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Description

Exceedingly rare Revolutionary War battle plan illustrating the Siege of Boston and the Battle of Bunker Hill.

The map shows Boston at the center, with 3 ships denoting the British Naval presence. The roads to Boston are delineated, extending to Lyn(n), Woborn, Lexington, Concord, Sudbury, Natick, 'Scherburn' (Sherborn) and Hingham. The English positions are identified by the mark of 'A', while the American fortifications and positions are marked with a 'B'.

The map is quite focused in its presentation. We have compared it to several famous early English plans, but have not been able to identify a direct source for the information. We note that in 1989, Graham Arader offered for sale German edition of the Beaurain map, which he identified as the "only German map of Boston during the Revolutionary period ." ( Carte von dem Hafen und der Stad Boston mit den Umliegenden Gegenden und der den Lagern sowohl der Americaner als auch der Englander von dem Cheval de Beaurin nach dem Pariser Orignal von 1776, published Leipzig, 1776). The present map is thus one of only two contemporary German maps of the Boston Theater, and was likely printed before the Leipzig Beaurain. Indeed, it seems to have been rushed into production as soon as news of Bunker Hill arrived in Germany, whereas the other map was a grand, time-consuming production adapted from an earlier French work.

The present map embraces precisely the geographical perspective and scope as J. De Costa's A Plan of the Town and Harbour of Boston (1775), celebrated as the first printed map of the American Revolution. However, the details of the geography are altogether different, and while this map is attractively engraved and planimetrically correct in a basic sense, the delineation of the shorelines and estuaries is quite crude. This suggests that the map was likely based on a sketch of the Boston Theater taken by a participant in the events, and which found its way to Germany, where it was picked up by a publisher.

The map captures action that surrounded the Siege of Boston, as it appeared in the days following the Battle of Bunker Hill. The map prominently features the towns of Lexington and Concord and the roads leading towards Boston. This was where the American Revolution began in earnest, when the 'Shot heard around the World' was fired on April 19, 1775. Since that time, the Americans had effectively surrounded the British forces that were barricaded within the city of Boston, which lay precariously on a small peninsula.

On June 17, 1775, the British attacked the American positions on the heights across the Charles River at Breed's Hill, an altercation that had erroneously been known as the Battle of Bunker Hill. While the British won a bloody pyrrhic victory, dislodging the Americans from the heights, it failed to lift the siege. For the next nine months, the British remained surrounded, with only occasional provisions arriving by ship. The British abandoned Boston on March 17, 1776.

The present map is an early testament to the great level of interest in the American Revolution experienced in Germany. While regiments of German troops (the so-called 'Hessians') would not land in America until August 1776, it must be remembered that George III was both the British monarch and the Prince Elector of Hanover, such that his German domains were automatically at war with any of Britain's antagonists. In Hanover, Hesse, Hanau, Kassel, and various other areas, the populous was well aware that their troops would soon be pressed into service across the Atlantic. There was an imperative amongst German printers to gain interesting intelligence about the war in what was a distant and largely mysterious land in order to satiate the public's curiosity.

The present map appeared in an exceedingly rare almanac, Frankfurter Mess-Relation: Das ist, halbjährliche Erzehlungen der neuesten Staats- und Welt-Geschichten (Frankfurt, 1776). Editions of the Frankfurter Mess-Relation were printed every half-year from 1750 to 1802. The map was part of the almanac's ongoing commitment to cover the American Revolution, as in the legend below the map appears an inscription that translates as follows: "Should the war widen to the North or South, this map will be complemented by others."

The map is very rare, and is not listed in Krieger & Cobb's Mapping Boston or Boston Engineering Dept., "List of Maps of Boston." Moreover, we are not aware of any examples of the relevant 1776 edition of the Frankfurter Mess-Relation appearing at auction or in dealers' catalogs during the last century. This is the second example of the map we have handled, the first of which was acquired by the Boston Public Library in 2012.