Le Jeu Des Fortifications

“The Game of Fortifications” is the English translation of the title of the game, created by Gilles Jodelet de La Boissière as royal engineer to King Louis XIV. He collaborated on the texts with the architect François Blondel. The oldest known edition comes from Paris by the printer Mariette (Pierre II?) in 1668 (1663?).

In its basic form, it is a paper print of the game board of a special variant of the Royal Game of the Goose. In France, the principle of the game was innovated into a pedagogical tool with various thematic focuses. The oldest known adaptation should be the “Jeu Chronologique” by Mariette (Pierre I) from 1638, whose purpose was to teach history. At the same time, Instructive and Educational Playing Cards by Jean Desmarests and others were also being developed in parallel.

The advanced version of this game by M. de La Boissière deals with the construction of fortress fortifications of that time. In the dice game, it guides the player from the basic definition of geometric principles to the advanced defensive elements of bastion fortresses. The final field of the game contains the floor plan of the completed fortress. The game board also contains game instructions and a name index of the terms used.

Above: Le Jeu Des Fortifications designed by Gilles de la Boissière and manufactured by Jean Mariette, Paris, 1691.

An interesting innovation is the addition of a miniature card in the upper right-hand corner of each playing card. After cutting the game board, a regular 52-card deck is created, which can also be used for a card game. The miniature card also contains the sequence number of each field, and when all the cards are spread out on the table, the possibility of using it for a dice game is preserved.

The same solution is also repeated in “Das Spiel der Hoffnung” (The Game of Hope), a game of chance designed by Johann Kaspar Hechtel of Nuremberg circa 1799, from which the deck of Fortune Telling cards called Petite Lenormand subsequently developed.

The game model was very successful, with various language versions being published in Western Europe over the next hundred years. The colour version is exceptional, most of the time it is a single-colour print. The British Museum holds several versions of this game from later editions and in different languages. These are complete printed sheets for a dice game, but also cut-up versions suitable for a card game.

The online store for historical prints AbeBooks offers a book Le Jeu des fortifications from around 1710, with individual cards glued in. If the book was ever used for a game, it could be considered a prototype for a future gamebook. www.abebooks.com/Jeu-fortifications►

Le Jeu De La Guerre

As further proof of the success of this solution, we can mention another game by Gilles de la Boissière. The same basic scheme is used in the game Le Jeu De La Guerre from 1698. The “Game of War” looks at the issue of war from the opposite side and guides the player through the process of conquering a fortress. According to legend, the game was created for the education of the son of Louis XIV. A significant advance is the solution of the card indexes in the upper left corner. Readability has also been improved by replacing the miniature with a symbol of the card suit with a Roman numeral. De la Boissière anticipates the solution of “Dexter indexes”  more →

References

Wikipedia : Gilles Jodelet de La Boissière►

British Museum : Gilles de la Boissière►