I have a remote Git repository, and I need to roll back the last n
commits into cold oblivion.
elmarco is correct... his suggestion is the best for shared/public repositories (or, at least public branches). If it wasn't shared (or you're willing to disrupt others) you can also push a particular ref:
git push origin old_master:master
Or, if there's a particular commit SHA1 (say 1e4f99e in abbreviated form) you'd like to move back to:
git push origin 1e4f99e:master