Le Royaume de France et les Conquettes de Louis IX Grand

An attractive piece of cartographic promotion for the Sun King, Louis the Great.

This map is dedicated to celebrating the victories of Louis the Great, king of France from 1715 to 1774. Views of 19 cities flank the map, each of which played a role in Louis’s conquests and is explained in further detail in text boxes around the border. Strasbourg, Algiers, Cadiz, Mons and Barcelona are included, just to name a few.

The map shows France colored by political region, with additional organizational information provided in two indices. A detailed legend identifies the sites of numerous clerical and political buildings, battle sites, bridges, universities, prisons, ports and more. The elaborate image certainly painted a rosy view of Louis XV’s reign (the longest of any monarch in European history), but whether he earned the title of “The Great” is up for debate. His warmongering led to the loss of the colonies of New France during the Seven Year’s War, and drained the French treasury; contributing to the circumstances that led to the French Revolution in 1789.