VEGETIUS RENATUS, Flavius. De re militari libri quatuor. Edited by Guillaume Budé. Paris: Christian Wechel, 23 August 1532.
2° (317 x 22mm). Woodcut title vignette and woodcut illustration on verso, full-page woodcut frontispiece, with ?17th-century hand-colouring and gold heightening, 120 full-page woodcut illustrations, woodcut text illustrations, diagrams, initials, and publisher's device on Z8v, letterpress diagrams of formations. (Slight oxidisation to frontispiece colouring, occasional light spotting or marking, first 3 leaves skilfully repaired at inner margin.) Late 17th- or early 18th-century panelled speckled calf gilt, spine in compartments with 2 gilt lettering-pieces and the crowned monogram label [SX] of the Earl of Essex (lightly rubbed and scuffed, recornered and rebacked retaining early backstrip, chipped with minor loss). Provenance: Algernon Capell, second Earl of Essex of the second creation (bookplate dated '1701', monogram lettering-piece).
THE EARL OF ESSEX'S COPY OF THE FIRST WECHEL EDITION. This edition combines Vegetius's famous text with Sextus Iulius Frontinus' De strategematis, Aelianus Tacticus' De instruendis aciebus and Publius Franciscus Modestus' De vocabulis rei militaris. The 1532 edition appears to be unknown to Brunet, who cites Wechel's second edition of 1534, finding that edition notable for 'le nom de son éditeur, le savant Budée, et [...] les gravures sur bois, dont elle est ornée'. Adams V-331; Mortimer, Harvard French 486: cf. Brunet V, col.1162 (second and third Wechel editions, 1534 and 1535); Davies Murray French 563 (third Wechel edition, 1535).