Sign In

- Or use -
Forgot Password Create Account
Description

Striking Atlas from the Library of the Marshall Soult, Duc de Dalmatie, and Baron Reille, Including Charts of Jeddah, Saigon, and Manila

A fine, rare collection of charts from the supplement to the Neptune Oriental, including detailed renderings of the shores of the Middle East and South East Asia.

The volume bears the bookplate of the Baron Reille and was likely also owned by Reille’s grandfather-in-law, and one of Napoleon’s favored generals, Nicolas-Jean de Dieu Soult, Duc de Dalmatie. Thus, the atlas is associated with two important nineteenth-century French politicians and collectors.

The volume is comprised of the following charts:

  • Carte generale de la Mer Rouge avec un plan du Port de Suez
  • Arabie, avec plan de Giddah
  • Arabie, route de la Fregate Venus, rade de Moka
  • Carte du Golfe de Suez
  • Carte des cotes de Guzerat, de Cancan et de Canara
  • Carte de la partie Meridionale de la presqueile de L´Inde qui comprend l´Ile de Ceylan avec la Cote de Coromandel et de la Cote de Malabar
  • Plan d'une partie des cours de la Riviere de Saigon
  • Cote de la Cochinchine depuis le Cap Bonhornen
  • Three maps of the Baye de Saigon
  • Plan de la Baye de Manille et ses environs verifie sur la Fregate La Meduse en 1789
  • Carte d´une partie de la Mer de Chine… d´apres les observations du Gen Rosily

Le Neptune Oriental

This atlas contains charts from the supplement to the Neptune Oriental, Mannevillette’s famous atlas showing the sailing route to Asia. The work was immensely influential in its time; indeed, after the publication of the first edition in 1745, many copies were destroyed by the French Admiralty, who thought the detailed coverage was too likely to aid enemy ships.

Mannevillette drew on his decades of experience at sea to correct and make improved charts of the waters around the Cape of Good Hope, the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, in the India Ocean and into the South China Sea. The atlas, with 22 charts, was first released in 1745. It improved considerably on the work of John Thornton and the van Keulens, among others.

Mannevillette spent the next thirty years on a second edition of the atlas, often with the help of Britain’s most knowledgeable hydrographer of the East Indies, Alexander Dalrymple. It was finally published in 1775 with 41 additional charts and Mannevillette’s Instructions sur la navigation de France aux Indes. An additional supplement was added in 1781 and again in 1797.  The charts were also individually updated, with many having printed paste-overs to correct portions of their coverage. While the charts are numbered, customers could also design their own volumes, which is why practically none of the surviving atlases are exactly alike.

François Étienne de Rosily-Mesros

Several of the charts in this volume reference a “Rosili, Vice Amiral.” This is François Étienne de Rosily-Mesros. The son of a naval officer, he entered the same profession at age fourteen, serving on Atlantic voyages as a garde de la marine. By 1772, he was an ensign and assigned to Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Trémarec’s expedition to find Terra Australis Incognita. While they did not locate the southern continent, they did find and name the Kerguelen Islands in the Indian Ocean.

His first command came in 1777 and he was promoted to lieutenant the next year. In the same year, he was part of a skirmish between French and English ships, resulting in his capture. He remained in England for twenty months, only gaining release in February 1780. Rosily shuffled between European and Indian Ocean waters. As captain, in 1784, Rosily took on the hydrographic work that would define the rest of his career. In the Vénus, Rosily surveyed coasts of Africa, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and India. By 1790, he was named commander of the French naval division in India.

With the coming of the Revolution, Rosily was promoted rear admiral and given command of the navy at Rochefort. In 1795, he became director and inspector general of the Dépôt de la Marine. A year later he was promoted to vice admiral. As one of the highest-ranked officers in the fleet, Napoleon finally called on him in 1805, when Rosily was supposed to replace Admiral Villeneuve. Villeneuve instead sailed out of Cadiz, ultimately losing the famed Battle of Trafalgar. Now in command of the shattered remains of the French fleet, Rosily was blockaded in Cadiz. By 1808, he was surrounded by land and sea; Rosily had to surrender and return to France and the dépôt.

In his later years, Rosily was named a Count of the Empire and a member of the nation’s Bureau of Longitude. He also served as the President of the Council of Naval Constructions. In addition to his official charts, he was a prolific author and a free associate of the Académie des sciences. He died in 1832.

Provenance: The Duc de Dalmatie and the Baron Reille

While all surviving charts from the Neptune Oriental are rare, this volume has a special provenance. It was originally in the library of the Baron Reille. Baron René Charles Reille-Soult-Dalmatie (1835-1898) was a prominent nineteenth-century French soldier, entrepreneur, politician, and collector of books and maps.

