Description
A detailed map with stunning original colour in outline shows locations of battles and position of the troops in Flanders, Brabant, Namur and Hainaut in today’s Belgium, between 1690-1693.
This uncommon map without an imprint, stating only one Vaultier as an author, was published in a counterfeit edition of Atlas minor ad usum Serenissimi Burgundiae Ducis. Atlas françois à l’usage de Monseigneur le duc de Bourgogne: contenant les cartes et tables geographiques des empires, monarchies, royaumes,… issued anonymously by Pieter Mortier in Amsterdam around 1700. The atlas included 31 maps copied without a licence after Alexis Huber Jaillot and this map by Vaultier. Because of the other copies after Jaillot, this map is often misattributed to Jaillot too.
Also this map of the battles was copied without a licence, but this time not after Jaillot, but after separately issued map Les Campements des Armées du Roy dans les Pays-Bas depuis l’Année 1690 jusques en 1694, dédiée à Sa Majesté par le Sr. Vaultier et dressés sur ses mémoires par le Sr. Moullart (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8493324x/f1.item.zoom), made by Pierre Moullart-Sanson in 1694, after the instructions of Vaultier.
Not much is known about Vaultier (or sometimes called Vautier), not even his first name, except that he was a soldier in the French army. His most famous book Journal des marches, campemens, batailles, sieges et mouvemens des armees … was first published in 1794 and was reissued in many editions until the mid 18th century.
The Moulart-Sanson’s map was made to accompany Vaultier’s book.
In the first edition of his book Journal des marches, campemens, batailles, sieges et mouvemens des armees … Vaultier writes in the introduction:
Pour rendre plus intelligibles tous les Mouvemens qui font dans ce Journal, j’ai fait faire une Carte particulière des lieux de la Flandres , où se sont passèz les Mouvemens dont je parle.
Le Sieur Moullart Sanson Géographe du Roi l’a dressee exactement sur les Mémoires que je lui ai donnez. J’y ai fait marquer les Campemens de chaque année par des traits de couleurs différentes. On y a mis aussi les Camps que les Ennemis ont occupez proche de nos Armées; la Carte en donnera un entier éclaircissement.
(To reconstruct all the movements from this book in the most comprehensible way, I had made a special map of the part of Flanders, where the battles I am talking about happened. Mr. Moullard Sanson, the royal geographer, based it exactly on the memories I have presented him. On the map I have marked the battles, which happened every year, with different colours. I had also had marked the places the enemies took over in the vicinity of our armies. The map brought to it (the book) the whole clarification.)
According to the texts from different editions “Sieur Vautier” was serving in the army for many years. He was dead by 1739, when the privilege of the king already mentions the “beloved widow Vautier” (published in the 1740 edition of the Journal…).
