France & Corsica Map 1809 Atlas Print - Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Bastia

John Pinkerton directed the compilation of this map of France for his Modern Atlas, which L. Hebert drew and Samuel John Neele engraved at 352 Strand in London, and which Cadell and Davies and Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown published on 1 March 1809. The atlas, completed in sixty maps with a title page of 1815, is regarded as one of the best English atlases of its period, comparable to Thomson's General Atlas of 1817. This sheet is a full hand-colored engraving of 70 by 52 centimeters at 1:2,250,000, with relief by hachures and each department distinctly colored, which gives it a bold, decorative look beside smaller atlas maps of the same country. It shows France in the spring of 1809, when Napoleon governed a Europe in arms and Britain, where the map was published, was his chief opponent.

France is divided into its departments, the administrative units that the Revolution created in 1790, each colored to stand apart from its neighbors. Paris sits on the Seine at the center of the road system, while Bordeaux, the great wine port on the Garonne, and Toulouse, the old capital of Languedoc, give the south its anchors. Marseille faces the Mediterranean, and Lyon dominates the Rhône valley. An inset places the Island of Corsica beside the mainland, a reminder that France had held it since 1768 and that Napoleon had been born at Ajaccio the following year. Hachures convey the Massif Central, the Alps and the Pyrenees as shaded masses of high ground.

A family with British and French branches, a collector of English atlases of the Napoleonic era, or a historian of the Peninsular War will find a handsome gift here, perhaps for an anniversary or a retirement. TheMapVault's Lapie map, also dated 1809, was drawn and engraved in Paris and shows the whole empire, while this Pinkerton sheet is the London view of France alone, on a larger sheet with fuller coloring. Teesdale's 1831 map is smaller and lighter, with outline color only. Like every print in the collection, it ships unframed and is available in a full range of sizes, from a compact desk piece to a large-format statement print.