Le Royaume de France, distingue suivant l’estendue de Toutes ses Provinces, et ses Acquisitions,..

Title

Le Royaume de France, distingue suivant l’estendue de Toutes ses Provinces, et ses Acquisitions,..

Description

Map showing the Kingdom of France with the English Channel, southern England, Belgium, Luxembourg, western Germany, northeastern Italy, and Switzerland. With a magnificent title cartouche featuring the French coat of arms held by two angels, a mile indicator cartouche, and a compass rose.

c. 1696

Artist

Jaillot/ Sanson (1632-1712)

Alexis Hubert Jaillot (1632–1712) was a prominent French cartographer and publisher. In 1665, he married into the Berey family of map publishers. After the death of his brother-in-law Nicolas II Berey in 1667, Jaillot bought the Berey map collection from his sister-in-law, acquiring a valuable stock without having ever created a map himself. Jaillot entered the map business at a favorable time—after Louis XIV’s early victories in the Reunions Wars in 1668, France’s territory expanded rapidly, creating high demand for maps showing French triumphs, new borders, and expansion plans. His collection included plates originally made by Pierre Duval, who resisted Jaillot’s reissues. At the height of this conflict, Jaillot gained the support of Guillaume and Adrien Sanson, sons of Nicolas Sanson, as mapmakers and partners, enabling him to publish new maps under the prestigious Sanson name. His first atlas, Atlas Nouveau (1681), was a commercial success, leading to widespread piracy by other publishers.

Historical Description

It is estimated that today's France was settled about 48,000 years ago. Important rock paintings from the Paleolithic period have been preserved in the Lascaux cave From 600 BC Chr. Phoenician and Greek traders founded bases on the Mediterranean coast, while Celts settled from the northwest the country that was later called by the Romans as Gaul. The French Middle Ages were marked by the rise of kingship in the constant struggle against the independence of the nobility and the secular violence of the monasteries and religious orders. Starting from today's Île-de-France, the Capetinians enforced the idea of a unitary state, which was underpinned by participation in various crusades. The Normans invaded Normandy repeatedly, hence its name; in 1066 they conquered England. A long series of armed conflicts with England began under Louis VII after Ludwig's divorced wife Eleonore von Poitou and Aquitaine married Heinrich Plantagenet in 1152 and thus about half of France's territory fell to England. Philip II August, together with the Hohenstaufen family, largely displaced England from France until 1299; the English king Henry III Ludwig IX. recognize as suzerain. From 1226 France became an inheritance monarchy; in 1250 Ludwig IX was one of the most powerful rulers in the West. In the 17th and 18th centuries, France held European leadership and supremacy. The political and cultural charisma was significant: The court of Louis XIV became the model for absolutist states throughout Europe and the French Revolution with the declaration of human and civil rights, together with occupations by Napoleon Bonaparte, started in many countries the time and again Setbacks interrupted development towards democracy.