The Reveries of the Marshal of Saxony

• 2 volumes in-4 bound in full contemporary fawn calfskin, the boards decorated with a triple gilt frame, ribbed spine decorated with floral motifs, title and volume number labels, double gilt fillet on the cuts, red edges – leveled caps, beginning of split at the tail of the first cover of the TI, skinned jaws, friction on the covers, pierced corners – T. 1: [5 ff.], CXXXIV pp., 159 pp.; Volume 2: [2 ff.], 259 pp. Illustrated work of 84 out-of-text plates (61 fold-outs), drawn by Pierre Patte after the author and engraved on copper by Moitte, Tardieu and Patte himself, finely colored (except 4), representing military costumes and battle plans. (ref. 104163)

Second and best edition of the great military treatise of Marshal de Saxe, the first published by Abbot Pérau on the original manuscript of 1740. The first edition, published a year earlier in The Hague, by Zacharie Pazzi de Bonneville, is generally held for less success. Composed over thirteen nights, under the influence of fever, the work theorizes the recruitment, maintenance and training of troops, then the association of infantry and cavalry, fortification and entrenchment, and finally the qualities necessary for generals; it is followed by curious Reflections on the propagation of the human species. An exceptionally fresh copy whose 24 plates representing soldiers have been treated in beautiful pastel shades.