Levasseux de Beauplane, Guillaume

Guillaume Levasser de Beauplan was originally from the northern province of France - Normandy . Levasseurs were a large famous family in France, which was divided into many branches, each of which bore a special name, in accordance with the name of its estate. One of the Levasseurs, probably Guillaume's father, acquired the Beauplan estate ( Beauplan ) from the noblemen Vinefay ( French Vinefay ), which marked the beginning of the creation of the new noble line Levasser de Beauplan ( French Levasseur de Beauplan ). The exact time of Guillaume's birth is unknown. It is known that he was born at the end of the XVI century, in the city of Rouen or near it. Having entered military service in his youth, Guillaume de Beauplan soon became a trust in the then-powerful Marshal d'Ancra , who in 1616 appointed Beauplan to command the fortress of Pont d'arché in Normandy. Information on the further military service of Levasser de Beauplan was not preserved in the French troops. There is reason to believe that he remained in France until the fall of his patron marshal d'Ancra. These circumstances may have forced Boplan to seek service in other countries (this period may include Boplan's stay in India and on the island of Madagascar ). In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Guillaume de Beauplan was invited by the Polish king Sigismund III to serve in the Commonwealth as senior artillery captain and military engineer ^[4] .

The appearance and long stay of Guillaume de Beauplan within the borders of Ukraine was closely connected with those plans and measures that the Polish state then carried out to protect the captured southern and southeastern outskirts from enemies. The strengthening of the neighbors, especially the Ottoman Empire , which was pushing its borders farther and farther every year, as well as the regular raids of the Crimean Tatars and Cossacks , greatly worried the Polish government. The state, realizing the whole danger of the open and unprotected position of the new southern borders of the Polish state, sought, if possible, to provide them and cover weak points with a number of fortresses. As a result, a whole network of fortifications appears on the steppe border of the Wild Field . Boplan was the best performer of this plan of the Polish government. For 16 or 17 years, he traveled from one end of the Wild Field to the other, erecting and finding places to erect fortresses and all kinds of barriers to detain the enemy. Boplan worked especially hard on erecting fortifications in the Dnieper right-bank strip bordering the steppe, which covered Polish lands from the south. In addition to the right side of the Dnieper, Boplan often visited the left side of the river with the same purpose.

Finding places convenient for fortifications, Boplan became well acquainted with the topography , ethnography , life and position of Polish Ukraine and the localities closest to it, and made interesting notes about it. In addition, on behalf of the Polish king Vladislav IV and the crown hetman of Konetspolsky, Boplan was involved in compiling a detailed map of Ukraine. At the beginning of the uprising in Ukraine under the leadership of B. Khmelnitsky , Boplan leaves the Polish service and returns to his homeland, in Rouen. The real reasons for Boplan leaving Poland remain unknown. The most probable reasons were the plight of the Polish state in the middle of the 17th century due to anarchy in administration, court, finance and military affairs and the neglect of the new Polish king, Jan Casimir , to the Boplan case.

Returning home, Boplan was engaged in processing the material that he had collected in Ukraine, and compiling notes about the region where he spent a lot of time. The results of these works were: an essay on Ukraine, entitled " Description d'Ukranie " and detailed maps of Ukraine and Poland.

Guillaume Levasser de Beauplan built castles on the territory of modern Ukraine (for example, according to one version, according to his design, the Podgoretsky castle was built in the 1635-1640s) and fortresses (such as Bar , Brody , Kremenchug ), restored in 1639 destroyed by the Cossacks Kodak , designed the external fortifications of Berezhansky castle .

One of the most famous cartographers of the 17th century , Boplan made the first version of the handwritten plan (map) called “Ukrainian Geographical Council” Tabula Geographica Ukrainska 1639 (44.5 × 62.5 cm, scale 1: 1500000) entered the manuscript atlas of F. Getkant and it displays 275 names of settlements, 80 names of rivers, 4 islands, 13 rapids, 4 forests, 2 names of the seas. Today it is stored in the Stockholm Military Archive ^[5] .

The first edition of the General Map of Ukraine lat. Delineatio Generalis Camporum Desertorum vulgo Ukraina. - The general plan of uninhabited lands, usually called Ukraine , southern orientation, 42 × 54.5 cm, scale 1: 1800000) was made by the famous Dutch engraver Wilhelm Gondius and printed in Danzig in 1648 .

1,293 objects are displayed on the map, including 993 names of settlements and 153 names of rivers.

During the 17th century and in the first half of the 18th century , Boplan maps were used in European cartography to display Ukrainian lands. ^[6]

There are several options for a general card. Thus, the 1660 edition of Carte d'Ukranie Contenant plusiers Prouinces comprising entre les Confins de Moscouie et les Limites de Transiluanie , engraved by J. Tuten in Rouen as an addition to the second edition of the Description of Ukraine, is supplemented with an image of the Crimean Peninsula .

