"Sackville: coward or just not very bright?" Topic

Minden: one of the earliest British battlefield triumphs was partly marred by the failure of Lord Sackville to obey orders and charge the beaten French with the cavalry.

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Was he a coward or just unable to understand the orders given him?

And if the latter, why wasn't he shot, like Byng?

TMP link

Follow Sackville's later career. He had pull. Byng did not.

As it was, his name was read out in anathema in every regiment in the British army.
So, he gave up a military career for a much more respectable one in politics.

And "lost the colonies for Great Britain" if you read the literature.

You Yanks built any statues of him?

You Yanks built any statues of him?

Why?

We seized our independence with sheer manliness and a rousing speech or two.

We seized our independence with sheer manliness and a rousing speech or two.

Yeah, I've seen Mel Gibson's 'The Patriot'. 87)))

Sackville and Byng were very similar – neither was a pleasant character in private, and both were homosexuals at a time when, if not actively persecuted, they were certainly not made to feel welcome in society.

Sackville was no coward, as far as I can see; he had been wounded leading from the front at Fontenoy (I think – might have been Dettingen). Piers Mackesy – whose own father's reputation had been trashed – wrote a sympathetic(ish) biography, in which he points out that Germain (as he was by then) was singularly responsible for co-ordinating the military response – both land and maritime – to the outbreak of the AWI. The only reason Great Britain managed to put together 30,000 troops – the largest army any European state sent overseas prior to the Crimean War – and keep them supplied was down to his organisational skills. so not an idiot either.

He made strategic errors from relying too much on looking at inaccurate maps (and not appreciating the distances and lack of transport infrastructure in theatre) and listening to Burgoyne, but then so did others.

I'd say he was a careerist, morer afraid of losing a command than taking any risk of loss in doing his job.

Hi Ochoin,

Not a coward at all times, but possibly that day – or simply a bitch.

In short, I would say it was a combination out of two major factors. First: the man was unwilling to obey to Ferdinand's orders – the French Comic Isnogud sort of character – arrogant and conceited as Hannoverian officers noted before. Second: he really may have been overwhelemd by his command on the day of battle. He wasn't a cavalry commander, nor had he ever commanded a wing in a general engagement before. As he apparently suffered from a big hangover due to too much brandy the last night, it may have been all too much for him.
As a proof of the second cause would serve Sloper, commanding the Blues, who noted signs of fear and confusion in Sackville's conduct.
For the first cause – much more pressing – Sackville belonged to a branch of British society (along with the Prince of Wales and his Lordship Bute) that rejected British troops being commanded by a Prussian general. At the later stages of their London night time leisure hours rendezvous, they were always much convinced, it ought to be the other way around. This way Sackville behaved for quite a while earlier during the campaign, in order to please his party-pals in London. By the day of Minden, Ferdinand was sick of him and didn't trust him anymore. If Sackville's sexual declension may have been relevant with this issue at all, it may have been that he let himself down and acted 'bitchy' that day, for he adored Ferdinand just as much as anyone else (he much praised him in a letter to his father), but found his affection unrequited.

With the long winter nights being ahead of us all now, you might want to find out yourself and enjoy reading within the below two books:
The complete minute journal of the court trial and second some correspondence between Sackville and the aid-de-camp Fitzroy.

I really read some of the trial, and while being a bit tedious as a whole due to the endless repetition of asking and answering the same questions over and over, it does have some very interesting sections. In particular the information you can extract of what people saw of the battlefield at a particular time in a particular area. I was surprized that for most of the time, not much was seen at all. For long periods, the men must have found themselfes in empty space, it appears. Poor captain Macbean commanding a battery on the right hardly ever saw the enemy. Only for rather brief periods he found some apparently enemy guns a worthwhile target shooting at (for they were shooting at him). Some more rounds he managed to fire into the cavalry (the 3d charge) at it became visible for only some minutes, and finally some more Saxons closing in for a short while, he also managed to get a few rounds in before they vanished out of sight again.
Sackville's Court Trial:
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Sackville – Fitzroy correspondence
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Cheers,
Christian
crogges7ywarmies.blogspot.com

Well thank you, Christian. I'll check out your blog as well.

Thanks Christian for those links. Fascinating detail.

Sackville was angry with Brunswick and just wanted him to lose the battle