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Sieges of various cities in Flanders, with 25 folding engraved plates

[FUNCK, Jakob and Marc Guérard D'ILLENS].
Plans et journaux des sieges de la derniere guerre de Flandres.
Strasbourg and the Hague, Pierre Gosse junior, 1750. 4to. With 25 folding engraved maps with some hand-coloured details, and several, woodcut head- and tailpieces. Contemporary vellum. [8], 113, [1 blank] pp.
€ 1,250
First edition, Gosse issue (one of two simultaneously published issues), of a richly illustrated account of sieges of Flemish towns during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748). The two authors, Jakob Funck and Marc Guérard D'Illens, both captain in the French army, dedicated the book to the French minister of War, the Count of Argenson. The book is divided into 24 "journals", each describing the siege of a different town in Flanders in chronological order, starting at the siege of Menin in 1744 and ending with Maastricht in 1748. Each journal has its own folding plate, showing a ground plan of the besieged city and its fortifications with the "plan des attaques" highlighted in yellow. Included after the preliminaries is a table with a survey of the besieged towns. The map and plans are detailed and finely drawn, decorated with cherubs, monsters, etc. and some have additional artistic value, with maps with enlarged details rolled out on top of another map.The two issues of the first edition hardly differ from each other. Besides a different title-page, only the letterpress table in the preliminaries is reset. Not in Jähns, Jordan.
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Europe  >  Low Countries
Low countries
Maritime history