French Empire Map 1812 Napoleonic Historical Print - Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Brussels

Auguste Michelot and Achille Meissas drew this Empire Français en 1812 for their Petit atlas de géographie du moyen âge et des principales époques des temps modernes, a ten-map school atlas adopted by the university and published in Paris by L. Hachette in 1842, with the map itself dated 1841. Hippolyte Bonvalet engraved it on steel and P. Rousset lettered it, and the result is a double-page engraving colored by division, with relief in hachures, drawn at 1:7,000,000 and marked Atlas Complet No. 52 at upper right. It shows the empire in 1812, when Napoleon ruled 130 departments and stood on the eve of the Russian campaign, but it was made a generation later, soon after his remains returned to Paris in 1840.

The map covers France with much of Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, all drawn as French territory or French-controlled ground, and it marks the major cities, rivers and mountain ranges. Rome had been declared the empire's second city in 1810, and in 1811 Napoleon's infant son was named King of Rome. Amsterdam, annexed in 1810, was ranked the third city of the empire, and Hamburg was taken in the same year. Hachures draw the Alps as a barrier at the empire's southeastern edge, and the Rhine ran through lands that had been French for years. The sheet therefore records an empire at the very peak of its extent, within months of the retreat from Moscow.

A reader of Napoleonic history, a family from Rome, Amsterdam or Hamburg, or a collector of French school atlases will find a thoughtful gift here. TheMapVault's Lapie map of 1809 shows the French Empire as it stood in that year, drawn in Paris on copper with decorative tinted borders, while this Meissas and Michelot sheet is a later historical map made for pupils and engraved on steel, looking back on the empire at its greatest reach in 1812. 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.