Reille inherited much of his collection from his wife’s grandfather, the legendary Nicolas-Jean de Dieu Soult (1769-1851) and it is likely this volume initially belonged to him. Soult enlisted in the army as a teenager and was a sergeant when the French Revolution broke out. He quickly rose up the ranks to brigadier general by 1794, division general in 1800, and was noted for his bravery and tactical skill in battle.

General Consul Napoleon appreciated Soult’s skills and named him commander of the southern portion of the Kingdom of Naples from 1800 to 1802. The newly self-crowned Emperor named him one of the first Marshals of the Empire in 1804. This only spurred Soult’s successes, which included victories at Ulm, Austerlitz, and Jena in 1805-6. Napoleon then awarded him the title of Duc de Dalmatie and placed him in command of the French armies fighting in the Peninsular War.

Soult remained involved on the Iberian Peninsula until Napoleon abdicated in 1814. While Soult nominally supported the royalists, and served as the Minister of War, during Napoleon’s brief exile on Elba, he quickly joined his former commander-in-chief during the Hundred Days. Indeed, Soult was Napoleon’s chief-of-staff at Waterloo. This led to Soult being exiled in Germany, but he was recalled in 1819.

In the government of King Louis-Philippe, Soult was newly made a Marshal of France. He served as Minister of War and President of the Council, a position analogous to that of Prime Minister of France. In these capacities, he created the French Foreign Legion in 1831 and oversaw the conquest of Algeria during the 1840s. Due to his loyalty, Soult was named a Marshal General of France, one of only six officers to ever hold that title. However, when Louis-Philippe in turn lost power, Soult declared himself a republican. He wrote of his extraordinary life in a three-volume memoir published in 1854.

Thanks to his travels, Soult amassed a large collection of art and printed materials, with an especial interest in cartography and travel. He is accused of looting in Andalusia, where he acquired many paintings and other items during the Peninsular War. These materials were stored at his castle in Saint-Amans-la-Bastide, which was renamed Saint-Amans-Soult in his honor.

Soult was married for over fifty years and had a son, Napoleon, and two daughters, Hortense and Caroline. Napoleon in turn has a daughter, Geneviève, who would marry the next prominent owner of Soult’s collection, René Reille.

The son and grandson of marshals of France, it was no surprise that young René enrolled in the military academy at Saint-Cyr. As a second lieutenant, he was assigned to the Staff College, where he quickly was promoted lieutenant (1856) and then captain (1858). He served in the Second Italian War of Independence and then transferred to the Ministry of War. He retired from the army in 1869, but he was again in command of local forces in Tarn during the Franco-Prussian War a year later.

As a second career, Reille entered politics, serving as a representative in various capacities for Tarn and, later, Castres. He was also an industrialist involved mainly in mining and iron working, which increased the family fortune considerably.

Reille inherited and expanded his grandfather-in-law’s library, especially its geographic holdings. The Baron Reille had a lifelong interest in the subject; for example, he was named a Deputy in the General Commission of the International Geographical Conference in 1875.

The collection continued in the Reille family until the mid-twentieth century. The Soult-Reille collection was sold at auction on February 20, 1978.

This item likely entered the collection under Soult and was then held by Reille, whose bookplate it bears.

Condition Description
12 engraved maps, double-page or folding. 1 leaf, [maps], 2 leaves.

Folio. Contemporary calf, boards with gilt interlacing fillet borders; spine flat, with elegant tooling and red morocco lettering piece. (Light rubbing to boards and foot of spine.)
Reference
"Vente 20 Février 1978: Bibliothèque du Maréchal Soult, Duc de Dalmate," (DROUOT RIVE GAUCHE - PARIS, 1978). KAP
Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Denis d'Après de Mannevillette Biography

Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Denis d’Après de Mannevillette (1707-1780) was a French sailor and hydrographer celebrated for his excellently-rendered charts. Mannevillette was born into a maritime family and he joined his father on a French East India Company voyage to India aged only twelve. A clever boy, he returned to France to study navigation, chartmaking, and mathematics with Joseph-Nicolas De L’Isle. At nineteen, he was back at sea, working his way up the ranks of the French East India Company’s merchant fleet.

In his work with the company—he was eventually promoted captain—Mannevillette sailed to the Indian Ocean many times. En route, he was constantly gathering and correcting hydrographic knowledge. He was also skilled at using the latest navigational instruments, like the octant and later the sextant, which allowed him to make his charts especially accurate for their time. He compiled his work into his most significant publication, Le Neptune Oriental, which was commissioned by the French East India Company and first published in 1745. It was released in an expanded second edition in 1775, with posthumous expansions in 1781 and 1797.

The Neptune earned Mannevillette many accolades. The company made him Director of Charts at Lorient in 1762. In 1767, King Louis XV gave him the Order of St. Michael and named him an associate of the Royal Marine Academy.