116 - THYBOUREL (François) & APPIER HANZELET (Jean). A Collection of Various Military Machines and Fireworks for War and Recreation. Including Trittemius’s Alphabet […] and the method for writing at night to an absent friend. Pont-à-Mousson, Charles Marchant, 1620. Small quarto, old vellum with lacing (wear and stains). Foxing, paper browned in places, faint old water stains.

THYBOUREL (François) & APPIER HANZELET (Jean). A Collection of Various Military Machines and Fireworks for War and Recreation. Including Trittemius’s Alphabet […] and the method for writing at night to an absent friend. Pont-à-Mousson, Charles Marchant, 1620. Small quarto, old vellum with lacing (wear and stains). Foxing, paper browned in places, faint old water stains. A rare first edition of this important treatise on military mechanics and pyrotechnics, lavishly illustrated with intaglio engravings by Jean Appier, known as Hanzelet, depicting war machines, movable bridges, siege engines, grenades, rockets, and incendiary devices... François Thybourel, a master surgeon, and Jean Appier Hanzelet, an engraver and printer, were both affiliated with the University of Pont-à-Mousson. The work comprises five books devoted to military machines and fireworks, followed by two treatises on methods of secret and nocturnal writing. This copy is incomplete, lacking the last three folios of Book III (pp. 19–24) and the text of the seventh part, “Méthode pour escrire de nuict,” of which only the title survives. The sixth part, “Method for Writing Secretly to One’s Friend,” is complete. (Ruggieri, 512; Brunet, I, 358.)