Joseph de Ferraris

Between 1771 and 1778, Ferraris was commissioned by the empress Maria Theresa of Austria and emperor Joseph II to create a detailed Carte-de-Cabinet of the Austrian Netherlands.

One is in the Kriegsarchiv in Vienna, one is in the Rijksarchief in The Hague and the third one remains in the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels.

The maps held in Brussels were the maps destined for Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine, the Governor of the Austrian Netherlands, and were transferred to Belgium by Austria in 1922 as part of the World War I reparations.

In 1794 they took the engraving plates to France so they could produce more maps for their own use and to prevent any enemy from acquiring copies.

Both versions were very similar and about 40 years out of date (for instance, coal mines with their supporting infrastructure which had developed around Charleroi in the interval between the map's drafting and 1815 were missing).