Beschreibung:

George III Document signed ("George R"), signed at the head, to Lord Eldon as Lord Chancellor, authorising an instrument granting "our Full Power to Our Right Trusty and Welbeloved Counsellor Sir Arthur Paget as Our Ambassador Extraordinary ... to Our Good Friend the Grand Signor", signed at the foot by George Canning as Foreign Secretary, 2 pages, folio, papered seal, with a copy of the text of the commission attached, altogether 7 pages, plus blanks, docketed, stab-stitched with purple silk ribbon, 16 May 1807 THE APPOINTMENT OF A TRUSTED DIPLOMAT TO THE OTTOMAN COURT. It was a key appointment as the previous year the Ottomans had made an alliance with France and the French Ambassador, Count Sebastiani, was a trusted figure at the Sublime Porte. Britain had tried to prise the Ottoman Empire away from the French alliance by threatening Constantinople with warships and occupying Alexandria, and now appointed a new ambassador to counter Sebastiani. Arthur Paget (1771-1840) was not yet forty but had remarkable experience: he had been Ambassador in Naples and Vienna, had been instrumental in establishing the Third Coalition, and watched it collapse at the Battle of Austerlitz in December 1805. His mission to Constantinople was, however, a failure, and not even his exposure of the secret clauses in the Franco-Russian Treaty of Tilsit that undermined French support for Turkey succeeded in undermining the alliance. He was recalled in 1809.