Overtures to a separate peace between Britain and France - photo 1
Overtures to a separate peace between Britain and France - photo 2

Overtures to a separate peace between Britain and France

Starting price
$ 25 000
Auction dateClassic
17.01.2024 11:00UTC -04:00
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CHRISTIE'S
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USA, New York
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ID 1119160
Lot 113 | Overtures to a separate peace between Britain and France
Overtures to a separate peace between Britain and France

Jacques Necker, 1 December 1780

NECKER, Jacques (1732-1804). Letter signed ('Necker') as Director-General of the Royal Treasury to Frederick, Lord North [later 2nd Earl of Guilford], Paris, 1 December 1780.



In French. Four pages, bifolium, 314 x 204mm. with autograph postscript. (Some light soiling, espeically to final page, two minor pinholes).



Jacques Necker's remarkable secret letter to Lord North proposing to negotiate a separate peace between Great Britain and France in the American Revolutionary War. Responding to overtures by the English banker Thomas Walpole, Necker expresses his love for peace ("Vous desirés la paix, je la desire aussi") and proposes that he and North should, if not write a peace treaty — a task more suited to their political emissaries — at least lay the groundwork ("Nous ne leur ravirions pas les honneurs d'un traité, mais nous pourrions preparer les premières voyes, ou connoitre, du moins, si le tems est venu"); the key to the treaty is to be "une paix honnorable," on the basis of the belligerent parties each retaining their existing possessions; the negotiations must however remain secret, as any open negotiation would damage French credit. An autograph postscript notes that the letter had been sent via an English-bound merchant who knew nothing of its contents, and in an envelope addressed for the sake of discretion to Lady North.



Jacques Necker, in the role as Royal Treasurer since October 1778, made repeated attempts in the course of 1780 to achieve a negotiated settlement of the American Revolutionary War. This reflected above all the increasingly desperate state to which the war effort had reduced the French national finances, though here, he takes great pains to exaggerate his country's financial strength, intimating that Louis XVI was able to borrow with lower interest rates and had numerous additional resources to draw upon should the need arise.



Necker's secret letter reached Lord North on 15 December, who forwarded it to George III on the 17th, commenting 'It will be rather difficult to draw a proper answer'; the King however simply dismissed it as a sign of French weakness, "It shews France is certainly in greater difficulties than we imagined" (J. Fortescue. Correspondence of King George III, 1928, vol.V, pp.162-3). Had George III been more receptive, there is no doubt that a separate Anglo-French peace at the end of 1780 would have been a severe blow to American hopes, and seems likely at the very least to have put back independence for many years. As it was, French land and naval forces continued to play a key role in the conduct of the war up until the crushing victory at Yorktown in the following October. Necker's letter was evidently returned to Lord North by the King, and was published by Lord Mahon (History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, 1713-1783, 1858, vol.7, appendix, pp.xiii-xv) from among the North Papers (though with a number of significant variations and omissions).

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