Tavernier, Melchior
Engraved news map/broadside of La Rochelle at the outset of the first royal operations against the Huguenot stronghold, surveyed by the royal engineer and geographer Jérôme Bachot and issued in Paris by Melchior Tavernier. The plan presents the fortified city and roadstead with a long descriptive text in three columns below, offered to readers as a “true plan” and topographic account of the environs. The publication coincided with Louis XIII’s 1621–22 blockade of the port.
Tavernier specialized in topical engraved placards and early French cartography.
This plan is recorded in two contemporary versions: a map alone titled Inographie [Iconographie] de la ville de La Rochelle 1621 and the present, expanded broadside with the three-column text headed Plan au vray.
Attribution on the heading credits Bachot as ingénieur & géographe ordinaire du Roy. Bachot also designed a 1621 map of Aunis for Tavernier, underscoring his close collaboration with the Paris publisher.
The image combines a numbered key in the side panels with a vigorous bird’s-eye plan. Towers of the harbor chain and Saint-Nicolas, the arsenal, markets, bastions, and principal gates are identified among more than fifty sites. A 32-point compass rose, rhumb lines, and soundings animate the roadstead with several sailing vessels.
Issued several years before the great siege of 1627–1628, the plan captures La Rochelle’s defenses and approaches that would soon dominate European news and print culture. It documents the city just prior to the royal encirclement that ended Huguenot autonomy.
Apparently very rare, we are unable to trace any copies in OCLC.
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