[AUTOGRAPH LETTER, SIGNED, FROM KING GEORGE III TO BRITISH SECRETARY OF STATE LORD HAWKESBURY, JUST SIX DAYS BEFORE THE OUTBREAK OF THE NAPOLEONIC WARS, WARNING THAT "WAR SEEMS NOW SO CERTAIN" WITH FRANCE AND TASKING HIM TO CREATE A "MANIFESTO" BLAMING FRANCE'S ACTIONS "SINCE THE CONCLUSION OF THE PEACE AS THE CAUSE OF THE STEPS WE HAVE BEEN OBLIGED TO TAKE"]

Windsor, May 12, 1803.. [1]p., on an 8¾ x 6¾-inch sheet. Left margin reinforced with thicker paper, old folds. Mostly minor losses along left margin, just touching first letters of several words. Very good. A royal letter of profound import written entirely in the hand of King George III, and signed "George R." Here the British King writes hastily to Lord Hawkesbury, his Secretary of State, outlining the lack of recent communications from his emissaries in Paris who were conducting peacetime negotiations with Napoleon after the failure of the Treaty of Amiens the year before. King George III mentions receiving dispatches from Lord Whitworth, who was serving as the King's ambassador to France at the time; interestingly, it was Whitworth to whom Napoleon threatened war if Great Britain did not evacuate Malta just a few months earlier, in February 1803. Whitworth himself evacuated France the day after the present letter was written, in full knowledge that peace negotiations were over. The King also relates the failure of French General Jacques Lauriston to arrive in London, presumably for last-minute peace talks to prevent conflict. The King states that Lauriston's activities were likely intended to buy time for French negotiators.

King George III then writes portentously, beginning the second and final paragraph: "War seems now so certain that Lord Hawkesbury cannot too soon form the negotiations between this country and France into a Manifesto and state the conduct of the latter fully since the conclusion of the Peace as the cause of the steps we have been obliged to take...." In other words, the King is ordering his secretary of state, Lord Hawkesbury, to state Great Britain's case for war with France. This is very likely the first admission by the King himself of the reality of impending war with France. Six days after the present letter was written, Great Britain declared war on France, sparking the long series of armed conflicts known as the Napoleonic Wars, which would culminate a dozen years later at the Battle of Waterloo.

Important letters signed by King George III are rarely offered in the market. Rarer still are letters composed entirely in his hand and signed by him, as in the present example. Cheffin's Auctions in England sold a follow-up to the present letter (also to Lord Hawkesbury and dated two days later, on May 14) for £11,430 in January 2019. That letter was bought for £55 in 1966. By comparison, the present, earlier letter was bought by H. Richard Dietrich for $92 at Parke Bernet's Fitzgerald sale, on November 6, 1963. It has remained part of the Dietrich American Foundation collection since then.

A momentous political and diplomatic communication from the King of England to his secretary of state, resigned to the fact that war with Napoleon is at hand.