Lunéville

Lunéville is the birthplace of the famous cartographer Joseph François Ferraris. More specifically, he was born at the Lorraine court in Lunéville. Although he was of noble descent, he was not the eldest son and thus had no claim to the ancestral lands. Ferraris awaited the almost nomadic existence to which thousands of nobles in eighteenth-century Europe were condemned. The younger sons without an inheritance title had to try to make a name for themselves. And he certainly did.

His Empress Maria Theresa was not averse to a bit of war. After yet another lost war, she believed that the solution did not lie in more clashing of arms, but in better maps, which Ferraris could confirm. Too often, the Austrian armies had maneuvered themselves into an ambush because they did not know the terrain.

Pascal Brackman