Maniement d'armes d'arquebuses, mousquets, & picques Selon l'ordre de monseig. le Prince Maurice, Pr. d'Orange, Comte de Nassau...Wapen-handelinghe van roers, musquetten, en spiessen... The exercise o

£12,000 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A beautiful copy of this classic early 17th-century work on the use of hand weapons, a polyglot edition in quarto including English text, illustrated with woodcuts, and portable so far more practical than the lavish folio edition with engraved plates. The publisher’s preface, given in French, German, Dutch and English, is addressed to ‘al souldgiours and these that take deleight in armes’. It is dated from Zutphen, 20 August 1619, and states that because the original work in folio is expensive and too big to be had on a long journey he has ‘thaught fit to reduce it in such a small forme as yow heere see’ but has ‘not left owt anye thingh wich is in the great Booke.’ He also tells us that he has divided it into three parts, ‘eche own of them shal be soulde asunder’. The three parts are ‘1. The use of the callivres. 2. The use of the Musket. 3. The use of the Pike.’ The OED defines ‘calliver’ thus: ‘a light kind of musket or arquebus… it seems to have been the lightest portable firearm, excepting the pistol, and to have been fired without a ‘rest’.’ The section on muskets shows them all using a ‘rest.’ In the main text each page spread comprises a numbered woodcut illustration on the left hand page with a heading in French, German, Dutch and English above and a description in the same languages on the right hand page. The setting of the English text (printed in italic) is less expert than that shown in the other languages and the initial long ‘s’ is particularly badly handled,

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.