King George III | Document signed, authorising peace negotiations with France, 30 October 1801

King George III.

Document signed (“George R”), appointing Charles, Marquess of Cornwallis, to negotiate peace with France

being a warrant ordering the Great Seal to be affixed to Cornwallis’s instructions to “treat and agree with the Minister or Ministers of the French Republick and with those of any other Powers who may be assembled at the Congress of Amiens”, 2 pages, countersigned by Lord Hawkesbury as Foreign Secretary, with a copy of the instructions, in Latin, altogether 6 pages, plus blanks, folio, St James’s Palace, 30 October 1801, stab-stitched with blue silk ribbon, papered seal, docketed, seal partially obscuring signature

DIPLOMATIC ORDERS TO NEGOTIATE THE TREATY OF AMIENS. The Treaty, which was signed on 25 March 1802, came after a decade of war. The treaty left France in a commanding position in Europe: Britain agreed to surrender most of her recent colonial gains but her isolation from European markets was ended. It was an uneasy peace that proved to be just an eighteen-month pause in nearly 25 years of European war.

Provenance:

Sotheby's, London, 13 December 1990, lot 334