Add MS 65179 A-D

French. The letter to Gen. Berthier, Napoleon's Minister of War, who had quarters and a command-post in Boulogne during the period when the invasion of England was being planned (see Alain Lottin (ed.), Histoire de Boulogne-sur-Mer, Lille, 1983, p. 184), suggests that the letter and maps were part of Berthier's papers used in preparing the defence of Boulogne against a possible English attack late in 1805. For further details of Boulogne during the time of the planned invasion, see Lottin, op. cit., especially the detailed printed map on p. 189. For 16th-cent. maps of the area, see Cotton Augustus I. i. 53; II. ii. 8, 68, 73, 75, and for other maps of circa 1805, Add. 31339, a volume of plans and views relating to Napoleon's preparations for the invasion of England, particularly Add. 31339 (2), another map, on a larger scale, of the coast line around Boulogne. Purchased from Roger Mason, June 1988.