Manejo, e Governo da Cavallaria.Lisbon, Miguel Manescal, 1707. Small 8vo (14.5 x 9 x 1.5 cm). With a richly engraved frontispiece showing a cavalry battle before a castle, with one cavalryman on his rearing horse in the foreground, and the title in an elaborate cartouche incorporating military attributes. Gold-tooled red goatskin morocco (ca. 1892/99) by Marcellin II Lortic in Paris (signed “M LORTIC” in the tooled foot of the front turn-in), each board with the crowned arms of José Pinto Leite in a double oval and a triple-filet rectangular frame, richly gold-tooled spine and turn-ins, marbled endpapers, gilt edges, headbands, silk ribbon marker.

[12], 198 pp.Very rare first Portuguese edition of a treatise on the management and governance of cavalry by Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato (1606-1678), a Venetian military officer, tactician, diplomat and author best known for his numerous works on contemporary history, the present translation (written in the 1660s but not published until the present edition) with notes by the Portuguese cavalry general João Mascarenhas (1633-1681), probably also the translator. Gualdo Priorato originally wrote it in Italian, published at Venice in 1650 as Maneggio della cavalleria. His military histories and accounts of noblemen and of Cardinal Mazarin were enormously popular, going through many editions, but his present practical handbook for cavalry officers seems to have appeared in only one edition (in the original Italian) during his life, and WorldCat records only one copy of it and none of the present translation. Most copies must have been worn out through use in the field.Marcellin II Lortic (1852-1828) had succeeded to his father’s famous bookbindery in 1884, first continuing it with his brother and from 1891 alone. Lortic I was a bookbinder, but not a finisher, so he owed part of his fame to the finishers who carried out work for him, but Lortic II designed, bound and finished his bindings himself. With the 1937 bookplate of J.H. Anderhub (with his silhouette portrait). With the marbled free endleaf at the front detached and small scuff marks at the corners, and on the hinges at the head, foot and where the raised bands meet them, but further in fine condition.l guerradarestauracao.wordpress.com/2008/04/25; Innocêncio J1009 (vol. 3, p. 416); KVK & WorldCat (2 copies); not in Mennessier de la Lance; Palau; for the binder and a nearly identical binding: British Library bookbindings database 000009438; Fléty, p. 115.