts from which opponents of the war had resigned, while Parliament, upon reconvening in January 1776, spent its time arguing over contested elections and the high prices charged by German princes for the hire of their troops. The peace