The French coasts XVIIth century

• Italian quarto (4 x 26,5 cm). Full soft vellum binding from the period, handwritten title, 39 ff. - 2 pp. & 14 plates including 32 with engraved titles, a folded general map (restoration without missing) and 2 particular maps (a tiny restoration). Text in two columns (Latin and French opposite). Browned margins. Scattered marginal moisture. Ex-libris Prosper Falgairolle. Good copy.

One of two editions published the same year. The 29 maps were intended to facilitate coastal defense at the height of the Thirty Years' War. The first part traces the Atlantic coast from Calais to San Sebastian, the second the Mediterranean coast from the Spanish border to Villefranche. In the 1630s, Christophe Tassin, ordinary commissioner of wars and geographer to the king, transferred military sources to civil cartography, which he renewed, while general maps are still marked by the work of La Guillotière.