[EGYPT, 1801.]

A plan of the operations of the British forces in Egypt from the landing in Aboukir Bay on the 8th of March to the Battle of Alexandria March 21st inclusive.

London, William Faden, 28 May 1801. 240 x 400 mm, hand-coloured engraved plan; top margin slightly frayed, with stitch marks; inscription on verso, ‘Landing at Alexandria’, showing through. This plan illustrates the movements of both the British, under Sir Ralph Abercromby, and the French, under General Menou, throughout the 1801 Abu Qir campaign. In it, Abercromby was fatally wounded but the French, who suffered more than double the British casualties, were driven back into their fortified lines. ‘Coming after a long period of reverses and disappointments [Abercromby’s] triumph at Abu Qir, which rendered France’s foothold in Egypt quite untenable, restored the army’s reputation and testifies to his considerable abilities as a general. The mere prospect of defeat there was evidently sufficient to intensify French efforts to negotiate an end to the revolutionary war. If the treaty of Amiens truncated the political effects of Abercromby’s victory its military significance lingered. Indeed it proved the first of the many victories that the British army secured in its lengthy struggle with Napoleonic France’ (Oxford DNB).Faden, engraver and cartographer, came to prominence during the American wars ‘with maps and atlases of considerable historical note, some of the materials for which survive in the Library of Congress . . . . Systematic in the acquisition of the best available maps, Faden developed the most competent cartographic service of the period. His was an international concern, in contact with map makers throughout Europe. He supplied government departments and commissioned fresh surveys. A gold medallist of the Society of Arts in 1796, his activities foreshadowed the emergence of national cartographic agencies. He brought out the first published Ordnance Survey map, An entirely new & accurate survey of the county of Kent (1801). Some of his plates were likewise adopted as official Admiralty charts. When he moved at this time to larger premises at no. 5 Charing Cross, his maps were reputed the finest being engraved anywhere in the world’ (Oxford DNB). He retired in 1823, passing the business on to a former apprentice, James Wyld ‘the elder’.Only two copies found on COPAC, at Cambridge and the BL.

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• ordernr.: T2918

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