parade to every regiment in the service:  ’It is his Majesty’s pleasure that the above sentence be given out in public orders, not only in Britain, but in America, and in every quarter of the globe where British troops happen to be, so that all officers, being convinced that neither high birth nor great employments can shelter offences of such a nature, and seeing they are subject to censures worse than death to a man who has any sense of honour, may avoid the fatal consequences arising from disobedience of orders.’

This seemed to mark the end of Sackville’s sinister career.  But when George II died and George III began to reign, with a very different set of men to help him, the bad general reappeared as an equally bad politician.  Haughty, cantankerous, and self-opinionated to the last degree, Germain, who had many perverse abilities fitting him for the meaner side of party politics, was appointed to the post for which he was least qualified just when Canada and the Thirteen Colonies most needed a master mind.  Worse still, he cherished a contemptible grudge against Carleton for having refused to turn out a good officer and put in a bad one who happened to be a pampered favourite.  At first, however, Carleton was allowed to do his best.  But in the summer of 1776 Germain restricted Carleton’s command to Canada and put Burgoyne, a junior officer, in command of the army destined to make the counterstroke.  The ship bearing this malicious order had to put back; so it was not till the middle of May 1777 that Carleton was disillusioned by its arrival as well as by a second and still more exasperating dispatch accusing him of neglect of duty for not having taken Ticonderoga in November and thus prevented Washington from capturing the Hessians at Trenton.  The physical impossibility of a winter siege, the three hundred miles of hostile country between Trenton and Ticonderoga, and the fact that the other leading British general, Howe, had thirty thousand troops in the Colonies, while Carleton had only ten thousand with which to hold Canada that year and act as ordered next year, all went for nothing when Germain found a chance to give a good stab in the back.

On May 20 Carleton wrote a pungent reply, pointing out the utter impossibility of following up his victory on Lake Champlain by carrying out Germain’s arm-chair plan of operations in the middle of winter.  ’I regard it as a particular blessing that your Lordship’s dispatch did not arrive in due time.’  As for the disaster at Trenton, he ‘begs to inform his Lordship’ that if Howe’s thirty thousand men had been properly used the Hessians could never have been taken, ’though all the rebels from Ticonderoga had reinforced Mr Washington’s army.’  Moreover, ’I never could imagine why, if troops so far south [as Howe’s] found it necessary to go into winter quarters, your Lordship could possibly expect troops so far north to continue their operations.’  A week later Carleton wrote again and sent in his resignation.  ’Finding that I can no longer be of use, under your Lordship’s administration ...  I flatter myself I shall obtain the king’s permission to return home this fall. ...  I shall embark with great satisfaction, still entertaining the ardent wish that, after my departure, the dignity of the Crown in this unfortunate Province may not appear beneath your Lordship’s concern.’