MEYNIER (Honorat de). Lot n° 221

Les Nouvelles inventions de fortifier les places : contre la puissance d'assaillir par traverses, galleries, mines, canons, & autres machines de guerre. Presented to the King (...). The whole represented by figures engraved in intaglio by Crispin de Pas le Jeune. Paris, Nicolas Rousset, Julien Jacquin, 1626, in-folio, [4] ff. n. ch. (title, to the reader, dedication, with a portrait of the author), one f. n. ch. (army housing), with 21 figs. on 16 off-text plates (one double-page), brown pebbled basane, spine ribbed (18th c. binding). Spine slightly rubbed with small lacks at the headpieces. First few pages awkwardly rebound and repaired Apparently the only French edition of this treatise by the Provençal Honorat de Meynier (1570-1638), a military engineer who retired in 1608: Jordan reports an issue of 1625, but it is not given. The text is short, but very dense, and the plates, without appearing to be very spectacular, provide good information on the techniques in use at the end of the 16th century. Jordan, 2516. Cockle, 835 (for the German translation of 1642). Bound at the end: Recueil de plusieurs desseings de fortifications et de machines, tant pour tracer toutes sortes de forteresses, avec leurs parties tant extérieures qu'intérieures : Ensemble la façon de les attaquer & deffendre, comme aussi de quelques machines servant à icelles. By the S. B., ordinary engineer of the King. Paris, Melchior Tavernier, 1631, [2] ff. n. ch. (title, table), 4 large double-page plates (chiifré 1-4) and 15 fig. on 8 plates. A rare first edition of this collection, which was reprinted in 1639, in a more developed version. No copy is listed in the CCF, unlike the British Library (one copy). Marini, p. 87 & Jordan, 3066, report only the 1639 reprint. Les gens de guerre à l'âge baroque