Nouvel atlas militaire ou Cartes très-détaillées du Duché de Brabant & partie de la Hollande, pour l'intelligence de la guerre present dans les Pays-Bas.

Folio: title-15 pls (very sl. us.).

Sewn in cover of marbled paper (sl. used, spine strengthened). Nice copy.

Very rare contemporary assembling of a military atlas published for officers toward the end of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and attributed to Johannes Covens and Cornelis Mortier. The bottom half of the title page consists of the 1st plate of the anonymous "Nouveau theatre de la guerre aux Pays-Bas, ou cartes très détaillées du Duché de Brabant et partie de la Hollande dressées d'après les meilleures du pays et en particulier celle d'Hollande en 20 feuilles par Covens et Mortier" that was in fact a mutual undertaking by 11 book dealers in Lille, Ghent, Brussels, Antwerp, Liège, Köln, Berlin, Nurenberg, Strasbourg and Paris. This conveniently portable theatre-of-war atlas, undated and based on the much earlier maps of Eugène Henri Fricx (1644-1730), revised and published by his nephew George Fricx in Brussels, could be assembled in different forms: to form a large wall map, to bind them in 4to, etc. or, as in our copy, to form an atlas of 15 maps, each c. 51 x 68 cm. Typically for this assembling is the repeated use of map leaves, meant to create larger maps on which the positions of an entire army could be represented. According to the map catalogue of Pierre Gosse Junior (La nouvelle bigarure, The Hague), the usual "Nouveau theatre de la guerre", as well as our assembling entitled the "Nouvel atlas militaire", were issued by Guillaume Dheulland in Paris in 1747. Ref. Koeman C&M 19 (4 copies, but not in this format). - BNF Tolbiac GE DD-2063. - La nouvelle bigarure 15 (1754), 165. - Catalogue des livres de la bibliotheque du duc d'Aumont 1875.