French Empire Map 1809 Napoleonic Atlas Print - Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Brussels

Pierre Lapie, who with Poirson drew the maps for Conrad Malte-Brun's Précis de la géographie universelle, made this map of the French Empire in 1809 for the atlas that François Buisson published in Paris, with a title page dated 1810. Jean-Baptiste Tardieu engraved the sheet at his address in the rue Saint-Jacques and Giraldon lettered it, so the credits read like a roll call of the Paris map craftsmen of the Napoleonic years. The result is a hand-colored copper engraving of 22 by 29 centimeters, with borders tinted in yellow, blue, green and red, hachured relief and a decorative cartouche that give it the polish of a prestige item rather than a school map. It shows the empire as it stood in 1809, when Napoleon had been emperor for five years and his authority reached across much of western Europe.

The map is oriented on Paris, which serves as the prime meridian, a reminder that France measured longitude from its own capital long before Greenwich became the world standard. The empire's neighbors appear around it, the regions of present-day Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and western Germany, with the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea labeled on its coasts. Inside France the departments created in 1790 had replaced the old provinces, and the hand-applied color marks their frontiers and those of adjoining states. Great rivers such as the Seine, the Loire, the Rhône and the Garonne were the arteries of the country's trade and give the sheet its natural lines. Linear scales in lieues and milles show how a reader of 1809 measured distance, and the title cartouche sits at the upper right.

A Napoleonic history enthusiast, a Parisian family, or a collector of French cartographic craft will find a distinctive gift here, perhaps for a wedding or a milestone birthday. TheMapVault's Pinkerton map of France, also dated 1809, is a London view of the country alone with a Corsica inset and every department in color, while Teesdale's 1831 map shows France after the empire had fallen; this Lapie sheet is the French one, made in Paris and reaching beyond France to the whole empire. It is also the only map in the group lettered and engraved by named Paris craftsmen. 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.