[Militaria. Presentation copy with a secret] Ordonnance du Roi, du 4 mars 1831,

sur l'exercice et les manoeuvres de l'infanterie. Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1831, 1 text vol. and 1 plate vol., text vol.: (2),XXXVIII,432 p., plate vol.: 64 mostly folding lithographed plates with 107 accompanying text pages, 9 pages of sheet music at the end, luxurious but not entirely uniform (see explanation below!) bound in richly gilt and blind-stamped morocco, gilt edges, folio.

Beautiful copy with some tiny defects (e.g. corners of boards slightly damaged). Both volumes with unidentified identical crowned owner's stamp on the title page. The original edition of a new set of regulations for the infantry, published at the beginning of the reign (1830-1848) of King Louis Philippe (1773-1850). An edition in 8vo also exists. There is something peculiar about this copy: why are the volumes of a presentation copy this splendid not in a uniform binding? The answer can be found by comparing our copy with one offered on Ebay by "Abigalivre" at the moment. That particular copy has the owner's stamp of Ferdinand Philippe duc d'Orléans (1810-1842) on both title pages. It appears that our text volume is bound exactly like the plate volume of that copy, and our plate volume is bound exactly like the text volume of that copy! Even more confusion arises when it becomes clear that the text volumes of the online copy and ours do have the same endpapers (our plate volume has different endpapers, the online copy does not show them). There is almost no other possibility than an accidental mistake when these copies were presented to both noble owners (or even earlier), resulting in two incorrect sets subsequently bluntly provided with the stamps. It is much less likely (but not impossible) that the sets were intentionally compiled this way. A mistake made almost 200 years ago is now uncovered thanks to the Internet.