Copper engraving, 38 x 48.5 cm, engraved by Isaac Basire, recent hand-colour, blank verso.

Plan of the Siege of Cardona, Catalonia, in 1714, published in Nicholas Tindal’s continuation of Rapin de Thoyras’s History of England; many of the maps illustrating the work depict military actions fought by the British during the campaigns of the War of the Spanish Succession, mostly in Spain and the Low Countries. The Allies in the context of this conflict were Spanish supporters of the Habsburg Archduke Charles of Austria, with the backing of Austrian, British, Dutch, Prussian and Portugese troops, and they faced a Franco-Spanish Bourbon army. At stake was the European balance of power, which would shift dramatically if the Bourbon Philip V was able to unify Spain and France. Cardona was the last Catalonian redoubt of Archduke Charles’ supporters and the war ended in compromise shortly afterwards: Philip V remained King of Spain but was excluded from the French line of succession, precluding a union between the two kingdoms.