Beaurain, John De

, an accurate military geographer, the descendant of an ancient family, was born at Aix in Issart in 1697, and at the age of nineteen went to Paris, where he studied geography under the celebrated Sanson, geographer to the king. His progress was so rapid, and his reputation so high, that at the age of twenty-five he was honoured with the same title. A perpetual almanac which he invented, and with which Louis XV. was much pleased, procured him the patronage of that prince, for whom he drew a great number of plans and charts. But his principal reputation rests on his topographical plans of the military kind, particularly his “Description topographique et militaire des campagnes de Flandre, depuis 1690 jusqu’en 1694,” Paris, 1756, 3 vols. folio, drawn up from the memoirs of Vaultier and the marshal Luxembourg. He had also the honour of contributing to the education of the dauphin, for which a pension was conferred on him in 1756, and, as he had talents of the political kind, he was not unfrequently employed in negociations by cardinal de Fleury and Amelot. He died at Paris, Feb. 11, 1771. His son, the chevalier de Beaurain, who appears to have inherited his father’s talents as a military draftsman, published “Cartes des campagnes de grande Conde” en Flandre," Paris, fol. 1774; and in 1781, those of Turenne, with the descriptions of Grimoard, compiled from Turenne’s original papers, the correspondence of Louis XIV. that of his ministers, and several other authentic memoirs, a most splendid folio, enriched with a great number of charts and plans, executed with uncommon fidelity, precision, and. minuteness, so as to describe every motion of the armies in the most distinct manner. ²