Depot de la Guerre
The Dépôt de la Guerre was a collection point in the French War Ministry for all writings related to war science and war history.
history
The institute was founded in 1688 by François-Michel Le Tellier , moved from Paris to Versailles in 1761 and enlarged by the allocation of the Dépôt des cartes et plans , but returned to Paris in 1791 with the extended powers. In 1793, on the orders of the convent, he received the famous map of France from Jean Dominique Comte de Cassini for completion and a little later a collection of 10,000 maps, among which were rare, old copies.
The Dépôt de la Guerre also had a rich collection of documents of military and geographic content, as well as the files and memoranda from the wars of the Republic and the First Empire.
In 1887 it was split into two independent bodies. The service geographique de l'armée (SGA) was responsible for the creation and publication of map material and had workshops for copperplate engraving, photography, heliogravure, etc. In 1940, it became part of the Institut geographique national . The Service historique de l'armée (SHA) is an archive for war history and military statistics and is now called Service historique de la Défense .
As in France, there is also a dépôt in Belgium for the same purpose.
Publications
The most important achievement of the Dépôt is the map of France begun in 1817 on the basis of new measurements on a scale of 1: 80,000, which was not completed until 1875. The so-called 1 Franc sheets that appear in stores have been transferred from copper engraving to stone by transfer printing. Some of the cards were printed in the Dépôt itself, the other in private institutions. Total production in 1875 was 524,204 sheets.
Under the direction of General de Vault, the Dépôt has published the history of the French wars from 1677 to 1763 in 125 volumes.
