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History of the siege of the castle of Namur

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Anonyme [Jean Donneau de Visé] – Chez Thomas Amaulry, rue Mercière au Mercure Galan

Full marbled calf, spine with 5 ribs, decorated on the boxes and with the title, red marbled edges, 152 x 91, 263p. 1692, first edition in this format, published the same year as the first edition in Paris, and anonymously like that one. Vignette on the title. With the legend of the plan p.257, but missing plan. Includes: Epistle to Monseigneur the Count of Toulouse, Admiral of France [Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, son of Louis XIV], signed Donneau de Visé, 12p. Then Notice, 8p. [in which the author states that "one has never made a more exact account and more filled with curious circumstances unless it was written by the generals themselves". The author therefore seems to assert that this edition is different from the others published the same year. He announces 5 descriptions: attack of the heights; attack of the redoubt of the hermitage or of the quarries; attack on Fort Guillaume (including the capitulation and its articles/responses; attack on the two covered paths of the old horned work; and that of the accommodation made in this same work. We can still find the 15 articles of the capitulation of the Chateau]. Clean interior, with scattered foxing. Bibliographic reference in pencil identifying the author on the upper inside cover and on the endpaper the affiliation of the work to the Mercure Galant. Rubbed corners and fields, blunt corners. Rubbed covers with scuffs. Rubbed spine with scuffs on the ribs and headpiece, missing tail. Very brief opening of the upper joint at the foot, and lower joint at the head. This siege is the last witnessed by Louis XIV "This is one of the episodes of the so-called war of the League of Augsburg or "nine years", which saw from 1689 a good part of the European countries fighting against the hegemonic policy of Louis XIV. The king wants strike hard at the heart of Spanish Flanders by seizing the place of Namur, at the confluence of the Sambre and the Meuse, the lock of land and river communications in the Netherlands. The siege took place from May 25 to June 29, 1692, combining the actions of the army commanded by the king (76,000 men) and those of Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707), general commissioner for fortifications and chief engineer of military works. The official account of the capture of Namur was published in Paris in 1692, without the author's name. It is attributed to the king by General Philippe Henri, Count of Grimoard, then to Jean Racine, the historiographer present at the siege, but it is probably a story composed by La Prée, assistant to the Marquis de Chamlay, quartermaster of the king's camps and armies, and taken up by Racine" (cairr.info, in The Siege of Namur of 1692: Heroism and Technique, by Michèle Virol). A man of letters, Jean Donneau de Visé is known for having founded the first monthly French-language review, Le Mercure Galant.