Add MS 64108-64109

'Plans de Places Estrangeres', an atlas of towns and fortresses outside France, prepared for François Michel Le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois, (b.1639, d.1691) as Minister of War to Louis XIV; circa 1684. French. The atlas contains 223 (out of an original 241) mostly double page watercoloured maps and plans with historiated cartouches and decorated scales. Most are dated, the dates ranging from 1658 to 1688 (most being from 1682-1683) with several representing the same places. Partially deleted numeration in red on some of the plans in both volumes suggests that they were reused from a smaller, single volume atlas on the same theme of circa 1682. Memoires on Luxemburg (Add. 64108, f. 235) and on Frankenthal (Add. 64109, f. 96), the latter with a plan (Add. 64109, f. 100), dated Feb. 1684 and Sept. 1688 respectively, were added to the atlas after binding. Individual maps often mention the engineer responsible and some are accompanied by detailed explanatory texts. The artist responsible for the frontispieces to the two volumes and for many of the historiated cartouches to the maps may be Pierre Bedeau. Bedeau signed the frontispieces to a very similar atlas, prepared for Louis XIV, which is now in the Bibliothèque du Génie, Vincennes. See Myriem Fonçin, 'L'Histoire d'une collection de cartes réunies pour Louis XIV', in Mélanges d'histoire du livre et des bibliothèques offerts a Monsieur Frantz Calot (Paris, 1960), pp. 119-126. Maps of Malta acquired by the British Library in 1985 (Add. 63590) were extracted, with several others, from the atlas at some time in the nineteenth century. For other maps, etc., by French military engineers, see particularly Add. 15349, 21117, 63585 and 64809. The eighteenth-century armorial bookplates of the Marquis de Dreux-Brézé in both volumes (design obliterated in vol. II) and the loose notes on Italian fortresses in vol. II, suggest that the atlas was retained in the secretary of state's office in Versailles until 1708, and then taken into retirement by Louvois's successor, Michel Chamillart, and eventually inherited by his son-in-law, the 1st Marquis de Dreux-Brézé. Purchased from Forum BV Antiquarian Booksellers, March 1987.

Paper. Two volumes. 390 x 290mm. Old press-mark, Da 33, on folio 1 of each volume. Contemporary bindings of red straight-grain morocco. Spines in 5 compartments, decoratively gilt, with title, number of volume, and fields of stars and lizards, the symbol of Louvois. Sides of boards have wide roll-stamped floral borders enlarged by dentelles, at each corner a gilt-stamped sun, inner dentelles, green silk lining. Bindings measure 400 x 300mm. Two gilt brass clasps on each volume. Modern slip cases.