One of the main cartographic works of Boplan Delineatio specialis et accurata Ukrainae. Cum suis Palatinatibus ac Distictibq, Provincycq adiacentibus (The special and detailed plan of Ukraine, together with the voivodships, districts and provinces located in it, consists of 8 sheets 41.5 × 45 cm each, total size 83x216 cm, scale 1: 450,000). Special map of Ukraine engraved and printed in 1650 in Danzig by V. Gondius. This is one of the first medium-sized topographic maps of a large territory in Europe. Several specimens are known that differ from each other in a number of changes and additions ^[7] .

In 1639, Boplan spent topographic survey of the course of the Dnieper and the adjacent territory. The first maps of the Dnieper Tractus Borysthenis were published in 1662 anonymously in Amsterdam on 3 sheets in the 2nd volume of the Latin edition of the Atlas Maior , the Dutch atlas of the Dutch cartographer Jan Blau . Each sheet is divided into two parts; in six parts the course of the Dnieper from Kiev to the Black Sea is depicted. The first two sheets had a scale of 1: 232000, the third - 1: 463000. These maps were reprinted many times in subsequent editions of the atlas of J. Blau and atlases of J. Janson and his followers.

There are even less well-known cartographic works of Boplan. For example, a small map of Poland with a territorial coverage from the Oder to the throat of the Don and from Ladoga to the Crimea was discovered in 1933 by K. Buczek in the Craczykyski library in Krakow ; and 11 engravings of unfinished maps to the "Description of Ukraine" , size 11 × 19 cm, discovered by S. Herbst in 1952 .

Boplan served as the prototype for Jonathan Green in the movie Wii (2014) ^[8] .

In European countries, the "Description of Ukraine " has become widely known:

• 1st edition: " Description des contrées du Royaume de Pologne, contenues depuis les confins de la Moscowie, iusques aux limites de la Transilvanie . Par le Sieur de Beauplan ", 1651);
• 2nd supplemented edition: “Description of Ukraine, which is some provinces of the Kingdom of Poland. Extends from the borders of Muscovy, down to the borders of Transylvania ”(“ Description d'Ukranie, qui sont plusieurs provinces du Royaume de Pologne. Contenues depuis les confins de la Moscovie, iusques aux limites de la Transilvanie ”, Rouen , 1660), where the author gives information about geography and the economy, depicts the life of the local peasantry, describes in detail the Dnieper rapids, etc.

The “Description”, which first opened Ukraine to a Western reader, aroused great interest in Europe: the book was translated into English (1704), German (1780), Polish (1822) and Russian (1832, translator F. G. Ustryalov ) languages . The first Ukrainian translation by J. Kravets appeared in 1981.

Boplan's work was one of the sources for the famous historical work of ^9] “History of the Cossacks wars against Poland” (“ Histoire de la guerre des Cosaques contre la Pologne ”; 1859) ^[10] .

• Guillaume Levasser de Boplan . Description of Ukraine. Moscow 2004
• Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan . Description d'Ukranie. Rouen, 1660. (fr.)
• Special map of Ukraine Boplan
• Boplan map in high resolution
• General Map of Ukraine Boplan (> 4M) ( TIFF version> 110M (inaccessible link) )
• Boplan. Description of the Ukraine, or the Regions of the Kingdom of Poland, lying between the borders of Moscow and Transylvania, with the addition of news about customs, customs and military art of Ukraintsev. - Translate from French. St. Petersburg. Въ Typography of Karl edge. 1832. - World Digital Library.

• Barvinsky B. "Ukraine" Boplan // Stara Ukraine. - 1924, No. 1. - S. 14.
• Boplan i Ukraine: Зб. sciences. prats. - Lviv: Meta, 1998.
• Kordt V.A. Boplan and his works on cartography of Southern Russia // Readings in the Historical Society of Nestor the Chronicler (CHIONL). - 1911. - Book. 22, Dep. 1. - S. 85-87.
• Lyaskoronsky V. Guillaume Levasser de Beauplan and his historical and geographical works on southern Russia. - K .: Type. I.I. Chokolova , 1901.
• Memoirs relating to the history of Southern Russia. Vol. 2. / Ed. V. Antonovich . - К., 1896.
• Rudakov V.E. Boplan, Guillaume // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Borschak E. L'Ukraine dans la litérature de l'Europe occidentale. Paris, 1935.
• Essar DF, Real AB Beauplan's Description d'Ukranie: A. Bibliography of Editions and Translations // HUS. 1982, Vol. 6, No. 4, P. 488–489
• Sossa R. І. History of cartography of the territory of Ukraine. - K .: Libid, 2000. - ISBN 978-966-06-0463-6

• Boplan, Guillaume Levasser de (neopr.) . Eastern literature . Date of treatment February 19, 2011. Archived August 21, 2011.