1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sanson, Nicolas

SANSON, NICOLAS (1600–1667), French cartographer, wrongly termed by some the creator of French geography, was born of an old Picardy family of Scottish descent, at Abbeville, on the 20th (or 31st) of December 1600, and was educated by the Jesuits at Amiens. In 1627 he attracted the attention of Richelieu by a map of Gaul which he had constructed (or at least begun) while only eighteen. He gave lessons in geography both to Louis XIII. and to Louis XIV.; and when Louis XIII., it is said, came to Abbeville, he preferred to be the guest of Sanson (then employed on the fortifications), instead of occupying the lodgings provided by the town. At the conclusion of this visit the king made Sanson a councillor of state. In 1647 Sanson accused the Jesuit Labbe of plagiarizing him in his Pharus Galliae Antiquae; in 1648 he lost his eldest son Nicolas, killed during the Fronde. Among the friends of his later years was the great Condé. He died at Paris on the 7th of July 1667. Two younger sons, Adrien (d. 1708) and Guillaume (d. 1703), succeeded him as geographers to the king.

Sanson’s principal works are: Galliae antiquae descriptio geographica (1627); Graeciae antiquae descriptio (1636); L’Empire romain (1637); Britannia, ou recherche de l’antiquité d’Abbeville (1638), in which he seeks to identify Strabo’s Britannia with Abbeville; La France (1644); Tables méthodiques pour les divisions des Gaules . . . (1644); L’Angleterre, l’Espagne, l’Italie et l’Allemagne (1644); Le Cours du Rhin (1646); In Pharum Galliae antiquae Philippi Labbe disquisitiones (1647–1648); Remarques sur la carte de l’ancienne Gaule de César (1651); L’Asie (1652); Index geographicus (1653); Geographia sacra (1653); L’Afrique (1656). In 1692 Hubert Jaillot collected Sanson’s maps in an Atlas nouveau. See also Niceron, Mémoires, vols. xiii. and xx.; the 18th-century editions of some of Sanson’s works on Delamarche under the titles of Atlas de géographie ancienne and Atlas britannique; and the Catalogue des cartes et livres de géographie de Sanson (1702).