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Rare plan of Namur, engraved by order of the King of France, shortly after the French took Namur in 1692
Fine early map of the fortifications of Namur, including 2 keys, one naming the streets and gates to the town and the other showing important military and non-military structures.
The French captured the city of Namur in the first siege in 1692, under the command of the Duc de Luxembourg, with King Louis XIV of France present. Namur's defensive works had been designed by Menno van Coehoorn, who oversaw the citadel's defence during the first siege. His French counterpart, Vauban improved the defensive works significantly after the city was taken. Given its strategic position at the confluence of the Sambre and Meuse rivers, the Citadel of Namur became the most strategically important fortress in the Spanish Netherlands..
The map appears as item No. 15 (page 356) of Annales de la Societe Archeologique de Namur (1881).
The last example we could locate in a catalog was offered by Frederick Muller in his 1903 Catalogue Topographie de l'Europe: Catalogue à prix marqués de cartes anciennes . . . (item 2189).
Alexis-Hubert Jaillot (ca. 1632-1712) was one of the most important French cartographers of the seventeenth century. Jaillot traveled to Paris with his brother, Simon, in 1657, hoping to take advantage of Louis XIV's call to the artists and scientists of France to settle and work in Paris. Originally a sculptor, he married the daughter of Nicholas Berey, Jeanne Berey, in 1664, and went into partnership with Nicholas Sanson's sons. Beginning in 1669, he re-engraved and often enlarged many of Sanson's maps, filling in the gap left by the destruction of the Blaeu's printing establishment in 1672.