Guillaume le Vasseur de Beauplan

Guillaume le Vasseur de Beauplan (* around 1600; † December 6, 1673 in Rouen ) was a French military engineer, architect and cartographer .

Life

There are different information in the literature on the year of his birth and death. Presumably he was born in Dieppe in Normandy . Occasionally his first name is given as Wilhelm. Information about his life in France is sparse and contradicting. Beauplan probably came from a Huguenot family. His father Guillaume († 1643) was a hydrograph, cartographer and mathematician. Allegedly Beauplan served as a lieutenant in the French army, at times even in the Caribbean, before coming to Poland.

Between 1630 and 1647 he was in the service of the Kingdom of Poland, from 1630 as an officer and from 1632 as a surveyor in Podolia , Volhynia and the Ukraine . In 1634 he took part in the definition of the border between Russia and Poland-Lithuania .

During the foray into the Dnepr estuary in 1639, Beauplan was able to collect a lot of information, including a. over the geographical latitude of the mouth with the result 46 ° 50 'and was only 15' wrong. The result of the trip was a three-part map of Ukraine along the river with the Crimea and the Sea of ​​Azov, which he created with the help of Sebastian Aders . This corrected Ptolemy's map, which dates back to antiquity . These maps were subsequently used in the atlas by Friedrich Getkant (1600–1666) and the cartographer Guillaume Delisle . His work interrupted Cossack uprisings in the years 1635–38. 1637–38 he took part under Hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski in the fighting against the Cossacks in the rank of artillery captain (promotion 1637). This map was supplemented in 1639 by Podolia, Volhynia and Dnepr regions.

General representation of the Empty Plains (in common parlance of Ukraine) along with its neighboring provinces compiled by Beauplan in 1648

Władysław IV. Wasa commissioned Beauplan in 1645 to print the work Delineatio specialis et accurata tutius Ukrainae cum suis palatinatibus ac districtibus provinciisque adiacentibus , that is, a general map of the Ukraine (belonging to Poland). The map with a scale of 1: 463,000 appeared in 1650. The basis for this was a smaller (no longer existent) map that was engraved by Willem Hondius in 1648 (“Delineatio Generalis Camporum Desertorum vulgo Ukraina”). After Hondius' death in 1652, his work was cataloged and sealed. On this occasion one learns about the project planned by de Beauplan “Atlante Polonico” with 20 cards. The 19 × 14 cm cards by Hondius found in the Gdansk City Library 11 in 1952 are most likely part of this project. The project would be a novelty if it were to be implemented: an atlas in pocket book format with the accompanying text. There was no longer any documentation for the surveying projects. The office was presumably in Warsaw, where Beauplan had to stay for several weeks. The maps created by Beauplan are irregular. Only those areas that he knew personally are recorded more precisely. Nonetheless, his contributions to the development of cartography are enormous, especially given the fact that he made many measurements himself and worked with four relatively simple devices, such as a clock , oodometer , bussole and astrolabe .

Only a few months before the beginning of the Cossack uprising under Bohdan Khmelnyzkyj , Beauplan was released from military service on March 29, 1647 and returned to France. Before returning home, he met Willem Hondius , whom he visited again in 1650 when the maps were going to be printed in Danzig. Beauplan received the maps from him that were added to the 1660 new edition of the "Déscription". Beauplan lived in Dieppe until 1652, from 1650–52 as vice-sergeant-major of the city, and after moving until his death in Rouen, where he also owned a small estate. In France he published his book in 1650 and the map of Rzeczpospolita in 1652 (scale 1: 1.8 million), in 1662 maps of the Dnepr and Normandy (1653). These maps were often changed afterwards by several authors and printed in various atlases or other publications.

Castle and chateau in Podhorce

His achievements in the field of military architecture include above all fortifications in Bar , Brody , Kudak , Nowy Koniecpol , Krzemieńczuk and the castle in Podhorce (1635–40) as well as numerous bridges and roads and road planning. He also published works on military geometry (1662), nautical science (1667) and astronomy (1653).

Beauplan was married twice, to Marie Duguet and to Elisabeth Boivin. Beauplan died as a Calvinist on December 6, 1673 (according to other sources, 1685, rather unlikely).

Déscription d'Ukranie

Déscription d'Ukranie

The title page of the first edition of the Déscription d'Ukranie from 1651 contains an error, perhaps not intended by the author. He wrote down his own information and observations that Beauplan was able to make during his stay in the Ukraine from 1630 to 1647 in one of his works Déscription . It is a contemporary witness report, therefore an important cultural and historical source about the people of that epoch. Déscription also contains his own drawings and maps. It is the first major description of Ukraine and the Cossack way of life.

However, the work is based on his observations and is not a systematic record of the country. Beauplan supplemented his description with a lot of information about fortifications or flora and fauna. He was impressed, for example, by the plagues of locusts with their miles of swarms in 1645 and 1646, to which he dedicated a longer passage. He describes bobak , a deer species that has already been exterminated, but does not mention the poisonous snakes that were then emerging in Ukraine. The French were particularly impressed by the mummies in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra; according to Beauplan, there were only two Orthodox churches in Kiev (four in reality). Beauplan mentioned the fees for weddings, baptisms and funerals that were imposed on the Orthodox peasants and Cossacks by magnates (which are considered to be the cause of the Cossack uprising under Chmielnicki . He did not understand the causal link).

The depictions of the Cossack Council also come from Beauplan. He estimates the number of Cossacks at around 200,000. He named the Cossack love for freedom as the cause of the Cossack revolts. Beauplan mentions that the Cossacks used the ashes mixed with liquor as a remedy for flu. He also noticed the widespread consumption of beer at every meal in Poland (in reality it was drank heavily diluted with water). Beauplan repeats a legend that was widespread at the time about blind birth among the Tatars, similar to that of cats.

The chronicle is unequal. Beauplan describes the facts known to him from the autopsy in more detail. The author twists numerous terms and names. It is therefore advisable to use annotated editions (Polish, Ukrainian). For example, the Ukrainian translation contains around 423 annotations to the 112-page chronicle. The Cossack Uprising and the Northern War sparked a demand for information from the disputed areas and secured four editions of the «Déscription» (1650, 1651, 1660, 1661).

The work was subsequently published several times in France and translated into several languages, including Latin (1685) and English (several times). The third corrected edition, published by Jacques Cailloué in 1660, was accompanied by the maps engraved by Hondius and several drawings by Beauplans accompanying the text. The only German translation is by Johann Wilhelm Moeller (1748–1807). The work was published in Polish twice ( Niemcewicz , 1822) and in 1972. Two Russian translations appeared in the 19th century. The censorship in the Soviet Union did not even stop at sources from the 17th century; the new Russian and the very first Ukrainian translation followed in 1990 (apart from the passages published in a specialist journal in 1981). The «Déscription» became the subject of some plagiarism. Several authors published fragments from Beauplan's work under their own names.

literature

• Wilhelm le Vasseur Sieur de Beauplan: Description of the Ukraine, the Crimea and their inhabitants. Translated from the French, along with an appendix relating to the Ukraine and the Budziackian Tatars, and drawn from the diaries of a German prince and a Swedish gentleman . Published by Johann Wilhelm Moeller, Breslau 1780.
• Guillaume le Vasseur de Beauplan: Description d'Ukraine qui sont plusieurs Provinces du Royaume de Pologne , Rouen 1650.
• Guillaume le Vasseur de Beauplan: Description of Ukraine , Translated and edited by Andrew B. Pernal and Dennis F. Essar, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press 1993.
• Eryka Lassoty i Wilhelma Beauplana opisy Ukrainy , przekł. Zofia Stasiewska, Stefan Meller; red., wstęp i koment. Zbigniew Wójcik; mapa Janusz Łopatto, Warszawa 1972 (descriptions of Ukraine by Erich Lassota and Guillaume Beauplan. Translation by Zofia Stasiewska, Stefan Meller; editing, introduction and commentary by Zbigniew Wójcik; map by Janusz Łopatto).
• Hijom Levasser de Boplan: Opis Ukrainy , Kyjiv 1990 (Translation Jarema Kravec, Zoja Borisjuk. Introduction Jaroslav Savič, Valerij Smolij).
• Guillaume le Vasseur de Beauplan: Les principes de la geometrie militaire , Rouen 1662.
• Polski Słownik Biograficzny (Polish Biographical Lexicon), vol. 1. pp. 384–386, Karol Buczek's biogram.
• La Grande Encyclopédie , p. 1056.

Web links

• Guillaume le Vasseur de Beauplan: Description d'Ukraine, qui sont plusieurs provinces du Royaume de Pologne . Rouen 1650. litopys.org.ua
• Гійом Левассер де Боплан: Опис України (Hijom Levasser de Boplan: Opis Ukrainy , Kyjiv 1990). litopys.org.ua
• Dennis F. Essar, Andrew B. Pernal: Beauplan's Description d'Ukranie. A Bibliography of Editions and Translations . Harvard Ukrainian Studies VI, 4 (1982), pp. 485-499 projects.iq.harvard.edu (PDF).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} General Depiction of the Empty Plains (in Common Parlance, the Ukraine) Together with its Neighboring Provinces . World Digital Library. Retrieved January 20, 2013.